Essay on The Gaza Flotilla

Submitted By ngoodman18
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The Gaza flotilla raid was an event that had a deep effect on the relationship between Turkey and Israel. Six ships left Turkey in May 2010 carrying humanitarian aid, with the intention of breaking the Israeli blockade on Gaza. One of the six ships that participated in the flotilla, The Mavi Marmara, refused to heed any of the instructions by the Israeli Navy to change their route to Ashdod port for inspection. At that point, Shayetet 13 (the Israeli commando), boarded the ship and were faced hard resistance. The fighting on the board of the Mavi Marmara resulted in nine activists dead, a dozen activists and seven Israeli soldiers wounded. The reactions to the event by the main international actors, Turkey and Israel, which until that day, had been strong allies, lead to a serious diplomatic dispute. In this an analysis I will go over the three levels (individual, state and systemic), focusing on the Israeli side.
When examining the individual level in the Israeli side, we need to look at the major decisions makers in that case, Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Foreign minister Avigdor Liberman. Netanyahu is the leader of the Likkud party, a major Zionist right wing party. During his time as the prime minister of Israel and to this day his main focus is preventing a nuclear Iran. He is known as an excellent speaker, but not as one that necessarily stand by his words. In Israel, a common opinion is that the real decision maker in Israel is the Prime minister wife, Sara. Many Israelis believe that under Netanyahu’s government Israel is in her worse diplomatic situation ever and that country has never been so isolated. One of the most criticized steps by Netanyahu was appointing Avigdor Liberman as his foreign minister. Liberman, the leader of Ysrael Beiteinu, a right wing nationalist party he is a very controversial figure in the Israeli politics. His opinions and beliefs often seems racist and many people view him as a dictator, mainly because of his Soviet background and the fact that his party does not hold a primaries to elect their members. He thinks that Israel should come to any negations with their neighbors from a place of power and that any gestures and give-away of land will be a sign of weakness. He is known to say whatever is on his mind with out really thinking or caring about the diplomatic consequences. In regard to the Israeli-Turkish relationship, Liberman was blamed even before the flotilla by attempting to humiliate the Turkish ambassador in Israel after an anti-Semitic film was broadcasted over Turkish television. After the flotilla many countries, lead by Turkey, condemned Israel. The Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan demanded three things in order to keep the friendly relationship between the countries: an official apology, compensation for the families of the victims and the lift of the blockade on Gaza. Both Netanyahu and Liberman refused to any of the demands. In response Turkey degraded their diplomatic relationship with Israel to the lowest level.
On the state level we need to first understand political structure of Israel. The Knesset is the legislative branch of the Israeli Government and consists of a 120 members. Each party gets number of seats in the Knesset based on the number of votes they got in the elections (proportional reprentation). The leader of party with largest number of seats is then responsible for forming coalition between parties that together will have a majority of at least 61 Knesset members. This structure leads to a lot of negotiations and demands of the parties for control in certain offices and committees in return for support for the prime minister. In this situation for example, the Foreign Minister, Avigdor Liberman, has tremendous influence on issues that are not necessarily related to his office, only because he is the leader of the seconded largest party. He can threat to quit the government if an action or decision is opposition with his views, and
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