Why Hamas Lost the Flotilla Fight

There are winners from the Gaza flotilla and losers. In human terms, the losses begin with the battered and injured IDF soldiers who boarded the Mavi Marmara. But there is a geopolitical scorecard too, and Hamas is a major loser.

There are winners from the Gaza flotilla and losers. In human terms, the losses begin with the battered and injured IDF soldiers who boarded the Mavi Marmara. One may wonder if we should not tally as winners the nine militant blockade runners who gained the martyrdom they sought.

But there is a geopolitical scorecard too, and here is a first estimate:

• Major loser: Hamas. Hamas tried to break the Israeli blockade and failed. You hear tough talk of a second try. It will not happen. Already, the sponsors of the next would-be blockade-runner, an Irish-backed ship named the “Rachel Corrie,” have agreed to dock at the Israeli port of Ashdod and submit to a security inspection.

Clumsily, maybe, but the message has been sent: The blockade will be enforced, and those who hope to break it must fight the Israeli navy first. And next time the commandos will not be carrying paintball guns.

The point of the flotilla was not of course to deliver humanitarian aid — or even to ease the Israeli blockade of Gaza. As is, Gaza receives more humanitarian aid every 24 hours than was contained in the entire flotilla. And of course Hamas could ease the blockade at any time by releasing Gilad Shalit and forswearing violence against Israel.

The point of the flotilla was to end Israeli inspection of Gaza cargoes, so that Hamas could resume importing weapons.

Hamas has lost that point. The inspections will continue. The weapons will not come, not by sea anyway. That’s a defeat.

• Minor loser: President Obama. President Obama’s very complex Middle East strategy envisioned a steady squeeze upon Israel.

That plan is suddenly wrecked.

Israel is much more popular with the American public these days than is President Obama. Important members of his party have upbraided the President for his harsh treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu in March. Obama could not afford another confrontation with Israel so soon. Result: Within hours of the flotilla incident, senior White House spokesmen were telling the press there would be “no daylight” between the U.S. and Israel on the flotilla.

The U.S. did not condemn Israel’s actions, has voted to support Israel at the United Nations and (unlike the new British Prime Minister) has refrained from emitting a word of criticism of the Gaza blockade.

Nobody thinks this is where Obama’s heart is. But it’s where politics has forced him to plant his flag — nor will he find it very easy to unplant it in the near term.

• Minor winner: Mahmoud Abbas and the West Bank Palestinian Authority.

In the aftermath of the flotilla incident, the world community will look for ways to assuage Palestinian concerns without rewarding Hamas. The likely recipient of the coming wave of attention and benefit: the West Bank Palestinian Authority.

The West Bank is already enjoying political tranquility and economic boom: growth rates of 7% and a rapid diminution of both terrorism and gang violence. Nearly 1.5 million tourists visited the West Bank in 2009. As stability grows, the Israeli security presence has receded. After the flotilla, watch for that security presence now to recede even faster, for more roadways to open to Palestinian inter-urban traffic and for check points to process travellers faster and more courteously.

• Major winner: Sorry, but the worst actor in this drama is also the biggest winner: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan is the man who set the crisis in motion, and he will receive from the crisis exactly what he hoped.

The Islamist Erdogan has been chipping for half a decade at the once-close Israeli-Turkish bond. He has had to exercise care, because secular Turkey — the armed forces above all — have protected the relationship.

Islamists within Turkey have fabricated wild fantasies to denounce Israel as a threat to Turkey, including movies in which Americans are represented as dissecting Iraqis in order to sell their body parts in New York and Tel Aviv. (When asked about this paranoid fantasy by The Wall Street Journal’s Robert Pollock in a 2006 interview, Erdogan could not bring himself to repudiate it.)

Now at least Erdogan has an authentic bloody shirt to wave. The deaths of Turkish nationals will hush and embarrass the pro-Israel forces in Turkish government and society. Erdogan can now move away from an unwanted relationship — even terminate the relationship altogether — at diminished risk of triggering a negative reaction from the guardians of Turkish secularism. A cunning move by a bad man with a sinister agenda.

Originally published in the National Post.