After the Israeli flotilla incident, Turkey is the new Palestinian champion

But standing behind this sharp Turkish reaction to Israel’s assault on the Turkish ship is a deeper regional rift, and this divide stems from the near-universal conviction that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has failed. Its structural pillars have crumbled: The Israeli public no longer believes that “land for peace” – the Oslo principle – will bring them security. Rather, Israelis believe those who tell them that further withdrawal will only bring Hamas rockets closer. The other Oslo pillars also lie broken on the ground: The hitherto presumed “reversibility” of the Israeli settlement project and the hypothetical possibility of last-resort American imposition of its own solution are now understood to have been no more than chimeras.

Yet Egypt refuses to budge in these changed circumstances. It stands almost alone as Israel’s ally. But the shift in the balance of regional power toward the northern tier of Middle Eastern states – Syria, Turkey, Iran, Qatar, and Lebanon – continues, and gathers pace. Egypt increasingly has only its memory of past grandeur on which to stand. In contemporary terms its influence has been on the slide for some time.

Egypt’s one card is that it is Gaza’s other neighbor – aside from Israel. It has been Egypt’s acquiescence to the siege of Gaza – encouraged by President Abbas in the West Bank, who shares Mubarak’s desire to see Hamas weakened – that has given Mubarak his stranglehold over Palestinian issues. But the Islamic and regional tide will be flowing ever stronger against him after Israel’s action against the flotilla.

Already the Arab League is talking of supporting Turkey in any legal action against the Israeli assault on the aid convoy to Gaza. The Arab League has also issued a call to other states to break Israel’s siege on Gaza.

It is too early to say that such talk marks any turning point in Arab League politics. The Arab League, as such, is not taken seriously in the region or elsewhere. But it is rather the shifting of the regional strategic balance that marks the locus from where real change may become possible.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia may conclude that the price of seeing the baton of leadership on such a key and emotive issue pass to non-Arab hands inIran and Turkey is too high, and too shameful. The near-universal skepticism directed toward the “peace process” among their own peoples has already left these leaders exposed internally.

For nearly 20 years these leaders have used their involvement in the “process” as justification to curb internal dissension; but it is now a tool that has lost its magic. They are already paying the price of popular cynicism.

This is Mubarak’s dilemma: stay with the siege and hope America will reward him with Gamal’s succession; but by flouting the winds of change, he may imperil Gamal’s very survival. In any event, Egypt’s control of the Palestinian “file” will never be the same again.

Alastair Crooke, a former British M16 operative in the Middle East, is author of “Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution.” He runs the Conflicts Forum in Beirut.

© 2010 Global Viewpoint Network/ Tribune Media Services. Hosted online by The Christian Science Monitor.

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