The once-close allies have been estranged since Israeli Defense Forces staged a deadly attack May 31, 2010, on an aid flotilla attempting to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, killing eight Turks and one American of Turkish descent.
The U.N. panel, set up by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in August 2010 to investigate the incident, is not expected to force Israel to apologize and pay compensation to the victims’ families, two conditions set by the Turkish government to normalize ties.
Turkey’s conviction that Israel is using every possible means behind the scenes to affect the outcome of the panel was reinforced recently when the head of a separate probe on Israel’s 2008-2009 military offensive in Gaza backed away from a report published last September.
The report, issued by a commission headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, concluded that both Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, sides committed potential war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It accused Israel of using disproportionate force, deliberately targeting civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure, and using people as human shields.
The four-member panel on the flotilla raid is set to resume work next week. Led by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, it includes an Israeli and a Turkish expert. Representatives of both governments will also be present during the workings of the panel. The panel will meet for a final time in May and the Turkish side hopes it will give its report to the U.N. secretary-general no later than May 31, the first anniversary of the deadly incident.
While Turkey seems confident about the strength of its arguments, the behind-the-scenes weight of the Israeli lobby on the possible outcome of the U.N. probe cannot be underestimated. It has been extremely difficult to convince Israel to cooperate with the U.N. probe and the lengthy negotiations have seriously restricted the mandate of the panel.
The panel is tasked with looking at the circumstances of the raid and reviewing the results of the Turkish and Israeli investigations into the incident, as well as considering ways to avoid similar incidents in the future. Israel is extremely sensitive about any U.N. inquiries. It has been working to cancel the Goldstone commission’s report after the judge said earlier this month regret that the report may have been inaccurate.
“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a very different document,” he said in a newspaper article