JERUSALEM — In a remote corner of northern Israel, the words “Seni Seviyorum” — Turkish for “I love you” — are scrawled on a roadside wall. Until a decade ago, they would have reflected popular feelings for Turkey, the first Muslim country to have recognized the Jewish state. Those were the “golden years” when Israeli fighter jets trained in Turkish skies and Turkey benefited from Israel’s intelligence on its Kurdish rebel foes and from Israel's influence in Washington. The now-defunct defense protocols forged in the mid-1990s between the Middle East’s two most powerful militaries caused jitters in Damascus and Tehran and quiet satisfaction in Washington and Brussels. 

Nowadays, however, Israel is lobbying the Trump administration to curb arms sales to Ankara and says Turkey has become an operational base for Hamas with around 400 members of the Palestinian group plotting terror activities there. Israeli officials say these Hamas members helped organize the recent spate of attacks against Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Turkey dismisses the allegations as dark propaganda and charges in turn that Israel is treating Palestinians in Gaza as the Nazis did the Jews.

The two countries have not had ambassadors in their respective capitals since May 2018, when the Israeli envoy in Ankara, Eitan Na’eh, was to told to “leave temporarily” in response to the deaths of more than 60 Palestinian demonstrators at the hands of Israeli forces in Gaza. 

The downgrading of diplomatic ties has seen Turkey and Israel settle into rival regional blocs for the first time in modern history. One unites Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, primarily against Iran. The other comprises Turkey, Qatar and their Muslim Brotherhood-linked allies, who say they are being targeted along with Iran.