Sep 17, 2015

So far, Israel has not made any public comments about what lies behind the wave of Middle Eastern refugees now sweeping across Europe. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proud that no illegal immigrants have gained access to Israel via Egypt since his erection of a fence along the southern border. At a ceremony on Sept. 6 to mark the start of a new fence along Israel’s eastern border with Jordan, Netanyahu said, “This is a success that almost no Western country — and very few countries at all — has been able to achieve, but Israel has achieved it, and I am determined to continue this on Israel's other borders.” At the same event, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said, “We can see the stream of refugees washing over Europe. What is happening in Europe could have happened to us, had we not behaved in an intelligent manner.”

Senior Israeli political sources consider the current wave of refugees additional proof of what they call “President Barack Obama’s failed Middle East policy.” “If Obama had bombed [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad, all of this would have been avoided,” said a senior source who requested anonymity. He was referring to two years ago, when Assad crossed the US president’s “red line” by using chemical weapons, but instead of attacking, Obama decided on disarmament. In response to a question about what would stop the flood of refugees now, the source said, “There is no way of avoiding boots on the ground in a simultaneous attack against Assad and the Islamic State [IS].”

Israel is not only pleased that it is not along the refugees’ route, it is also experiencing a sense of schadenfreude. Europe has not held back in its criticism of how Israel is treating the Palestinians, even while it avoids responding to the collapse of Syria and Iraq. Now, however, Europe is being forced to directly contend with these nations’ collapse with the consequences having reached its own territory. The one person deemed responsible for transferring the problem from the Middle East to the heart of Europe is Turkey's former prime minister and current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Israel doesn't hold this against him.

Turkey was the first country to receive and embrace the refugees when Syria’s civil war broke out four years ago. Erdogan had turned Assad from a strategic ally into his No. 1 enemy, and by receiving the refugees he believed that he could convince NATO to act more decisively against the Syrian central government. When he realized that the United States and other Western leaders were not acting with what he considered to be sufficient determination against the Syrian president, Erdogan pinned his hopes on what became IS. Every so often, the Turkish media divulged information about how Turkish intelligence supported IS, and a senior Israeli official confirmed the allegations to Al-Monitor. “He funded them,” he said, referring to the relationship between Erdogan and IS.

What the Turkish president was effectively doing was funding IS with one hand while absorbing and supporting the refugees fleeing from it with the other. Erdogan believed that the larger the number of displaced Syrians, the better his chances of convincing the international community of the need to enforce a no-fly zone across northern Syria, where the refugees could ostensibly be settled. To ensure that this would become the preferred solution, the Turkish authorities made it difficult for refugees, now numbering close to 2 million, to leave for third countries. As their numbers in Turkey reached a critical mass, NATO member states would be more likely to act, Erdogan had hoped.