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Israel and Turkey have held secret talks to try to restore ties shattered after an Israeli raid on a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza. But the clandestine negotiations have sent shock waves through Israel’s own right-wing coalition government.
Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, met Israel’s Trade and Industry Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, an elder statesman of the Labour party, in Brussels on Wednesday, reportedly at the urging of the US government, which has close ties with both countries, who themselves used to be close allies.
Israel’s far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, was furious at having been kept in the dark about the high-stakes diplomacy and denounced the decision by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to send Mr Ben Eliezer, who has recently argued that Israel is becoming dangerously isolated diplomatically.
"The foreign minister takes a very serious view of the fact that this occurred without informing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," Mr Lieberman’s office said in a statement. "This is an insult to the norms of accepted behavior and a heavy blow to the confidence between the foreign minister and the prime minister."
The spurned foreign minister, often criticized as a bull in a china shop for his outspoken criticism of Israel’s neighbours, having once told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak he could "go to hell" refused an initial offer to meet the prime minister afterwards but said his party, Yisrael Beitenu, would not leave the coalition, as it did previous government line-up.
At the same time, Israel media reported that the state prosecutor investigating Mr Lieberman on allegations of bribery and money laundering had unearthed "significant" new evidence against the foreign minister, fuelling speculation that Mr Netanyahu may be reconsidering his alliance with Mr Lieberman’s party.
Some analysts have in the past predicted that with a US-demanded settlement freeze in the West Bank due to end in September, the prime minister might be willing to eject Mr Lieberman, a staunch nationalist and himself a resident of a West Bank settlement, and woo the opposition Kadima party, which takes a more conciliatory line towards peace talks with the Palestinians.
Mr Ben Eliezer, the Iraqi-born doyen of the Labour Party, which is a junior party in the coalition, enjoys close personal ties with a number of Muslim leaders, such as Mr Mubarak. He was personally approached by the Turks to join the talks, aimed at patching up ties between the two states that once enjoyed close military and economic ties.
Those links have all but been severed in the past 18 months however, since Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party took a harsh line on Israel’s offensive into Gaza in 2008, and sunk even further when Israeli commandos killed nine Turks on an aid ship bound for Gaza on May 31.
Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador to Israel, put billions of dollars of military deals on hold and refused to allow Israeli participation in military exercises in its airspace, something seen as a key part of Israeli preparations for a possible strike on Iran’s developing nuclear facilities.
Ankara has said it will not restore ties until Israel agrees to an international inquiry into the killings on the Mavi Mamara ferry, which was in international waters when Israeli naval commandos stormed it to prevent it breaking a three-year blockade on Hamas’ rule in Gaza.
But Israeli media said Mr Ben Eliezer had refused to apologise for the high seas raid, which the government considered legal – if badly handled – as part of its attempts to keep smuggled weapons out of Hamas hands. Despite the destructive, month-long Israeli offensive in December 2008, Gaza militants still regularly lob rockets and mortars into southern Israel.