7 only four days before the impending hostilities in Gaza, kept him in dark. As a consequence of the incursion, Israeli-Syrian negotiations that had made considerable progress under Turkish auspices fell apart, depriving Erdogan of what he thought was an important breakthrough. After the Gaza incident at the yearly Davos meetings in Switzerland, Erdogan publicly berated Israeli Ppresident Shimon Peres, paradoxically one of Turkey’s greatest supporters. Received as a hero after Davos in Turkey, Erdogan dramatically increased the stridency of his rhetoric against Israel. The Turkish prime minister became the most popular leader in the proverbial Arab street. Then came the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident: Israelis completely bungled the operation. They disregarded the publicly available information on the Turkish group organizing the flotilla and, more importantly, sent forces to intercede without any serious training or accurate intelligence. As a result, the Israelis landing on the ship encountered resistance and fired their weapons in panic. Cue the second terrible error in judgment: Instead of facing up to the fact that it had erred in sending unprepared soldiers into what amounted to be a trap, the Israeli government circled the wagons. Given the magnitude of the fiasco and its possible ramifications, those who were responsible should have been punished. None of that happened, of course, and no one lost his or her job as a result. As Turkey insisted on an apology and compensation, it became clear that Israel had lost the public-opinion contest and may even be forced to relax the embargo on Gaza. Having found that it had done nothing wrong, the Netanyahu government refused. If domestic politics in both countries appeared to prevent a compromise from emerging, the fact is that there were many behind the scenes diplomatic efforts, including face-to-face discussions, to resolve the problem. The United Nations formed the Palmer Commission to come up with a HOUSE_OVERSI