Martin Indyk’s plan to bring Israel and Turkey back from the brink

It’s hard to find a more universally respect Middle East policy expert than British-Australian-American former Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk. He’s worked at AIPAC and its cousin WINEP, was at Camp David a decade ago for the peace negotiations, and now heads the Middle East project at Brookings funded by uber-pro-Israel American billionaire Haim Saban.

Writing in Time today, Indyk offers what he calls a “package deal” for the Obama administration to get Israel, Turkey, Gazans, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, and Gilad Shalit out of the prison of Middle East politics. That prison is real – as in the case of Shalit and thousands of jailed Palestinian activists, politicians and students – and metaphorical.

A tall order, Indyk’s package has three elements.  Obama, he writes:

… should encourage the negotiation, by an Arab or European mediator, of a package deal between Hamas and Israel. The key ingredients are commitments by Hamas to prevent all violent attacks on Israel and stop smuggling weapons into Gaza. In return, Israel should lift its siege, allowing goods to flow in and out of Gaza with appropriate inspections. If Hamas breaks its commitments, which Israel has the ability to monitor, then the borders can be closed again — with Hamas rather than Israel bearing the blame. And in this context, a prisoner swap should be concluded so that Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped Israeli soldier, can be freed.

At the same time, Obama should try to shift attention to the West Bank, making sure that the “proximity talks” proceed. There is a quick fix available that would do much to improve Israel’s image while strengthening the Palestinian leadership there. It involves the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the West Bank territories they reoccupied during the intifadeh. The Palestinian security forces have demonstrated that they can prevent terrorism and maintain order in these areas, including during this crisis. Extending that control to all the areas ceded to Palestinian rule in the Oslo agreements would enable the Palestinian Authority to claim it had “liberated” Palestinian territory, not through violence but through peace negotiations with Israel.

Finally, Obama should try to patch things up between Turkey and Israel by refocusing them on the effort to promote an Israeli-Syrian peace. With the previous Israeli government, Turkey had played a key role as mediator with Syria. This gave Erdogan, with his intense interest in promoting Turkey’s regional role, a stake in maintaining a relationship of trust with Israel. Although hurt feelings on both sides are bound to complicate this effort, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to find a way to rebuild Israel’s strategically important relationship with Turkey, and Obama needs to bring Syria into his peacemaking effort.

The Syria-Turkey part of Indyk’s “package” is an important and intriguing one, as it explains one reason why Turkish leaders have been moving steadily away from Israeli leaders. As recently as late 2008, Turkey was brokering Israel-Syria talks on the Golan Heights. The talks were halted after the Gaza bombardment and then died when Avigdor Lieberman from the extremist Israel Beiteinu party was named Foreign Minister. There’s no way he would discuss returning the Golan Heights to Syria, or even sharing them, or turn them into a giant international demilitarized peace park – some of the proposals that had been on the table under his predecessor, Tzipi Livni.

As Israel’s foreign ministry moves away from its nation’s founding democratic ideals – supporting anti-Arab legislation and the further confiscation of Palestinian lands – while Turkey has moves away from its once-prized secularism and toward an increasingly Muslim society, the chances of these two nations working together drops precipitously. The flotilla fiasco is serving to turn these nations into outright antagonists. Indyk’s proposal recognizes the need to bring Turkey and Israel back before it’s too late, while at the same time renewing overtures to Syria.

The stakes in this are very high for the U.S., given how far out on a limb Obama has gone for our ally, Israel. As Indyk puts it:

Given the mess we’re in today, success seems unlikely. But a severe crisis forces leaders to recalculate the costs of the status quo and perhaps recognize the need for a fundamental change of direction. If Obama doesn’t test this opportunity, there’s a good chance that the battle over the Gaza fleet will sink his own Israeli-Palestinian peace boat.

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