At one point commission member Reuven Merhav asked about Egypt’s willingness to assist with stopping the flotilla and again the Israeli prime minister said he would discuss the matter “behind closed doors.” To the best of my knowledge, we know of no such Egyptian willingness to stop the flotilla. That is something I would love to hear the closed discussions about.
Netanyahu’s testimony angered Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Netanyahu suggested that because Israel had told Turkey to stop the flotilla (by force, I assume) and Turkey didn’t do that, this gave Israel the right to intervene instead -- and in international waters. A day after Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak reminded the members of the commission that “Israel was not like Europe or like Northern America,” suggesting, I assume, that some acts that are clearly anti-democratic in these parts of the world, are acceptable on the Israeli scene. The Turkish foreign minister has every right to remind Barak that Turkey is in Europe.
True, there are anti-democratic practices in Turkey, too, but this does not make it legitimate for a foreign state to ask Ankara to act undemocratically and forcefully limit the travel rights of its citizens.
Netanyahu also angered the former Israeli foreign minister. Tzipi Livni wrote to the president of the commission and, because one of the tasks of the commission was to determine the level of necessity of the Israeli blockade of Gaza and -- according to Livni -- Netanyahu misunderstood the reasons behind the blockade, she wanted to testify in front of the commission, too.
This is not love of the truth; it is love of opposition to the incumbents. In any case, it seems that the Turkel Commission will create more clamor inside Israel than it will internationally.
A second issue of discussion was about the bombardment of information the defense minister poured onto the members of the commission. The commission was admittedly ill-prepared for cross-examining the defense minister. The information dossiers that the commission requested from the Defense Ministry had reached them only a day before the testimony of the minister and it seems this was a deliberate act by Barak to bypass difficult questions. The members of the commission were so tired of listening to the long story Barak gave, full of details mostly unrelated to the incident, that the exhausted president of the commission had to ask for a break. Barak even spoke about the threat of Iranian nuclear ambitions.
A third issue that was revealed yet again was the disagreement between the civilian arm of the Israeli government and the military about the responsibility for the failure of the operation.
Both Netanyahu and Barak were ready to complain about the failure in military coordination and intelligence gathering before the raid and the actual management of the operation, as well as blame the soldiers for the failure. Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of staff, on the other hand, claimed that the soldiers acted proportionately and that there was nothing they could do other than what they did. This is a clear response to the prime minister and defense minister.
The Turkel Commission looks like a staged “mise en scène” to prove the rightfulness of the infallible Israeli army, but it is also revealing the internal contradictions of the Israeli administration. I am sure there were more contradictory remarks behind those closed doors.
