June 25, 2010

"Turning Points: Israel Caves Under Flotilla Pressure"

"The recent flotilla crisis," writed Phyllis Bennis, "may turn out to be one of those moments in which public understanding and perception, this time at an international level, is transformed. The crisis showed that civil society is the key global actor in the international struggle against Israeli occupation and apartheid."

Excerpt: "The fact that so many non-Palestinians were killed by the Israeli commandoes (even though the usual intense focus on any American citizen killed was diminished because Furkan Dogan held dual U.S.-Turkish nationality) highlighted the willingness of global activists to take risks on behalf of human rights that governments and the UN were unwilling to defend. It provided a powerful image of an increasingly empowered civil society with the capacity to transform events directly. While not all passengers among the flotilla's passengers adhered to principles of nonviolence, it was clear that nonviolence was by far the dominant character of the mobilization. And that reflects the increasingly popular recognition, certainly among many Palestinians but in this situation crucially among their supporters, that using violence engages Israel in its strongest arena, whereas strategic nonviolent resistance challenges the legitimacy of Israel's occupation and apartheid policies -- the battle of legitimacy where Israel is the weakest.

The flotilla presented a powerful image of the chasm between President Obama's failure to stop Israeli settlement expansion in occupied East Jerusalem, and Turkey's success in challenging Israel's Gaza siege and blockade through its support of the flotilla. (It was especially important in light of the U.S.-opposed success of the Turkish-Brazilian Iran initiative only weeks earlier.) As Tony Karon noted in Time magazine's online edition:

The move marks Israel conceding that its Gaza strategy has failed to achieve its goal, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disowned the blockade on Monday, stressing in his remarks to parliament that it was a policy he'd inherited from his predecessors. That the blockade collapsed under pressure is also an embarrassment for the Obama Administration because Turkey's more muscular challenge will be seen throughout the region to have forced a change in Israeli behavior -- something that Obama's polite entreaties have failed to achieve.

Indeed Ankara's assertive set of responses to the Israeli assault on the Mavi Marmara, from recalling its ambassador from Tel Aviv to cancelling planned military exercises with Israel to the powerful undiplomatic language of its top officials, and its successful insistence on the immediate return of everyone captured or killed on the ship, provided a model for how mid-sized, mid-level powers could challenge Israel and stand up to U.S. pressure and emerge not only unscathed but reaping enormous political capital both domestically and internationally.

And those who participated in the flotilla, and those who defended them around the world, did so on the basis of international law."...
Read full article here

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author with David Wildman of the new Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan: A Primer.