Vol. 77/No. 13      April 8, 2013

Relations between Tel Aviv and Ankara froze after May 2010 when Israeli special forces raided the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship symbolically attempting to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, killing nine participants.

With or without Obama, it’s clear relations between the two governments would thaw. Although Ankara downgraded diplomatic relations and suspended all military agreements with Israel when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to apologize for the raid, trade and business between the two Middle Eastern nations continued as usual.

In 2011 imports to Turkey from Israel reached $2 billion, an all-time high, and nearly 200 Israeli firms were investing there. Exports to Israel reached $2.4 billion.

In a 30-minute phone call with Turkish Primer Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Obama’s last day in Israel, March 22, Netanyahu apologized for “any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury.” He pledged to pay compensation to the victims’ families, and said Israel would relax its blockade of Palestinians living in Gaza “should the situation allow it.” Both leaders agreed to normalize relations and dispatch ambassadors.

Erdogan’s government is playing a key role in funneling arms and ammunition, including from the CIA, to Syrian rebels fighting the brutal tyranny of Bashar al-Assad. Both Tel Aviv and Ankara share borders with Syria and are concerned about the ongoing civil war’s impact on stable capitalist relations in the region and the type of government that might succeed Assad.

“The fact that the Syrian crisis is constantly intensifying was a prime consideration,” Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page after talking with Erdogan. “Changing reality requires that we reexamine our relations with countries in the region.”

Although Netanyahu does not spell it out, the “changing reality” is not just the civil war in Syria, but the continuing Arab revolution that has toppled governments and opened up space for working people from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond and affected politics in Israel as well.

Obama’s visit to Israel pleased some conservatives, unlike his June 2009 speech in Cairo. Writing in the March 25 online Commentary magazine, conservative historian Max Boot complained that in the 2009 speech, Obama “seemed to equate Jewish suffering in the Holocaust with Palestinian suffering ‘in pursuit of a homeland.’”

Boot noted that Obama expressed “sympathy and admiration for Israel” during his March 21 speech in Jerusalem. Obama told the crowd at the International Convention Center that “Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state.” He also said that he is for an “independent Palestine” with “real borders.” Both statements were applauded by the mostly student crowd.

But not everyone was pleased. “He talked about having separate countries for Jews and Arabs,” a young Arab woman told the Times of Israel. “That means we must leave Israel.”

In an article in Haartez newspaper that same day, Ari Shavit, a member of the paper’s editorial board, criticized the Israeli government for not taking steps to negotiate with Palestinian leaders of the Israeli-dominated West Bank. He said they are “feeling, thinking and behaving as though [Israel] is no longer located in West Asia and can exist as an island that has broken off from it. As if there was no Arab world, no Palestine, no Iran. No Arabs, no settlers, no occupation.”

Israel is not an island, Shavit wrote, “Certainly not a nation of eight million Israelis surrounded by 350 million Arabs. Certainly not a nation in which six million Jews share the land with more than five million Palestinians. Certainly not a nation that insists, even in the second decade of the third millennium, on occupying another nation.”
 
 
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