Turkey continues to undermine Israel-NATO cooperation, and Ankara should be clearly told this hurts the NATO alliance and is no way for a member of the alliance to act, Eran Lerman, the deputy head of the National Security Council, said Monday.
Lerman, speaking to the annual meeting in Jerusalem of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Turkey was undermining Israeli participation in NATO, and that Ankara should be told that this was not to Israel’s detriment, but rather to NATO’s, and that it was not proper for a member of the alliance to undermine the organization’s capacity.
Lerman noted that while the Israeli-Turkish storm “continues in the public domain, the economic relationship is better than ever, and there is a realization in Turkey that there are things in common.”
Lerman was also willing to publicly speak about the Kurds, something Israeli officials rarely do out of a concern of antagonizing the Turks. Saying that Israel should not be “more Kurdish than the Kurds" and take a position on Kurdish sovereignty, he nonetheless said that the Kurds “historically have been allies, and potentially can be building blocks for stability and well being in the region."
Lerman said the Kurds have “done well" in the post-2003 period following the US invasion of Iraq, and “it is in our interest they continue to do well."
Asked whether he believed the US should be supplying Egypt with fighter planes and tanks, Lerman said that at this point in time Israel considers the Egyptian military an “important interlocutor." He alluded to Egypt’s role in securing the cease fire with Gaza following Operation Pillar of Defense, and said that this is “the longest cease fire" Israel has had with Gaza.
While understanding the intensity of the debate in the US about whether to pay for Egyptian arms, Lerman said “it is our judgment that in this period of history, the Egyptian military remains the repository of the historical memory [inside Egypt] that war is bad. Our relationship with it, and the US relationship with it, is useful to our long term interests.”
Regarding the Palestinian track, Lerman -- speaking just over a month before US President Barack Obama’s expected visit here on March 20 -- said elliptically that “those who know the history of the last two years, have a better understanding of what Israel was willing to do, and what the Palestinian were unwilling to do.”
Lerman said that there was a serious effort a year ago in Jordan to restart the diplomatic track, and that “both the Americans and Jordanians know why it failed, and not for a lack of trying on our part. We are prepared to come to the table without preconditions anywhere, anytime.”
Lerman said that the Arab Spring and what happened to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak intimidated the Palestinian leadership “out of their wits." He intimated that now that shock has begun to wear off, and as a result there may be more of a willingness on their side to negotiate.
He disputed the idea that Israel was not really interested in the idea of a Palestinian state, saying that Israel’s help in PA Prime Minister Salam Fayad’s bottom-up effort to build statehood institutions belied that notion.
“If we wanted Fayad to fail, he would have failed,” he said.
Lerman praised the Bulgarian government as “courageous” for resisting pressure and squarely placing responsibility for the Burgas bombing on Hezbollah. He also commended the British and the Dutch for supporting placing Hezbollah on the EU’s terrorist list.
Without mentioning the French by name, he referred to arguments they have made that placing Hezbollah on the EU’s terror list would endanger French peacekeeping forces in Lebanon. This argument, he said, was a “sad comment on the utility of international forces.”
Lerman cited a recent article by former statesmen Jose Maria Aznar from Spain and David Trimble from Northern Ireland saying that if the result of having international troops stationed abroad was that they would become hostages to terrorists, then perhaps they should not be there in the first place.