Israel’s flotilla violence changing everything, Part 2

A.
The fact that PM Netanyahu has decided that fallout from the IDF’s gratuitously violent flotilla assault requires him to cancel his planned meeting in Washington Wednesday and return to Israel is extremely important. The Wednesday meeting was supposed to be a rapacious (date-raping) consummation of his new “love affair” with Obama. So it was important.
But clearly, trying to get a handle on what’s been happening back home regarding the flotilla assault is more important. Ynet is already reporting that because the IDF general staff and the political leadership both recognize that the assault was a massive net negative for Israel, they are already blaming each other.
Good. Let them try to start to sort it out. Preferably by recognizing that the entire policy of imposing a lengthy tight siege is just plain wrong— under international law, under Jewish ethics, under any notion of respect of human rights!
Let them lift the siege of Gaza. Period.
B.
By underlining the continuing tragedy (and crime) of Israel’s siege of Gaza, the IDF completely bulldozed any pretense that Israel’s sputtering “proximity talks” with the PLO had any hope, relevance, or meaning at all. Over there in Ramallah the PA/PLO leadership reportedly agreed to a six-point plan as follows:

1) Send a delegation of PA and PLO officials to Gaza to discuss situation
2) Demand the UN Security Council order an end to the siege on Gaza and initiate an investigation into the attack
3) Coordinate with states whose nationals were killed in the attack to seek justice
4) Meet with the Arab League’s secretary-general, Amr Mousa, in an urgent session called for by Abbas
5) Ask the EU to freeze relations with Israel
6) Call on officials in the West Bank including ambassadors, to organize events to mourn the loss of so many supporters of Palestine, and listen to calls from the public to press forward with an inquiry.

Of course, at one level this is still merely political theater, as with everything “Fateh” does. But significantly, Fateh/PLO pol Mohamed Dahlan was the one who reported these results out of an meeting held by the Central Committee of Fateh, the movement that dominates both the PLO and the Ramallah-based PA.
Dahlan, of course, is the guy who was the lynchpin of Condi Rice’s plan to dislodge Hamas’s democratically leadership of the PA legislature by force, back in 2006-07.
How credible should we take his new appearance as one seeking to lead the effort to coordinate or perhaps even reconcile with Hamas? Perhaps not terribly credibly. But if he is the one individual whom the rest of the Fateh CC sends out to make the announcement about the six points, then it strikes me they think that Fateh is in big, big trouble.
C.
Further afield, all of NATO except for the U.S. has now come out with some acknowledgment that Turkey, a vital fellow NATO member has had its civilian ship wantonly attacked by Israel on the high seas.
What is NATO good for?
Why would any other NATO member ignore this grievous attack against Turkish shipping– especially given that (a) Turkey is a substantial country, well respected in the world and currently a member of the U.N. Security Council; (b) Turkey is NATO’s only majority-Muslim member nation; and (c) NATO is currently waging a difficult war in a distant Muslim country, Afghanistan?
D.
Issandr el- Amrani has had good reporting about the popular outrage expressed against th Israeli assault in Egypt. Egypt, which is a key U.S. military ally in the Arab and Muslim worlds, is currently entering a very sensitive succession crisis. Watch Issandr’s blog for updates.