MIDEAST: Anti-Israel Tsunami ‘One Door Away’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Sep 11 2011 (IPS) - “Only one door” separated the vengeful throng of demonstrators from the six Israeli embassy guards. Chief security officer ‘Yonatan’ was on the phone from the besieged representation. On the other side of the line was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Prime Minister pledged, “Israel will do everything in its power (…) in order to rescue you.” Such was his own personal, and sobering, account on Saturday evening during a televised address to the nation, hours after what’s been dubbed here as the “lynch ordeal” was averted.

The symbolism of the situation was inescapable. In Cairo, stranded in one room, six Israeli security personnel; in Jerusalem, hastily assembled in the Situation Room of the Foreign Ministry, six Israeli leaders – Netanyahu, the defence minister, the foreign minister, the chief of staff, the head of the internal security services, and the head of the Mossad spy agency – all frantically grappling in the dead of night with how to arrange the flight of the diplomatic personnel.

Beyond the dramatic imagery, more tangibly, the chairman of Egypt’s Supreme Military Council, Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein Tantawi, who de facto presides over the provisional government, was nowhere to be found. Netanyahu’s last resort was to call U.S. President Barack Obama and appeal for his personal assistance. Defence minister Ehud Barak was on the phone with his counterpart Leon Panetta in the U.S.

That night, Israelis came to terms with the powerlessness of their most powerful officials.

Within one week, almost simultaneously, Israel lost its strategic alliance with Turkey to the north and almost lost its strategic peace partnership with Egypt to the south. Israeli diplomats were expelled from both capital cities.

In Ankara, the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador was dictated by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has long demonstrated his indignation over last year’s botched assault by Israeli commandos of a Turkish vessel that attempted to break through the naval blockade imposed on Gaza, in which nine Turkish citizens were killed.

In Cairo, amplified by the Turkish move, popular resentment broke into the Israeli embassy building and was “one door” away from breaking ties with Israel. The anger was triggered by the Aug. 18 killing, albeit mistakenly, of five Egyptian soldiers by Israeli forces engaged in hot pursuit against Palestinian guerrillas from Gaza who had infiltrated Israel via Egypt and killed eight civilians.

Eventually, an Egyptian commando dispatched to the embassy managed to rescue the Israeli guards. Cairo publicly reiterated its commitment to all agreements signed with Israel. Ankara, on the other hand, announced the end of most official agreements, military and economic.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak publicly expressed regret and promised to cooperate with Egypt in the investigation of the border skirmish. Netanyahu refused to apologise to Turkey for his wrong handling of the 2010 “Peace Flotilla”.

Turkey and Israel are fast sliding into “an eye for an eye” agenda. On Thursday, Erdogan threatened to dispatch navy ships to escort any future humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza. Netanyahu’s riposte came the same day, during a visit to an Israeli naval base: “In front of the brothers in arms who physically stopped a breach of the naval blockade – I tell you in a clear and loud voice: the justness of our path is the strategic asset of the State of Israel.”

And, as tit for tat for Turkey’s support for Hamas, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman from the ultra right-wing party Israel Beitenu party, threatened to offer aid to the PKK Kurdish insurgency.

That has lead Israeli analysts to ponder whether Israel isn’t already engulfed in the “diplomatic tsunami” predicted a few months ago by Barak in reference to Sep. 20, when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will officially introduce Palestine’s bid for U.N.-endorsed statehood.

In an editorial titled ‘Crises with Turkey and Egypt signal political tsunami for Israel’ Aluf Benn, editor- in-chief of the daily Haaretz, matter-of-factly concluded, “Israel’s political and strategic positions are far worse under (Netanyahu’s) leadership.”

What Netanyahu had to say in his weekend address was mere truism. “The Middle East is now undergoing a political earthquake of historic proportions,” was his assessment, which led political commentator Ari Shavit, to wonder rhetorically, also in Haaretz, “Last week we lost Turkey and Egypt. Who knows what we’ll lose next week?”

Netanyahu’s recipe for what lies ahead could seem quite unsettling. The official discourse was destined more to cope with the fast-evolving course of events, than to hint at any political initiative, especially vis-à-vis the Palestinian issue. His weekend statement was crammed with passive emotions.

Fatalism: “We did not choose this sequence of events”; fear-mongering: “There are many external and strong forces at work here”; anti breast-beating intimation aimed at those who demand that Israel complies with Turkey’s demand of an apology: “We in Israel have a tendency to think that everything happens because of us or that we are somehow at fault for the turbulence in our area.”

And, the bottom line – the great equaliser of domestic politics – the ‘S’ words: “More than anything else, we must, in these times, act to safeguard our security” and, two days earlier at the naval base, “At this time of uncertainty and instability, we must fortify our strength.”

The redundancies and platitudes – ‘fortify one’s strength’, ‘standing firm in the face of adversity’ – didn’t seem to soothe the overall sense of insecurity. For it sounded precisely like an evading of responsibilities, impotency at the helm, the profession of faith of a leader awestruck by some decree of fate.

Interspersing Netanyahu’s statement were formulas such as, “I would like to express my gratitude to…,” “I also wish to cite the intervention of…,” “I therefore also appreciate the words of…,” “I would like to thank again the…,” even “Thank God” –many thanks indeed, but hardly the kind of protection Israel will need as it finds itself, to paraphrase his own words, “only one door” away from the international opprobrium and the anger that a U.N.-endorsed recognition of Palestine under occupation will spark off.