\n<\/p>\n
With the likelihood increasing of a United States attack on Iran, Israeli politicians are already turning their attention to another regional rival: Turkiye.<\/p>\n
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is expected to run and do well in the country\u2019s elections this year, was the latest prominent politician to declare Turkiye a threat to Israel.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Speaking at a conference last week, Bennett said that Israel must not \u201cturn a blind eye\u201d to Turkiye, accusing it of being part of a regional axis \u201csimilar to the Iranian one\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cA new Turkish threat is emerging,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cWe must act in different ways, but simultaneously against the threat from Tehran and against the hostility from Ankara.\u201d<\/p>\n Other Israeli politicians have said similar things in the past few months, with Turkiye a strong critic of Israel\u2019s actions towards the Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza, and also getting closer to regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.<\/p>\n The tone indicates that while the Iranian government remains in power in Tehran, Israel is already looking for a new regional nemesis, with a network of like-minded states around it.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while announcing the forthcoming visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, declared his intention to forge a new \u201chexagon\u201d of alliances that would outflank a so-called \u201cemerging radical Sunni [Muslim] axis\u201d, and cement Israel\u2019s regional influence.<\/p>\n Included in that alliance would be countries like Greece and Cyprus, which have historically had antagonistic relations with Turkiye.<\/p>\n According to Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, the timing of the apparent campaign against Turkiye may not be strange, even if it is being made simultaneously with the push for war against Iran.<\/p>\n \u201cPoliticians like Naftali Bennett and Benjamin Netanyahu rely on the perpetual threat of war,\u201d Pinkas told Al Jazeera. If it wasn\u2019t Turkiye, it would be Iraq. If it wasn\u2019t Iraq, it would be Hezbollah. If it wasn\u2019t Hezbollah, it would be the Muslim Brotherhood. It doesn\u2019t matter who. There just always needs to be a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel has existed in a heightened state of war since the attack led by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Since then, Israel has carried out a genocide in Gaza, invaded Lebanon, bombed Yemen, occupied parts of Syria, launched a war against regional power Iran, and most recently defied global opinion and international law by moving closer to annexing territory in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n Against this background, analysts explained, talk of more threats \u2013 such as the one from Turkiye \u2013 and fresh alliances are cast from the same mould. Despite being political opponents, Netanyahu and Bennett are both right-wing Israelis who are completely opposed to a Palestinian state, and who share similar beliefs on pushing for Israeli regional hegemony.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has always been what Naftali Bennett has been about,\u201d political analyst Ori Goldberg said.<\/p>\n \u201cLiberal [Israelis] have been projecting their own hopes onto him for years, simply because he was an opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu. That\u2019s to miss the point,\u201d he said, referencing both men\u2019s apparent contempt for Palestinians. \u201cHe isn\u2019t even pretending now. He\u2019s just trying to overtake Netanyahu on his right.\u201d<\/p>\n But a focus on Turkiye as a threat is both complicated \u2013 the two countries have a decades-long relationship, and Turkiye is a member of NATO \u2013 while also an understandable objective for an Israeli right keen to ensure that a new bogeyman exists.<\/p>\n While Israel has had an antagonistic relationship with Iran since the latter\u2019s 1979 Islamic Revolution, Israel-Turkiye relations have been more pragmatic, with Israel\u2019s continued repression of Palestinians historically often a point of negotiated dispute, rather than open threats spurring aggressively hostile rhetoric.<\/p>\n However, since coming to power in the early 2000s, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been increasingly critical of Israel.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s attack on a flotilla travelling to Gaza in 2010, ultimately killing 10 Turkish activists, was one of the defining moments in the relationship\u2019s downturn, with fierce political rhetoric and diplomatic downgrades following.<\/p>\n Subsequent Israeli military operations in Gaza and Syria have further fuelled public and government anger in Turkiye, with Ankara adopting an increasingly confrontational stance to Israel\u2019s genocide and territorial ambitions, leaving bilateral ties strained and the suggestion of Turkiye\u2019s involvement in Gaza\u2019s proposed interim security force politically toxic in Israel.<\/p>\n But beyond their clear opposition to Israel, comparisons between Ankara and Tehran border upon the ludicrous, analysts said.<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael has worked alongside Turkiye numerous times,\u201d said Pinkas. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t all that long ago that policymakers in Israel talked of the Middle East being overseen by two superpowers, Israel and Turkiye, in opposition to Iran. And now they\u2019re trying to supplant Iran with Turkiye? What are they talking about, armed conflict? Turkiye is a NATO power.\u201d<\/p>\n Pinkas noted further points of difference. \u201cHas the leadership in Turkiye ever denied Israel\u2019s right to exist, or threatened to wipe it from the map?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n While the alliance with the US is ultimately Israel\u2019s biggest protection, it has also sought to broaden its network.<\/p>\n At the forefront of this, Netanyahu explained, would be the support of India\u2019s Modi and what he described as a \u201chexagon\u201d of allied states, including India, the aforementioned Greece and Cyprus, and various unspecified Arab, African, and Asian nations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe intention here is to create an axis of nations that see eye to eye on the reality, challenges, and goals against the radical axes, both the radical Shia axis, which we have struck very hard, and the emerging radical Sunni axis,\u201d Netanyahu said, without specifying the \u201cradical\u201d states he was referring to.<\/p>\n Netanyahu stressed that his proposed new hexagon of alliances was intended to complement, rather than replace, Israel\u2019s typical reliance on the US. But some believe \u2013 as support for Israel is becoming more politically toxic in the US \u2013 that Tel Aviv now needs to hedge its bets.<\/p>\n Political analyst Goldberg called the moves by Netanyahu \u201cdesperate\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of this because we\u2019ve burnt through past alliances with Russia and now the United States, so we\u2019re 1771879971 claiming that India will be leading this hexagon of \u2018moderate states\u2019,\u201d Goldberg said. \u201cNot even people in Israel, not even the most deluded, have any belief that Israel might still be a moderate state.\u201d<\/p>\n And the talk of the Turkish threat and hexagonal alliances was evidence that Israel is not as central to decision-making on any US attack on Iran, said Yossi Mekelberg, an expert with Chatham House.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all deflection; there just isn\u2019t any honesty, and it just gets worse and worse,\u201d Mekelberg said of Netanyahu\u2019s framing of events. \u201cThe big issue is Iran. [That is] what they\u2019re interested in. Turkiye is just so much noise.\u201d<\/p>\n While the intention may be to distract by talking up the Turkish threat, it still carries risks, Mekelberg cautioned.<\/p>\n \u201cMost leaders, at least the devious ones, can separate rhetoric and reality, so there\u2019s no real chance of one spilling over into the other,\u201d he said. \u201cThe risk is that as Israel ramps up its rhetoric against Turkiye, it risks making it a genuine opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With the likelihood increasing of a United States attack on Iran, Israeli politicians are already turning their attention to another regional rival: Turkiye. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is expected to run and do well in the country\u2019s elections this year, was the latest prominent politician to declare Turkiye a threat to Israel. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Worsening relations<\/h2>\n
Hexagonal alliances<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"