This is the hottest issue debated both in domestic and international circles nowadays.Two phenomena seem to converge to affect Turkish foreign policy. The first is what is simply and mistakenly called a “shift of axis.” The other is the souring of Israeli-Palestinian relations that ought to be a peace process rather than an escalating conflict watched by all of us with distress and increasingly wary eyes.
Let us tackle the latter issue first.
Israeli-Palestinian relations hinge on worn-out clichés and have lost their appeal for any side and any international actor, for that matter. When the sense of importance of a relationship that involves bloody conflict is lost, it is a tragedy for at least one side and insecurity for the seemingly stronger side.
Efforts for continued negotiations and a search for a political compromise or diplomatic breakthrough give the feeling of an artificial resuscitation that will not bring the dead to life. This is quite unfortunate. Yet both the Palestinian and the Israeli leaderships are pursuing their ideological agendas while they pretend they want peace with the other side. Although their peoples are suffering, the leaderships are not really paying a true price. Instead they expect the US government to be on their side to support their own individual agendas or solve the problem on their behalf.
As long as the Israelis know that the US will protect them from the repercussions of their excesses, they will go on with their harsh military campaigns that leave little leeway to the Palestinians. As long as the Palestinians remain divided and their leaders estranged from their people while looking to the US to force the Israeli government to agree on a settlement, both sides will fail to come to terms with the other side on their own. Yet, neither leadership has the courage to admit this truth to their people.
Will the Israeli government continue to build settlements and to hold on to the West Bank, seeing no wrong in using disproportionate force against Palestinians without any moral restraint? Will the Palestinian Authority really seek peace rather than obtaining international approval for Israel’s criminality? Will Hamas constantly maintain an agenda for the obliteration of the state of Israel and direct the population of the Gaza Strip to blame the Jewish state, with the dream of creating an Islamic state in Palestine against the will of secular Palestinians.
None of these goals are attainable, and the current policies pursued by both sides are not sustainable. So no outsider, the US or Turkey for that matter, should get involved in Israeli-Palestinians affairs so that these two peoples will feel the need to reconcile on their own and their leaders will feel responsible to achieve peace or be the agents of constant war and fear.
In passing, one ought to point out the fact that a modern, secular and popularly run Palestinian state will have exemplary effects on more authoritarian and traditional Arab states that clandestinely support Israel for maintaining the conflict so that a free democratic Palestine never finds a seat in the UN assembly of independent states.
In short, what is going on is nothing like a “peace process,” and Turkish leadership has come to grips with this reality. For the time being it has maintained its distance from the problem except for retaining an emotional tie with the underdog. This attitude is interpreted as an additional issue to prove the “axis shift” in Turkey’s foreign policy. Is it? Let us discuss this in the next article.
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