Israel was not notified in advance about the presence of Qatari and Turkish officials among the Gaza Board of Peace (BoP) announced by US President Donald Trump, US officials told N12 on Saturday.
“We did not tell Netanyahu in advance about the composition of the executive committee. He did not expect there to be representatives from Turkey and Qatar, but Gaza is now our show, not his show,” the officials told N12.
“If he [Netanyahu] wants the Trump administration to deal with Gaza – we will do it our way,” they added.
In a separate statement, the technocratic administration expected to take over Gaza said that it “embrace[s] peace, through which we strive to secure the path to real Palestinian rights and self-determination.”
The revelation came as Israeli officials raised concerns over the makeup of the BoP, saying that it contradicts Israeli policy and was not brought up with Israeli authorities.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar to take the matter up with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Prime Minister’s Office stated following the announcement.
The Israelis regard certain countries as unacceptable members of the BoP. The two most worrisome are Qatar and Turkey. Both are enemies of Israel. Qatar has long been the financial supporter of Hamas, and has provide a luxurious refuge for Hamas’ senior leaders. As for Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly denounced the Jewish state, accusing it of “genocide” in Gaza.. He has even suggested in the past the formation of a pan-Islamic military force to attack Israel, and it was clear that this Turkish egomaniac saw himself as leading such an effort.
Instead of a Qatari on the BoP, why didn’t the Trump administration choose someone from the United Arab Emirates, the Arab state that has been least malign in its attitude toward Israel? And instead of Turkey, why not put someone from Azerbaijan, or from one of the Turkic states of Central Asia, that do not share Erdogan’s hatred of Israel?
"Opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) called the announcement on the Gaza Board of Peace a “diplomatic failure for Israel.”
Lapid claimed that, for the last year, he has been warning the government that “if you don’t advance the Egyptian solution with the US and the world, you’ll end up with Turkey and Qatar in Gaza.”…
And that is exactly what happened: the BoP has members from both Turkey and Qatar.
What can Israel now do? Having been kept in the dark by Trump about the makeup of the BoP, and then double-crossed by him when he selected representatives from Qatar and Turkey to be on the BoP, knowing those were precisely the two countries that Israel most wanted kept out, it should simply declare, more in sorrow, that it cannot accept the Board as tentatively constituted. It should state, firmly, that Qatar is both the handmaid and host of Hamas, and that Turkey’s present leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is so hostile to Israel as to have promoted the idea of a pan-Islamic military force to attack Israel. How will Trump, who fancies himself the master of everything, be able to reply to that?
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