Turkey warships to guard Gaza-bound flotilla
12:43 pm September 12, 2011
Tensions in the Middle East are rising rapidly, with Israel increasingly isolated both within the region and across the globe. The specter of military confrontation is increasing.
In Turkey, a NATO ally, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said last week that Israel’s interception of a Turkish flotilla bound for Gaza last year would have been “cause for war” if Turkey had decided to take that course. This week, the Turkish press reports that military preparations have begun to ensure that such an incident doesn’t happen again:
“The Turkish Navy is planning to dispatch three frigates to the Eastern Mediterranean to ensure freedom of navigation and to confront Israeli warships if necessary, a Turkish news report said on Monday.
The Turkish frigates, to be dispatched by the Navy’s Southern Sea Area Command, will provide protection to civilian ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, blockaded by Israel since 2007, the Turkish daily Sabah reported. If the Turkish warships encounter an Israeli military ship outside Israel’s 12-mile territorial waters, they will advance up to 100 meters close to the ship and disable its weapon system, in a confrontation that resembles dogfights in the Aegean Sea with Greek jet fighters, according to the report.”
Erdogan is visiting Egypt this week and may seek to include a trip to Gaza on his agenda, a step that would further inflame Turkish-Israeli and Egyptian-Israeli relations.
Last week, an Egyptian mob stormed the Israeli Embassy in Cairo while government security forces stood aside. Most embassy personnel have now been airlifted back to Israel, leaving just one Israeli diplomat behind and producing the biggest crisis in Egyptian-Israeli relations in a generation.
Things are no better on the diplomatic front, where Israeli isolation is also the long-term trend. The United Nations will be presented with a petition next week seeking recognition of the Palestinian Authority, over strong protests from Israel.Russia has announced that it will support such recognition, and an online poll of citizens of Germany, France and Great Britain has found “that in Germany 84 percent supported Palestinian statehood and 76 percent believed Germany should act now to recognize; in the U.K. the figures were 71 percent and 59 percent; and in France the figures were 82 percent and 69 percent respectively.”
According to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, “France and Spain, along with the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Catherine Ashton, are in advanced stages of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority over a “package deal” that will enable the 27 member states of the EU to vote at the United Nations General Assembly in favor of upgrading the PA to the status of a non-permanent member of the UN.”
The United States has announced that it would try to block such a resolution and would veto it if it came before the Security Council. As a result, Palestinian officials are likely to introduce the resolution in the General Assembly instead. The United States cannot use its veto in the General Assembly, but GA approval is also less consequential.
In an op-ed in the New York Times today, a top Saudi Arabian official and former ambassador to the United States warned of serious consequences to U.S.-Saudi relations if the U.S. opposes recognition of the Palestinian Authority:
“Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically has. With most of the Arab world in upheaval, the “special relationship” between Saudi Arabia and the United States would increasingly be seen as toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, who demand justice for the Palestinian people.
Saudi leaders would be forced by domestic and regional pressures to adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy. Like our recent military support for Bahrain’s monarchy, which America opposed, Saudi Arabia would pursue other policies at odds with those of the United States, including opposing the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq and refusing to open an embassy there despite American pressure to do so. The Saudi government might part ways with Washington in Afghanistan and Yemen as well. “
That wording — “Saudi leaders would be forced by domestic and regional pressures to adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy” — is not chosen lightly. Arab regimes under pressure from their own people cannot be seen as placating the Israelis, and might even be tempted to provoke a confrontation as a way of diverting attention from their own many failings.
