Shai Cohen: “Israel is more than willing to facilitate the life of the civil population in the Gaza strip”
Since the press leak during the Zurick meeting we are discussing the
Turkish-Israeli reconciliation. I wanted to ask Shai Cohen, the Consul General of Israel in Istanbul, about the latest
developments in the region as well as the reasons and outcomes of these
negotiations. I want to thank him especially as I know he does not talk to any
journalists right now and accepted my request
Karel Valansi
Since the press
leak during the Zurich meeting, we are discussing the reasons and possible
outcomes of Turkish-Israeli reconciliation. In what stage are the negotiations?
The Zurich meeting has anchored three Turkish conditions
which are the apology, the compensation and the Gaza issue. According to some
reports in the media, which I cannot confirm, there are Israeli conditions
which is the condition of withdrawal of lawsuits that have to do with the Mavi Marmara incident. The condition
that is already met by Israel more than two years ago is the apology. Regarding
the compensation, there is an understanding that was decided upon, I cannot
confirm the amount. There is an understanding that the compensation should be
paid to the families of the victims of the Mavi
Marmara, and also the mechanism has been agreed upon which is a fund that
should be established in Turkey regulated by Turkish authorities where the
money will flow to and from there, according to the Turkish authorities’
decision –It is not an Israeli decision, it will be in Turkish official
hands- it will be divided between the
families. This is the second condition.
And the Gaza
blockade…
The so-called third condition is the whole issue of
Gaza which is much more complicated. There is still way to go by both sides.
There is a sea blockade over the Gaza strip, it is not a secret. The sea
blockade is legitimate according to the international law. There has been
international legal analysis and monitoring of the sea blockade and those been
approved as legitimate by the international community officially. So there is
no question what so ever about the legitimacy of the sea blockade. On the other
hand, via land there is no blockade at all. Between 400 to 700 trucks a day go
into the Gaza strip through the Kerem
Shalom crossing point with goods of all types including building materials,
humanitarian assistance, civil goods, food, fuel and so on. There is
interconnection between the Gaza strip and Israel for electricity and water
supply. Moreover, ships that carry goods to the Gaza Strip, they practice
downloading in the port of Ashdod. There, there is a monitoring system then
they are loaded on trucks and carry down to the Gaza Strip via Kerem Shalom crossing point. As far as
we understand, the Turkish will, is to ease the situation in Gaza for the
welfare of the Palestinian population whether it is medical or social or for
construction purposes. Good percentage of building materials that goes from
Israel into Gaza on trucks are from Turkish origin. Mainly concrete and steel.
And also Turkey participates in many projects of reconstruction of the Gaza
strip. So as far as we understand, the Turkish purpose is to show the efforts
made by the Turkish authorities in order to facilitate the situation of the
Gaza population. If we talk about facilitating the life of the civil population
in the Gaza strip, Israel is more than willing to cooperate with. And also to
help Turkey be seen as a major contributor to the welfare of the Gaza
population. If we reach such a formula, the third issue which is Gaza will
already be under solution.
Are we talking
about facilitating the entry of Turkish goods into Gaza?
Transportation of Turkish goods is already happening.
Maybe we can discuss issues that Turkey would like to introduce into Gaza or to
increase the flow of some of the goods, to facilitate Turkish physical
operations in Gaza for example the Turkish Hospital that have been constructed.
There are many particular issues that could be discussed between Israel and
Turkey for the welfare of the Gaza population. If that is the direction, I
believe that we can reach a formula in order to do that and also to show
publicly what Turkey is doing in Gaza.
What about the
Israeli conditions?
We don’t like to use the term condition for
reconciliation but there are certain issues that we demand from the Turkish
side. The first one is of course abolishing the logistical support to Hamas.
Hamas is considered as a terror organization by Israel and by other Western states
like the U.S., Canada, the E.U., Egypt. Therefore, Hamas has to renounce its
military way of conducting the matters, abolish the articles in its Magna Carta from 1987 that call for the
destruction of the state of Israel and accept the agreements already signed
between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. If and when all these criteria
are met by Hamas, then we might be talking about Hamas as an interlocutor. But
so far it is not the situation.
Another thing is the lawsuits. Lawsuits against
Israeli officials that were part of the Mavi
Marmara incidents would like to see active official Turkish role in
preventing such legal procedure to be carried on, because it is non confidence
building measure. We will not be able to allow Israeli high officials in past
or in the present to be subject to international investigation or persecution
by different courts around the world. It will be contradictory to the spirit of
reconciliation between Israel and Turkey. The main idea is to leave the Mavi Marmara behind but with these
lawsuits it will only achieve the contrary; lack of confidence and obstacles
for future cooperation and collaboration.
There is also IHH
in the equation of the Mavi Marmara…
We don’t intervene in internal Turkish affairs. All I
can tell you about IHH, whatever this organization does or says should be
considered illegitimate as it is outlawed in the U.S. Germany, Nederlands,
Israel… Even before the Mavi Marmara
incident which in a way is an IHH operation lets not forget that, it was found
out officially and publicly that they were financing Hamas in different ways.
Their rhetoric is still the same, therefore I don’t have a reason to believe
that their attitude is objective when it comes to Turkish-Israeli relations. I
would exclude IHH from the equation. I hope they are not able to influence
Turkish official attitudes in the future.
In Turkey there
is a perception that all the region is destroyed and all the people is
suffering. On the other hand, I know that this is limited to some areas. The
life goes on, there are malls and sport clubs as well. What is the situation in
Gaza?
In certain places there were massive destruction, in
other places there was no destruction at all. On the contrary, we have
information about night life in different places in Gaza. Hotels, restaurants
and casinos are opening. But it is true that in certain neighborhoods
reconstruction should be still intensive.
The international community is assisting Gaza with
really a lot of means. We are talking about hundreds of millions or billions of
dollars every year to the Gaza strip for this kind of assistance. But Hamas
always finds a way to charge taxes or cut commission from what enters Gaza.
They did it before with 1000 tunnels from Sinai, they see the good and cut 20%
of commission. This was before the tunnels were destructed by us and by the
Egyptians. Now they have income from goods that enter on the trucks, and they
cut the same commission as well.
Hamas is the ruler and also has the responsibility for
the welfare of the Gaza population, it is not Israel or Egypt which has border
in Sinai with the Gaza strip. It is not even the international community who is
very active in international projects; Qatar, Persian Gulf states, European
Union states, the U.S. and Turkey. It is Hamas’ responsibility to make sure
that all of these international assistance is channeled for the benefit of the
Gaza population. From the practical point of view, there should not really be a
humanitarian crisis there. We have doubled the number of trucks that entered
Gaza on a daily basis in spite of Protective Edge from 280 to sometimes 700
daily. International reconstruction is going on.
We wish we could have real monitoring mechanism,
international-regional does not matter, in Gaza that would see exactly how to
divide the goods and all the benefits that come from the international
community in general, in order to equilibrate the usage of all those
facilities. Although 33 tunnels from Gaza to Israel were destroyed by Israel in
the last operation, we know that they are going on building new tunnels as we
speak and we are very sorry to note that these tunnels are built using those
construction materials that entered Gaza. Someone also should pay attention to
the fact that Hamas is continuing its military build up reconstructing tunnels,
smuggling or trying to smuggle more and more weaponry into the Gaza strip all
the time. This has never stopped.
Shira Ben Tzion (Deputy Consul General): I
want to add a word about the UN project of transparency where you can see all
the projects on Gaza that have been developing. There is full transparency
about how much sacs of cements go to each project, and you can see how much
does Hamas actually use it for hospitals, mosques, schools or to build new
attack tunnels which is exactly what it does. In this link http://grm.report/#/
you can see minute by minute all these transactions.
Why Israel wants
to mend ties with Turkey?
Especially in the last year or two the region has
become such complicated that two democracies that remained in the Middle East
which are Israel and Turkey should shake hands and cooperate in relevant fields
in order to prevent escalation and bring back stability to the region. I always
say, the only thing that separates physically Turkey and Israel is Syria by all
it means, not only geographically but also from the strategic point of view.
Both democracies, both share the same interest of curtailing terrorism, and
today terrorism is regarded as extreme jihad terrorism that menaces everybody. There
are regional objectives to be achieved. Like diversification of energy
resources, economic development, water management, all of these are common
interests. When you look at the global picture and you see so many common
interests that Israel and Turkey share, you wonder how come we still have this
quarrel about an incident that happened more than five years ago. It is about
priorities and proportions. The Mavi
Marmara incident should be minimized to the maximum as all of the regional
interests that I mentioned are huge.
Why do you think
Turkey wants to mend ties with Israel?
I think for the same reasons. They say Russia, but I
tend to believe that Russian-Turkish relations would be normalized much sooner
than everybody expects. I participated to several major international
conferences in Istanbul in the last 2-3 months; energy, regional economy,
economic development, counter terrorism… And everybody talks about two things;
Turkey becoming a regional economic hub, speaking about energy also for energy
supply. And the second thing is the need for everybody but for Turkey in
particular to diversify its energy resources. It is an official Turkish policy
to diversify energy therefore this is a window by which it should be looked at;
diversification of energy and the need to regional cooperation for regional
sustainable economic development. When you look at Israel you look at a very
young nation with high rate of growth, with successes in many different fields.
It is in the same region with same interests, why not cooperate and benefit
from each other?
If an agreement
is reached between Turkey and Israel, a strategic long term agreement such as
natural gas could be reached as well in the near future?
The energy issue is a strategic issue by definition.
My personal view is that it should happen one way or another eventually for the
benefit of the whole region. Natural gas supplies are the future of the supply
of energy to the whole region including Israel, Turkey, both Cyprus, Greece,
Europe, maybe Egypt and of course the Palestinians, Jordanians. It is clean
energy. It is obvious that it will be used in the future as well very
intensively. It is good for everybody.
There is a
discussion in Turkey that Israel is stealing Palestinian gas…
This makes me laugh because how Israel can steal gas
from the Palestinians when it is not even located close to Palestinian so-called
territories? Second thing Gaza and West Bank are interconnected with Israel for
energy, water and food supply. It is Israeli electricity that is provided to
the Palestinian territories. How can we steal gas from the Palestinians if we
give them electricity?
Israeli relations
with Egypt and Saudi Arabia are getting better. If we add to this equation
Turkey, it will be a group of ‘frennemies’ that could cooperate against the
empowerment of Iran.
Iran should be contained. We feel easier that the
neighbors of Iran lately are taking action in order to prevent Iranian
activities in the region such as promotion or supporting of terrorist
organization such as Hezbollah, Hamas. Nuclear agreement has been reached they
are doing what they have to do according to the agreement, everybody is very
happy. But there are many other Iranian
activities that are not included in this agreement. There are now new sanction
issues on the ballistic missile project of Iran. Gulf states are becoming more
and more concerned about how to deal with the other Iranian threats. We are
happy that it is on the agenda of the international community. Israel has
common interests with Turkey and Saudi Arabia and other states in the region.
Assad is the only one who benefits from this axis Iran and Hezbollah and all
the Shia complex. Look at Yemen, Bahrain threatened by Iranian subversion
attempts. They control the Persian straits and they already closed twice last
year. 40 % of the world oil supply passes from there. Jordan, Kuwait, UAE
should also be concerned from the same issues as Israel, Turkey. Energy is one
of them. I believe that eventually these interests should prevail. And not the
other regional sectarian rivalries. But I am not naïve, I know that in our
region, for centuries maybe, this sectarian rivalry exists and maybe it is too
optimistic to cease to exist in our generation.
BDS, recognition
of Palestine in European parliaments, branding goods from settlements are major
problems Israel is facing in the international arena. How is Israel dealing
with that?
This is high diplomacy. We operate in political and
diplomatic channels in order to try to change those resolutions. We don’t
believe that it is beneficial for Israelis and the Palestinians what is
happening in the E.U. vis a vis the de facto separation they are creating
between Israel and Palestine. What the E.U. is doing by these resolutions is
very problematic because it is direct intervention in the final political solution
of peace negotiations that should be enacted directly between the Israelis and
the Palestinians. What message they give for the Palestinian Authority? Why
should they dialogue with Israel any more if in European parliaments such
decisions are made? Someone else is working so hard for us they will say, let’s
continue with our BDS and incitement, delegitimization of Israel…
How do you
explain the knife intifada?
We don’t like to use the term intifada here because it
is not similar to the other two intifadas that we had. Both of them were
organized, with headquarters giving orders to the field… Here you see very
sporadic cases of stabbing, of shooting, each time in a different place mostly
by teenagers. But it is not organized. On the other hand, it is an ongoing
terrorism on a daily basis that we see for four months with thirty deaths
already and dozens of injured on the Israeli side. We call it lonely wolf
phenomena because it is youngsters incited mainly by the social media. It can
be seen as a very modern type of organization using the internet as a method of
inspiration. Terror conducted through the digital world. But also in the mosques,
we know that certain imams are using incitement methods in their speeches.
On January 7th
the Turkish Jewish community reopened the historical Iştipol Synagogue in Balat
but ten days later we found out that there were written “Terrorist Israel,
there is God” on the wall…
On one hand, we condemn it and think that these things
should not happen anymore in our world and especially here where there is such
an effort by central government and local governance in general to reopen
synagogue which is very important for Jewish heritage. This deed is actually
trying to spoil everything. On the other hand, I would not recommend to pay too
much attention. We know that Turkish authorities are not tolerant to such
activities. We are certain that they will do their best to prevent such
activities in the future, and find the responsible for that. What I am happy to
say in the same breath is that we don’t see much such activities here in
Turkey. It is much more contained here than other places that unfortunately
suffer from anti-Semitic on a daily basis like France, the UK. Here, such
physical demonstrations of anti-Semitism are very rare and I hope it will
remain rare in the future.
Shalom Newspaper 27 January 2016
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