‘THERE IS a wide picture forming around us that includes what happened with Turkey, what is happening with Egypt, and what is happening with the Palestinians,” Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak told his cabinet colleagues last weekend. “These events are not in our control but we can certainly affect the way we face them.” Mr Barak is rightly worried that his country’s growing political isolation in the region represents a sea change in its position for which it urgently needs to find constructive diplomatic initiatives.
On September 2nd, Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador, froze trade agreements and suspended military co-operation, while repeating its demand that Israel should apologise for killing nine Turkish citizens in its attack on the Turkish relief ship Mavi Marmara bound for Gaza last year.
This sharp deterioration in relations coincided with the publication of a United Nations report on the incident. Ahead of his visit to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya this week, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Israeli attack could have been responded to as an act of war and warned of stepped-up Turkish naval operations. His visit to Egypt comes just after a crowd attacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo last weekend, leading to the evacuation of its staff.
The sudden worsening of Israel’s official relations with these two major Muslim states comes as the United Nations General Assembly prepares to endorse a unilateral Palestinian bid for recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel’s efforts to head this off have only drawn increased attention to the diplomatic impasse on the question, coinciding now with radical political change in the region. Far from seeking to take advantage of these transformations, Israel gives the impression of responding with greater intransigence. This does not bode well for the future. Mr Barak correctly identifies the possibility of shifting perceptions but he needs to spell out much more precisely how that can be done. Mr Erdogan seems open to conciliatory gestures and Israel must take his growing influence very seriously.
To antagonise him further as Turkey consolidates its relations with a fast-changing region would be to lose a real political opportunity. Israel itself is also going through a profound social upheaval concerning inequality and the high cost of living. Its political class should try to harness some of that energy towards improving relations with its neighbours.