Land for Peace, A Perspective

Every once in awhile, I read something that gets right to the point of a matter. I had wondered about Turkey’s sudden reversal of relations with Israel, and the piece below puts it into perspective. “The more Israel has traded land for peace, the more its staying power has diminished. There is no better place to see that shift than in Turkey, formerly Israel’s closest ally in the Muslim world. That relationship was built not on mutual friendship, but on mutual respect. Today Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu envisions a region in which Israel ceases to exist and is replaced by a Muslim-Jewish protectorate of Turkey. In 1986 that vision would have gotten him laughed off the podium when through war after war, Israel proved that it would not be pushed into the sea. But in 2011, with two Muslim terrorist states under international protection inside its own borders, and an American administration pushing for a handover of half its capital, Davutoglu’s vision of the destruction of Israel has become the basis for Turkish policy toward Israel. And the only way that Jerusalem can improve its relations with Ankara is to change that perception of its destructibility. The so-called Peace Process has dramatically undermined Israel’s viability as a state in perception and reality. American and European pressure on Israel to create a terrorist state within its borders has undermined regional stability and sped up the process of regional Islamization. Israel has gone from a regional power capable of guaranteeing the security of American-allied neighbors such as Jordan, to a state under siege by rockets falling on its own towns and villages. If Turkey’s Islamists needed proof that Iran was the future and Israel the past, Hamas has been helpfully supplying it.” Dan Greenfield, http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-israels-peacemaking-endangers.html