Opinion The road to apology

Dogan,born in upstate New York,was an aspiring doctor. Little interested in politics,he’d won a lottery to travel on the Gaza-bound vessel. The report says of him and the other eight people killed that,“No evidence has been provided to establish that any of the deceased were armed with lethal weapons.” It’s hard to imagine any other circumstances in which the slaying in international waters,at point-blank range,of a US citizen by forces of a foreign power would prompt such a singular American silence. But of course no US president,and certainly no first-term US president,would say what PM Cameron said: “The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable.”

My rough translation of the Palmer panel’s conclusion would be this message to Israel: You had the right to do it but what you did was way over the top and just plain dumb. Overall,it finds that Israel should issue “an appropriate statement of regret” and “make payment for the benefit of the deceased and injured victims and their families.” Yes,Israel,increasingly isolated,should do just that. An apology is the right course and the smart course.

Israel and Turkey have been talking for more than a year. At times agreement has been close. Ehud Barak and Dan Meridor,Israel’s defence and intelligence ministers,have argued the case for an apology; Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has led the hawks saying Israel never bends; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had his finger to the wind. In the end,Lieberman and the far right have won,as they tend to with this abject Israeli government.

“It’s a typical case where coalition considerations trumped strategic thinking,and that’s the tragedy,” Shlomo Avineri,an Israeli political scientist,told me. “Given the Palestinian issue at the UN,and relations with the new Egypt,we could use strategic wisdom.”

That’s right. Instead,locked in its siege mentality,led by the nose by Lieberman and his ilk — unable to grasp the change in the Middle East driven by the Arab demand for dignity and freedom,inflexible on expanding settlements,ignoring US prodding that it apologise — Israel is losing one of its best friends in the Muslim world,Turkey. The expulsion last week of the Israeli ambassador was a debacle foretold. Israeli society,as it has shown through civic protest,deserves much better.

“We need not apologise,” Netanyahu thundered Sunday — and repeated the phrase three times. He’s opted for a needless road to an isolation that weakens Israel and undermines the strategic interests of its closest ally,the United States. Not that I expect Obama to raise his voice about this any more than he has over Dogan.