By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 31, 2010; 4:46 PM
The worldwide condemnation of the deadly Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla will complicate the Obama administration's efforts to improve its tense relations with Jerusalem and likely will distract from the push to sanction Iran over its nuclear program.
The timing of the incident is remarkably bad for both Israel and the United States. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Obama were scheduled to meet Tuesday in Washington as part of a "kiss and make up" session; the United Nations, meanwhile, was set to begin final deliberations on Iran in the weeks ahead.
Now the White House talks have been scrubbed, Israel's actions were the subject of an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Monday, and the administration increasingly faces a difficult balancing act as Israel's diplomatic isolation deepens.
In contrast to forceful statements from European, Arab and U.N. officials -- and impromptu demonstrations from Athens to Baghdad -- the White House responded to the assault Monday only by saying that Obama had held a phone conversation with Netanyahu in which the prime minister expressed "deep regret at the loss of life" and "the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances around this morning's tragic events."
Even before Monday's incident, Israel was on shaky diplomatic ground. After the government was accused of using forged foreign passports in an assassination of a militant in Dubai, Britain expelled an Israeli diplomat in March. Australia did the same last week.
The latest furor may have caused irreplaceable harm to Israel's relations with Turkey -- a Muslim state with which Israel has long had close ties -- because so many of the dead are Turkish nationals.
"This is terrible for Israel-Turkey relations," said Namik Tan, the Turkish ambassador to the United States, who served as ambassador to Israel from 2007 through 2009. "I am really saddened by it."
Tan said Israel's actions demanded condemnation from every country in the world, because the flotilla incident took place in international waters and because it involved civilians on a humanitarian mission. But he said the Obama administration's initial statement was wanting. "We would have expected a much stronger reaction than this," he said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will be in Washington Tuesday to discuss Iran with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, but Turkey's fury at the Gaza incident will inevitably top the agenda.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator now at the New America Foundation in Washington, said it's not the first time Israel has done itself a disservice.
"Israel constantly claims it wants the world to focus on Iran, but then it ends up doing something that gets everyone to focus on itself," he said.
Apart from the raid itself, attention now is likely to fall on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, which has faced an Israeli blockade since the Hamas militant group seized power three years ago. Although the Obama administration has pressed quietly for less onerous restrictions on trade, it purposely has not questioned Israeli policies; special envoy George Mitchell has never visited Gaza in some dozen trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Without high-level attention, the situation in Gaza -- a narrow coastal area with 1.5 million people -- has faded from view. Now that might change.
Rob Malley, Middle East director for the International Crisis Group, said Monday's deaths were a consequence of ignoring the "unhealed wound that is Gaza."
"The administration has questioned the way the policy was implemented rather than questioned the policy itself," he said.
In condemning Israel's actions Monday, Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, signaled that the E.U. would press anew for a shift in policy. "The EU does not accept the continued policy of closure," Ashton said in a statement. "It is unacceptable and politically counterproductive. We need to urgently achieve a durable solution to the situation in Gaza."
Malley said that U.S. officials have told him the situation in Gaza "is very high on Obama's agenda. He gets passionate about it and presses his staff to do more." In Obama's speech in Cairo a year ago, he highlighted Gaza, saying, "Just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security."
In that same speech, Obama appeared to appeal to Palestinians to undertake acts of civil disobedience rather than violence, saying that it was "not violence that won full and equal rights" for African Americans but "a peaceful and determined insistence."
Whether the flotilla was one such act of civil disobedience remains up for debate. Its organizers said it was, but Israeli officials say members of the Israel Defense Forces were met with violence when they boarded the ships.
Not only has the incident strengthened the Islamist Hamas, it has likely weakened the secular Palestinian leadership on the West Bank. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas quickly condemned the attack as a "massacre" but he will likely face new pressure to abandon the indirect talks with the Israelis.
Iran, whose nuclear ambitions deeply concerns Israeli leaders, also is a beneficiary. Turkey holds one of the rotating seats on the U.N. Security Council and was already deeply skeptical of the U.S.-led push to impose new sanctions on the Islamic Republic. After months of delay, U.S. officials were hoping to wrap up work on a sanctions resolution this month.
But now the council's attention will be hijacked by the Israeli assault. In order to gain on Iran, the administration now "will have to give a quid pro quo," such as pushing to ease the Israeli blockade of Gaza, said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator now at the Wilson Center.