Much has been said about whether US President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and the West Bank this week served any good for revamping the peace process.
While the jury is still out on what happens with the peace process, Obama will return to Washington from his Middle East tour with one solid victory.
Turkey and Israel decided on Friday [March 22] to renew their friendship for the sake of regional security and stability, and therefore agreed to put behind their differences over the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident.
Obama pulled some deft diplomacy on the tarmac as he was about to leave Israel by orchestrating an icebreaking conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which Netanyahu apologized to the Turkish people.
“In light of Israel’s investigation into the incident which pointed to a number of operational mistakes, the prime minister expressed Israel’s apology to the Turkish people for any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury and agreed to conclude an agreement on compensation/nonliability,” the statement from Netanyahu’s office read. “Prime Minister Netanyahu also noted that Israel had substantially lifted the restrictions on the entry of civilian
goods into the Palestinian territories, including Gaza, and that this would continue as long as calm prevailed.”
If Erdogan had not made controversial remarks equating Zionism to crime against humanity at a UN conference in Vienna on Feb. 27, this surprise breakthrough between Israel and Turkey might not have taken place. The US side made it clear that Turkey had gone too far with those remarks and that it hurt US-Turkish bilateral relations. This was something that Erdogan could not afford, and it yielded results. The first signal that something was being worked out came just as Obama arrived in Israel on Wednesday [March 20]. Erdogan’s interview with Danish newspaper Politiken, in which he softened his controversial remarks on Zionism, was published the same day and apparently played a crucial role in the making of this much-expected breakthrough.
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