Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Benny Morris - Greece Sides with Israel

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/greece-sides-israel-5579
Greece Sides with Israel
Benny Morris
Back in the 1950s, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion adopted
what came to be known as the "Peripheral (or Peripheries) Policy"
regarding Israel and the Middle East.
In 1948 the surrounding Arab states had invaded the newborn Jewish
state. In the latter stages of that war and in its immediate
aftermath, Israel tried to make peace with them on the basis of the
post-war territorial status quo. But Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon,
and the other Arab states beyond, and their societies, refused to
agree to peace principally because they continued to oppose a Jewish
state, whatever its territorial configuration.
So Ben-Gurion, to reinforce Israel's security and political standing,
resolved to reach out to and forge alliances with the region's non-
Arab or non-Islamic states and groups, including Iran and Turkey, and
the Druse of Syria, the Kurds of Iraq, the Christians and animists of
southern Sudan, and the Maronites of Lebanon. These states and groups,
on the "periphery" of the Muslim Arab world, all had conflicts with
Muslim Arab states and groups, making them enemies of Israel's
enemies. Often in the following decades, Israel supplied these
peripheral states and groups with military, political and intelligence
support.
Here lay the origin of the Israeli-Turkish relationship. In 1949
Turkey, with a tradition of bad relations with the Arabs, was the only
Muslim country to extend de jure recognition to the State of Israel
and in the 1990s the ties burgeoned into a special relationship, with
full diplomatic relations and hefty defense ties running into billions
of dollars annually (Israel refurbished Turkey's armored fleet and
jets and supplied that country with drones and other equipment, and
Turkey made its air space available to Israel Air Force exercises).
The rise of the Islamist government under Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the
massive growth of the Turkish economy resulted in a radical reshaping
of Turkey's foreign policy. While still officially a member of NATO
and while still officially seeking membership in the EU, the country
has steadily distanced itself from the West (in 2003 Turkey famously
prohibited the launching of an Allied assault from the north in the
invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the chances of the EU accepting
Turkey as a full member are today almost nil). This distancing has
included a steady erosion of Turkey's ties with Israel (but not to the
point of formally severing diplomatic relations) a steady growth of
its ties, political and economic, with Syria and Iran and very public
patronage of the Palestinian national cause.
This was the background to the dispatch last year, from Turkish
harbors, of the first "humanitarian aid flotilla" to the Gaza Strip,
besieged by Israel since its 2007 takeover by the Islamist Hamas
Party. The flotilla tried to break the naval blockade of Gaza's
coastline and Israeli naval units responded by boarding the boats. On
the flotilla's "flagship," the "Mavi Marmara," the Israeli commandos
killed nine Turkish activists who had attacked them with crowbars,
knives and bottles. The Turkish government, which had unofficially
orchestrated the flotilla operation, withdrew its ambassador from Tel
Aviv in protest.
A second flotilla, largely based this time in Greek ports, was due to
set sail last week for Gaza, but most of the boats remain in harbor
and it is not clear at the moment whether the flotilla will ever set
out.
In part, this is due to mechanical failures on at least two of the
boats (the Irish and Swedish components of the flotilla), which an
Irish activists’ spokesman was quick to attribute to Israeli
saboteurs. In the case of the Irish boat, the Turkish government
announced that there was no sabotage by external elements.
But the chief reason for the hold-up or cancellation of the flotilla
is undoubtedly the realignment of political forces in the Eastern
Mediterranean during the past year or two. Last week the Greek
Government officially prohibited the boats from sailing to Gaza and
proposed that the cargo of food and medicine they intended to convey
be transferred to Greek government ships, which would offload the
cargo in Ashdod, Israel, or El Arish, Egypt, for eventual trans-
shipment to Gaza. Indeed, the Greek coast guard even chased after an
American vessel, "The Audacity of Hope," that set sail from Piraeus
without permission and forced it to return to Greece after arresting
its captain.
Over the past year, Netanyahu, extending, as it were, Ben-Gurion's
Peripheral Policy, possibly with some assistance from Washington
(which is unhappy with the turn Turkey has taken in recent years),
initiated this realignment, with Israeli interest and favor shifting
from Ankara to Athens. Israeli-Greek relations, traditionally
extremely cool—Greece was the only European democracy to have voted
with the Arabs in 1947 against the UN General Assembly partition
resolution, which endorsed the establishment of a Jewish state, and
Greece only established full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1990—
have now warmed considerably, with Netanyahu and Georgios Papandreu
exchanging visits last year and with Israeli tourism to Greece rising
from 100,000 in 2009 to 250,000 in 2010 (the Israelis who commonly
sojourned in vast numbers in Turkey now boycott that country). Israeli-
Greek military cooperation and joint exercises have similarly
increased.
Without doubt, the current, deep Greek economic crisis, in which
Greece needs support from Washington and Western investments, is also
playing a part in the improved Greek-Israeli relationship as is the
prospect of Israel turning in the coming decade into a major natural
gas exporter, following the recent discovery of vast natural gas
fields off the Israeli coastline. Greece's "friendship" with the Arabs
during the past sixty years was largely a function of its need for
Arab oil.

 Greece Sides with Israel
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