I’ve been off at a wedding for most of this week and, poring over old headlines, I noticed that the flotilla incident in the Med continues to have drastic fallout for Israel and, by extension, the U.S.
By announcing that the easing of Israel’s land blockade of the impoverished Gaza Strip, P.M. Bibi Netanyahu gave us a rare glimpse of Israel bowing to international pressure. But because the U.S. played such a timid role in applying that pressure, Netanyahu’s move underscores (again and again) the U.S.’s inability to make serious progress in its regional agenda.
In contrast, middle powers like Turkey find themselves gaining concessions with their bold rhetoric and aggressive diplomacy. It’s a reversal of the trope that Arabs only understand pressure; Israelis now find themselves unable to face tough changes without a slap to coax them.
In an important piece on Time.com, Tony Karon ran down the winners and losers of the end of the Gaza blockade, including this biting observation about the U.S.:
That the blockade collapsed under pressure is also an embarrassment for the Obama Administration because Turkey’s more muscular challenge will be seen throughout the region to have forced a change in Israeli behavior — something that Obama’s polite entreaties have failed to achieve. (The President had urged the Israelis more than a year ago to ease the siege, to little effect.)
Indeed, this has much wider implications than for just Gaza.
Obama had numerous opportunities to exert serious pressure on Israel over the first year and a half of his presidency — on issues like settlements as well as the Gaza siege — and failed to so either by quickly retreating (settlements) or coming up short from the start (the siege).
Instead, Turkey, the region’s rising star, stepped into the breach. Along the way, however, Turkey’s relationship with Israel took a perhaps irreversible hit, not to mention the lost lives of nine Turkish citizens. This is not good for anyone in the Mid East, particularly the U.S., which relies on Turkey’s strategic location and its fast-growing clout in the region.
Easing the blockade in the face of pressure also undermines justifications for the strategy in the first place. All the talk of self-defense and security now rings hollow. A long-time astute observer of Mid East affairs, Media Matters’ MJ Rosenberg, picks up on this:
Everyone knows that if the Gaza blockade were necessary to Israel’s security, Netanyahu would be maintaining it and every friend of Israel would back his stand. But it isn’t, and so he can simply say “never mind.”
[…]
So ending the blockade makes Israel safer.
J Street is too polite to say it, so I will: “We told you so.”
We knew all along that the blockade on civilian goods was designed as a form of collective punishment on Gaza’s civilian population. We knew that it served no legitimate purpose. And we knew that those who protested it as punitive were right.
Netanyahu himself has now admitted it.
The starvation of the Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million residents was a sham, based on now-known fallacies.
Karon connects Israel’s siege strategy to its brutal invasions of Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008. On Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel blog, in a post highly critical of Western complicity in the blockade, Geoffrey Aronson finds the roots of the strategy even father back — as part of Israel’s 2004 plan to unilaterally disengage from its Gaza settlements.
Indeed, has the international community, and particularly the U.S., addressed this stuff strongly in the past six years? Nope. The lobby and the neocons were cheering it all on. Now the Obama administration — dare I say it — dithers, occasionally dipping its toe only to yank it back out.
On Foreign Policy, Marc Lynch chimed in that he thinks Obama deserves some credit for the blockade deal, despite the fact that it likely means U.S. acceptance of a whitewashed investigation of the flotilla incident. I tend to agree, but I wonder how long the U.S. can go on like this, jumping on the backs of issues only when others have pressed them.
Now that this six-year-old strategy has been exposed as a fraudulent cover for collective punishment, how long can the U.S. get away — before irreversible decline of its regional power (if it hasn’t already arrived) sets in — with issuing mild condemnations of Israeli malfeasance buried under full-throated endorsements of the policies they represent?
I have to say I find the comments to this article the most moderate in a long time. Usually, when it comes to criticizing Israeli actions, insults abound. I lived and worked in Israel in the 80s and it is such a different place now. I speak Arabic, am a Vietnam Veteran, and also lived and worked on the West Bank with a Bedouin family. The point it, there were only about 150,000 settlers back then. They are mostly American (some say no, but they are dual citizenship claiming they are Israelis) and the worst racists America has to offer. As a combat veteran, they are the most cowardly bunch I ever met and are a real rabble–I am speaking as a former paratrooper. The average Israeli then was really cool and I and my wife got along great with them, mostly due to my combat status, even though we are Christians. What most Americans also don’t realize is that, as Christians, we were paid one-third salary due to alaw passed by Gush Emunim and Begin, much to the embarrassment of the Israel National Museum. The settlers are now the government, shown by the constant stream of racist and “tough” talk. As one point to this, the Hebron monument to the settler murderer Goldstein is illegal but the government is afraid to tear it down. This is all very bad news for Israel and they are dragging us down with them. My letter to Obama was never answered and congressmen don’t care what “we” have to say on the situation. My response, and one I recommend, is to send letters to the Democratic Party leaders pointing out that you will never give another penny–pledging all my money instead to the Gaza Flotilla–nor vote until they force Israel to change. Yes, we really need an Eisenhower and this is not the change I voted for.
Some interesting commentary here. The best of it is worthy of the original piece (a rarity, sad to say). I find what Mr. Moore has to say fascinating. I used to get emails from the White House regularly, but no more. I guess I wrote to them on Mideast policy one too many times. Or perhaps somebody there actually took the time to read some of my writings. The attitude seems to be: thanks for helping us get rid of Bush, but if you can’t adore everything we do, then you’re no friend of ours. A sadly short-sighted view!
Delia (I love that name), I agree with you and Cook. I wrote of an Israeli tactical retreat, and how that might help them in the court of public opinion. I didn’t mean to imply that they’ve suddenly got wisdom, or become charitable.
Iris, has it really taken this flotilla business for the Turks to realize the extent to which Israel leads us around by the nose? Has there been a news blackout in Istanbul for the past twenty years? I used to work for a guy from Istanbul, but we parted on bad terms, so I can’t ask him how he views state of play in Turkey today.
I notice more comments about Israel becoming an apartheid state. That’s what it’s been since 1967. There are an incredible number of people who have never heard of the 6 day war. Don Thomson [email protected]
Karon’s piece is tripe and this commentary is the lemon juice.
First, like so many establishment liberals, Karon talks as if there exists some objective of the US to achieve “peace.” The US has no agenda separate from or independent of that of the Zionist interests that call the shots. And that agenda is mot about peace.
Second, as a good Jewish democrat, Karon has to remind us that Hamas “violently” seized control of Gaza, and omit the fact that the US (mostly Eliot Abrams) engineered the division and conflict between Fatah and Hamas.
Third, Karon simply apes the usual mindless assumption that the US has some legitimate interest of its own in dislodging Hamas. This is one of the biggest frauds of many concerning Palestine. Hamas has never so much as laid a single hair on the head of any American or committed or even planned the commission of any acts of terror on US soil or even on any US property and equipment sitting in occupied territory. The US is anti-Hamas solely because its leadership is bound by Zionist ideaology.
Fourth, gee, so the blockade really didn;t have anything to do with preventing Hamas from getting weapons. Wow. What a revelation. So now all the slighly left of democrats can all rejoice that Israel’s “collective punishment” is out in the open. So we go from one fraud to another. It is not about “punishment.” It is about eradication. It is about genocide. It is about… Zionism.