It's great that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized last week for the 2010 Israeli commando raid that killed nine Turkish civilians on a Gaza-bound flotilla. But the apology came three years too late. The delay contributed to a host of preventable diplomatic, economic, and geopolitical harms, including some that may prove incurable. Netanyahu's refusal to utter the word "sorry" any sooner was driven by the heart, not the head. Had Jerusalem -- with the support of Washington -- put pragmatism ahead of pride, the flotilla issue might have been put to rest some time ago, and a cascade of ill consequences averted.
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Many facts about the flotilla raid remain contested, but six investigations -- two by Turkey, two by Israel, and two by the United Nations -- tell us this much: In May 2010, a six-ship flotilla of boats carrying humanitarian aid and bent on challenging Israel's naval boycott of the Gaza Strip was intercepted by an Israeli commando raid. Aboard one boat, the Mavi Marmara, a violent confrontation led to the deaths of nine activists, eight Turkish and one Turkish-American, by gunshot wounds. Ten of the Israeli commandos were also injured, one seriously.
The flotilla incident had serious consequences for already-deteriorating Israeli-Turkish relations, and reverberated across the region, in Europe and in Washington. Israel and Turkey had enjoyed a mostly harmonious period of close economic, tourism and military ties during the 1990s through to the mid-2000s -- in 2006, the Israeli Foreign Ministry described its relationship with Turkey as "perfect." Dealings between Ankara and Jerusalem then soured due to friction over the 2008-09 Israeli military operation in Gaza and stagnation in the peace process. Yet trade remained robust, as did defense cooperation. For a time, Turkey even played a role as intermediary brokering secret talks between Israel and Syria.
After the flotilla raid, however, the fissure between Ankara and Jerusalem widened into a gulf. Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador in Ankara and suspended military ties. Israel lost billions of dollars in canceled defense contracts. Domestically, the split strengthened the hand of Turkey's conservative Islamists and heightened Erdogan's support from that camp. The flotilla standoff also complicated U.S.-Turkey relations. In the latest example, Erdogan's late February remark that Zionism constituted a "crime against humanity," (which he would later clarify) triggered condemnation from the White House at a time when the two countries are trying to cooperate closely on Syria.
Some analysts have argued that the flotilla was little more than a convenient excuse, allowing Erdogan to cloak powerful, preexisting anti-Israel instincts under cover of justifiable anger. But even if that's true, the rift had deleterious consequences. When upheavals began in a half-dozen Arab states in 2011, Israel and Turkey could not turn to one another amid the region's numerous rocky transitions and had to court other allies instead. The incident also deepened Israel's isolation at the United Nations, helping pave the way for the 2012 Palestinian bid for recognition as a state to garner overwhelming support in the General Assembly, including from many countries in Europe.
The question of whether an Israeli apology for the flotilla raid was warranted or wise is now moot. After refusing for almost three years to say sorry, Netanyahu -- a man not known for self-effacement -- finally saw the wisdom in saying what the Turks were waiting to hear. It likely helped that Israel's recent elections were behind him, and that the right-wingers most hostile to an apology lost ground at the polls (Netanyahu's hard-line ex-foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, slammed the apology, saying it would demoralize the Israel Defense Forces and embolden radicals in the region). The prolonged chaos and intensifying threat along both countries' borders as a result of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brutal onslaught against his people may also have been a motivating factor.
Whether Netanyahu was motivated by genuine remorse or by practical considerations is beside the point. If his standoffishness served Erdogan's ulterior purposes of rallying anti-Israel sentiment in the Muslim world, all the more reason for Jerusalem to get the apology over with faster and deprive the Turkish leader the cover of righteous indignation. The unwillingness to apologize sooner illustrates a familiar pattern of the Netanyahu government's high-minded yet unproductive reaction to the ostracism it faces internationally. The costs that resulted from the delay are a potent reminder that apologies can be a gesture of strength rather than weakness.
An apology and quick reconciliation after the flotilla incident were not out of the question. Global reaction to the flotilla flowed through two U.N. vessels, the Security Council in New York and the Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva. The Security Council took a measured approach to the explosive incident, but the Human Rights Council prolonged the standoff. While the difference is due in part to the distinct make-up and politics of the two bodies, also important were how Washington and Jerusalem played their hands in each. If the aim was to minimize the fallout from the raid on Israel's global standing, the shrewd approach followed in New York should have been mirrored in Geneva.
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