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Israel-Turkey Reconciliation Is Important, But Won't Be Easy

(Jerusalem Post) Dore Gold - There has been a steady deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations since Hamas rocket fire triggered the 2008 Israel-Gaza war. In 2009, Turkish President Erdogan stormed off the stage at Davos amid an exchange of shouting with Israeli President Peres. Months later, a Turkish government-backed foundation, the IHH, dispatched a flotilla to break the naval blockade of Gaza. Israeli naval commandos boarded the ships including the lead boat, the Mavi Marmara. A UN report concluded that Israel's blockade of Gaza was legal. Israel tried to reverse this trend through reconciliation talks with Turkey and negotiations over Israeli compensation for Turkish citizens who died in the Israeli raid. In 2016, both states signed a reconciliation deal. The hardest issue they faced was the insistence of Turkey to leave open the Hamas office in Istanbul, though Turkey committed itself to not allow from its territory any terror attack on Israel. (In 2014, the head of the Hamas office, Saleh al-Arouri, admitted that a Hamas attack, in which three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed, was ordered by him when he was on Turkish soil.) The Turks evicted Arouri, but other Hamas members remained. Hamas may be defined as an illegal organization in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but not in Turkey. The U.S. recently decided to remove its support for an undersea pipeline connecting Israeli and Cypriot gas in the Mediterranean to Europe through Greece and Italy. With the project sidelined, Turkey stands to emerge as a new gas hub for the Middle East. The normalization of Turkish-Israeli relations is important, but it will not be smooth. The writer, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, served as director-general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at which time he was intimately involved in Israeli negotiations with Turkey.
2022-01-31 00:00:00
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