I think Turkey should do whatever it can to help Israel as there will never be a peaceful Middle East without making sure that Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs are happy (Iran will always be a cause for concern but can be isolated if it crosses the limits). I am aware that having Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs simultaneously satisfied seems an impossible mission but there is no other way around it. Turkey’s help could be in the form of convincing the Israelis that their refusal to abide by United Nations resolutions and utter disrespect for international law not only has putrefactive effects on the international community and the United Nations but is gradually submerging the Israeli regime’s right to exist.The recent discussions in the Turkish media could be eye-opening for the Israelis. Almost nobody in the Turkish public sphere has said that Israel is right, should be empathized with, etc. Instead, even the ones who argued that Turkey should be more cautious based their arguments on the probable malicious counterattacks of Israel and/or the Jewish lobby. Is this not enough evidence that Israel does not command any respect but hopes to survive by relying on the fear factor based on its previous terrible record? Is this a sign of a healthy and sustainable existence?
Given that an increasing number of academics in the West -- including several Jewish ones -- are joining those who have criticized Israel, this should warn Israel that its atrocities will not be tolerated anymore. This will be even more so if Iran stops meddling with the Palestinian issue. Iranians must know that if they are sincere and have bona fide intentions, anytime they talk about the Palestinian issue, they are helping the Israeli right and ultra-right who use Iranian rhetoric to justify their actions, their atomic bombs and their massacres in Gaza. Suicide bombings should never take place.
If these can be secured, then Turkey could continue to insist that to have a peaceful Middle East, all parties must obey international law, meaning that in return for recognizing Israel’s right to exist, Israel must return to its pre-1967 borders, disestablish all illegal settlements and agree to a fully independent Palestinian state. I know that there is nothing new or original in what I say here. But what is new and irreversible is that in the global village everybody knows what is happening in Gaza, where people cannot live like humans. We all can watch how the Palestinian territory is bisected by Israeli roads that connect ever-multiplying Israeli settlements in illegally occupied Palestinian lands.
It is also new that establishments in the Middle East -- including Turkey -- can no longer follow a bureaucratic, oligarchic or autocratic foreign policy in this telecommunications age of satellites, cellular phones, the Internet, YouTube and so on. Israelis are deluding themselves in dreaming that the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) foreign policy with regards to Israel is accidental and Turkey will one day return to its good old militarist oligarchy times, when they only spoke to the generals. On the contrary, the other actors in the region will have to follow suit. Do Israelis not see how Hosni Mubarak’s autocracy is suffering in Egypt and Islamists are becoming more intelligent? Are they not aware of the transformations taking place in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere? With the visa requirements to Turkey abolished, we will see more Middle Easterners want what Turks have: democracy and respect for human rights.
Western powers will increasingly find it difficult to side with the injustices of the Israelis, stemming from its esoteric, fundamentalist, supremacist, maximalist but illegitimate and illegal endeavors. Israel should also remember that anti-Semitism has never been a Muslim property but has strong roots in the West. With racism increasing and the ultra-right on the rise, some segments of the Western population can add Jews to their hated list in addition to Muslims if they discover that their pockets are harmed because of Israeli atrocities, given that economically speaking these are not easy times for Westerners, who, unlike the Palestinians, do not know what hunger, starvation and lack of medicine are.
