In diplomatic circles in Jerusalem and Washington, people are rubbing their eyes in disbelief. Even in a world of calculating interests, a zig-zag like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's on Israel is no common thing. All of a sudden, the patron of the Muslim Brotherhood, the man who has spent years using any and every platform to insult Israel and gone back on his promise to stop Hamas activity in Turkey, is suddenly courting Israel.

Until recently, Erdogan was still making a mockery of the reconciliation deal Turkey and Israel signed in 2016, which was supposed to resolve the conflict over the Mavi Marmara incident and put Turkish-Israeli relations back on a normal path. Erdogan compared Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to how the Nazis treated the Jews; said the Israeli government was "following in Hitler's path," and even said that "filthy Zionists are polluting the Temple Mount."

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Two years ago, after the US Embassy was relocated to Jerusalem and Israel bombed Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, Erdogan expelled Israeli Ambassador to Ankara Eitan Na'eh and recalled his own envoy from Tel Aviv. And now, in the past few months, we're seeing him reverse course. Erdogan is seeking closer ties with Israel and sending emissaries, hints, and messages that leave no room for doubt about his intentions. Moreover, after a long sulky period, Turkey is sending a new ambassador to Israel – Ufuk Ulutas, a close associate of Erdogan's. Ulutas, too, has previously denied Israel's right to exist on "Palestinian land" and made extremely hostile statements against it.

Turkey is even accepting Israel's recent normalization agreement with Morocco with surprising equanimity. Only a few months ago, it attacked similar agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Reports about a series of meetings between Mossad head Yossi Cohen and head of Turkey's intelligence services Hakan Fidan also indicate how serious Erdogan is about Israel.

So what has happened to Erdogan? Senior officials in Jerusalem think that the about-face in his approach can be explained by the result of the US presidential election. Erdogan has a fractured relationship with US President-elect Joe Biden, and the Turks believe that the way to the White House goes through Jerusalem.

"What dictates relations between Israel and Turkey is how good relations are between the US and Turkey," explains Dr. Hay Eitan Cohen Yanarocak, an expert on Turkey with the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.  

According to Yanarocak, "The Turks are afraid of harsher American sanctions and they want help from the Israeli and Jewish lobbies, which they see as having a lot of sway in Washington. Their assumption is that renormalization with Israel will be a trust-building step for Washington, a kind of proof of good behavior."

A week or so ago, Erdogan advisor Mesut Casin announced that if Israel took a step in Turkey's direction, Turkey would take two steps toward Israel.

Yanarocak says that he knows Casin, who is a secular military man, not an Islamist. "He was my professor of international law in Istanbul," he says, adding that Israel should take what Casin says seriously, as well as what Erdogan himself is saying.

This week, the researcher points out, Erdogan was asked by a journalist whether it was true that Turkish-Israel relations were warming up, and Erdogan expressed a desire for better ties despite his difficulty with "Israel's policy toward the Palestinians" and "with the people at the top in Israel."

"When Erdogan says that, it's a lot more than a hint," Yanarocak explains.

Why is Erdogan so scared of the man who will soon be in the White House? Biden has long-standing issues with Erdogan, and doesn't bother to hide them. The president-elect has long opposed Turkey's occupation of Northern Cyprus. Biden has declared multiple times that if elected president, his administration would officially recognize the Armenian genocide the Turks perpetrated in the early 20th century. Unlike Trump, Biden is showing much less patient for the channel Erdogan's Turkey, which is still a NATO member, has opened up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as its operation of the Russian S-400 missile defense system, or for the Turkish-Iranian links fostered by the Russians. Biden is particularly outraged over the Turkish invasion of northern Syria and their attacks on the Kurds there. As president, Biden is expected to renew US support for the Kurds, whom the Obama administration supplied with weapons in their fight against the Islamic State.

Will the Turkish bank be investigated?

Not only is Erdogan well-versed in Biden's positions, the two have met in person four times. He also remembers Biden's remarks in the presidential race, when he talked of nothing less than ousting Erdogan with the help of the Turkish opposition – not a coup, but democratic elections. Now Erdogan is afraid that Biden, unlike Trump, will not continue to delay a criminal investigation into the government-run Halkbank, which allegedly tried to skirt US sanctions on Iran. The investigation could go to the very top of the Turkish pyramid, including Erdogan himself.

But Biden isn't Erdogan's only problem. The Turkish president finds himself increasingly isolated. Trump, whom he will miss, nevertheless sanctioned Turkey in his final days in the White House. He kicked Turkey out of a plan to build F35 stealth fighters and banned it from selling any defense equipment that contains American parts to other countries.

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Erdogan is afraid that Biden will tighten the sanctions. Meanwhile, he is fighting with both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which is unofficially boycotting him. The boycott is hurting Turkey at a time when the Turkish lira is tanking and inflation and unemployment are sky-high. Erdogan isn't even in contact with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who unceremoniously outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood.

In addition to all these troubles, the European Union is considering sanctions of its own against Ankara over its oil drilling in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, which is damaging Cypriot and Greek territorial waters, as well as trespassing on their sovereignty.

Israel is thinking carefully about how to response to Turkey's new overtures. Turkey's semi-formal offer of an agreement on shared maritime borders with Israel has been declined for now, and there isn't much chance it will be accepted. The proposal came in the form of an article by retired Turkish Admiral Cihat Yayci, another Erdogan associate, which was published in the monthly journal Turkeyscope, which Yanarocak edits.

In the article, Yayci suggests connecting Israel and Turkey's maritime borders, at the expense of Cyprus, and offers another "bonbon" – connecting the Israeli pipeline that is slated to export natural gas to Europe to the existing Turkish pipeline, from whence it would flow into the Trans-Anatolia pipeline to Europe.

That would indeed be less expensive for Israel than the costs of the initiative Israel is already committed to as part of a deal it made with Greece and Cyprus at the start of the year, under which a 1,900-km (1,180 mile) pipeline will be built from Israel to Cyprus and from there to Crete, Greece, and Italy by 2025 at a cost to Israel of $6.86 billion.

Israel, which has an obligation to its new Mediterranean partners, is unlikely to take the bait, but Yanarocak thinks that "the very proposal and the publication of it in Turkey – even though it was clear to the Turks that Israel wouldn't accept it – is meant to prepare Turkish public opinion for renewed ties with Israel."

Normalization, with a footnote

The current US sanctions could be very painful for Turkey, Yanarocak explains.

"Turkey sells battleships to Pakistan and is even proud of its attack helicopter, and the UAVs is builds and sells to a number of different countries. But all these systems include defense parts that originate from the US, and now they can't be sold. All this is happening even before Biden – unlike Trump – is expected to intervene in the issue of human rights and imprisonment in Turkey," he notes.

Yanarocak mentioned that some employees of the US Embassy in Turkey are still in jail for their alleged attempts to participate in the failed coup against Erdogan.

Yanarocak thinks that the new Turkish ambassador will arrive in Israel a month or two after Biden takes office, but warns about how honestly Turkey desires renewed ties. "They could maintain contact with Hamas, but have to stop their support for the organization and the quarter they provide for [Hamas members] planning terrorist actions from within their borders. That is unacceptable. We also need to arrive at clear understandings with the Turks that the harsh verbal attacks against Israel will stop. Turkey, which in 1949 became the first Muslim country to recognize Israel, is an asset, and we have no interest in making it an enemy. So true normalization is definitely appropriate, but after what we've been through with Turkey these last several years, we need to exercise caution."

Turkish or Islamist?

There is another possibility, a more explosive one. Pinhas Inbari of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was recently informed by his sources in the Persian Gulf that behind closed doors, something revolutionary is taking place: Turkey and Saudi Arabia are in contact about Turkey ousting the Muslim Brotherhood in exchange for broad Sunni reconciliation between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

According to Inbari, the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Kuwait "was afraid they would be arrested and fled to Turkey, but then rushed back and preferred to sit in prison in Kuwait than live under Erdogan. Senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership discussed the crisis between the brotherhood and Erdogan."

Q: What caused the crisis?

Inbari: "At the moment, it's unclear. According to them [the Muslim Brotherhood], Erdogan recently talked to Saudi King Salman and promised him that he would take action against the brotherhood, who we know are the root of the problem between their patron, Erdogan, and Saudi Arabia, which is afraid of them."

Inbari suggests cautiously that there might be corroboration for these reports from Kuwait, among other things in how Erdogan responded to the agreement ending the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

"In his victory speech, Erdogan, who supported the Azeris, supposedly presented areas of Iran as Azeri territory and part of Azerbaijan. The Iranians didn't like that at all. All of a sudden, Erdogan sounded like someone who was casting Turkey as the guardian of all Turkmen people – meaning Turks living outside the Turkish borders."

Inbari goes on to explain that in northern Iran, "there is a large Turkish-speaking minority, and the Iranians were shaking with anger. They responded by publishing a map from the time of the Persian Empire that included parts of Anatolia – in modern-day Turkey – within the borders of the Persian Empire. One conclusion that can be drawn from that is that Erdogan is looking for a new card to play instead of the Islamist one – the Turkish card."

If that is indeed the case, Inbari says, "Erdogan is now saying to Israel: I'm Turkish before I'm an Islamist, let's renew the good relations we had when Turkey was first of all Turkish."

"Could that be?" the researcher asks. "I wouldn't rule it out. But of course, I'd look at it very carefully, and be very careful not to hurt our ties and deals with Cyprus and Greece and of course insist that the Turks stop helping Hamas and allowing them to operate against us [Israel] from Turkish territory."

Indeed, it is difficult to image Israel giving up membership in what Ankara sees as the anti-Turkish EastMed Gas Forum – which only two months ago was formed as a regional intergovernmental organization and includes Egypt, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority – merely to take Turkey up on its offer. It's even harder to imagine Israel once again believing another hollow Turkish promise to put a stop to Hamas activity within its borders.

In addition to a long list of terrorist attacks and attempted terrorist attacks against Israel that Hamas executed from Turkey in recent years, researchers from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center have outlined Turkey's place as a base from which Hamas is handling its financial activity. Similar information has recently been published by the US Treasury, which stated that Hamas activists and sympathizers in Turkey raise funds, transfer them to [Hamas'] military wing in the Gaza Strip, fund terrorist organizations in Judea and Samaria, and operate companies in Turkey that launder terrorist funds.

According to the Americans, the main source for the money sent to Hamas via Turkey (and sometimes Lebanon) is Iran. The Americans believe that Iran's Quds Force handles the money transfers to Hamas, and that the process involves various money changers based in Turkey.

Will Turkey, which is trying to make nice with the Americans, take real action to stop all this? Or, like it did with the Mavi Marmara "reconciliation," make due with lip service and continue to be involved in Hamas' terrorist activity? Israel's defense establishment will be watching closely.

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Presiding Judge Solomy Bossa ordered Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to decide by Dec. 2 whether or not to open a formal probe. The 3-2 majority ruling by the court's appeals chamber is the latest step in a long legal battle to bring the case before the court.

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Bensouda earlier declined a request by the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros to investigate the May 31, 2010, storming of a vessel in the flotilla, which was sailing under a Comoros flag.

Israel is not a member state of the court but its nationals could face charges if Bensouda opens an investigation.

In her initial refusal to open a full-scale investigation, Bensouda acknowledged that war crimes may have been committed on the Mavi Marmara ship, where eight Turks and one Turkish-American were killed and several other pro-Palestinian activists were wounded by Israeli commandos. But she decided that the case wasn't serious enough to merit an ICC probe.

Comoros appealed that decision and sought a judicial review when Bensouda once again refused to investigate the case.

The ICC was set up as a court of last resort intended to prosecute senior leaders allegedly responsible for grave crimes including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity when national courts prove unable or unwilling to take on such cases.

The appeals panel on Monday criticized Bensouda for her rejection of calls by a lower panel of judges to reconsider the case.

"The appeals chamber also finds that the unfortunate language used by the prosecutor to express her disagreement demonstrates that she was entirely misinformed as to what was required of her in conducting the requested reconsideration," Bossa said.

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Israel has racked up a long list of public diplomacy failures in its 71 years of existence. After one of them – the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which was characterized by chaos not only on the battlefield but also in the battle for public opinion – a decision was made to do something about it and establish the National Information Directorate for public diplomacy in the Prime Minister's Office. The directorate would decide strategy, coordinate between various players, and act as the national leadership's professional arm in the effort to sway opinions in Israel and throughout the world.

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The person chosen to head the office was Yarden Vatikay. Vatikay had served in the Prime Minister's Office under Yitzhak Rabin, as IDF Spokesperson, as media adviser to the defense minister and COGAT, and as spokesman for the Jewish Agency. He took up the position when Ehud Olmert was still prime minister, and he stayed when Benjamin Netanyahu was elected, becoming one the professional staffers who was closest to the prime minister. He is a classic civil servant – careful, non-critical of managers and colleagues, and very loyal to Israel and its goals. This week, he resigned after 11 and a half years in the role.

"The messages Israel sends out are complicated: on one hand, we project that we're strong, that it's worthwhile to do business with us and make aliyah. On the other, we broadcast that we're under attack, a jungle clearing that needs help. That's complicated to explain," Vatikay says.

"The Palestinians' message is much simpler. They say, 'We're wretched, save us,' and that's it. Our lives are much more complex, and that makes public diplomacy work difficult," he says.

In the past, Israel spoke in a single voice. What was being said at home in Hebrew was what was said abroad in English. Today, the reality is different. Often, there is a need to send out conflicting messages. When it comes to military actions, for example, the message in Israel is that the IDF is pummeling the enemy, whereas the message for the rest of the world is that Israel is acting proportionally and with surgical precision. The need to say both of those things, without coming off as unreliable, demands skill and coordination. This combination lies at the core of the headquarters' work.

"The current age of social media allow us to take action much more easily. But it also demands more professionalism and especially the ability to turn on a dime," Vatikay explains.

"We often need to do both things at once, in different ways – reach public opinion in some country and the leadership of that same country, and sometimes we have to change what we're saying while we're saying it. For example, when a new government was voted into Washington, it was clear that the US under Trump would not be the same as it was under Obama."

The Goldstone Effect

The first crisis Vatikay encountered was Operation Cast Lead in the winter of 2008-2009. Having learned the lessons of the Second Lebanon War, the various PR engines were tested, even up until the night before the operation. In real time, everything went smoothly. The operation was seen as a success, and the IDF restored its own faith and the faith of the Israeli public in its ability to operate.

"The Second Lebanon War left scars, and not only with us. All throughout the region there were those who saw what happened there and started to think that Israel, unlike its image, doesn't always succeed. Cast Lead changed that," he says.

But after Cast Lead came the Goldstone Report. Israel found itself fighting on a new front – facing harsh international criticism and a sharp rise in efforts to delegitimize it.

"That was a crisis. The first decision was to not cooperate with Goldstone, but it was clear that we couldn't ignore him. It took years to handle. Slowly, we changed minds. Even Goldstone himself eventually retracted most of the claims in his report in an article in The Washington Post."

That event highlighted the need for Israel to fight against international organizations that are supposedly neutral but actually extremely hostile. The national public diplomacy headquarters brought all the actors – the IDF and Defense Ministry, the Mossad and the Shin Bet security agency, the foreign, justice, and finance ministries – into line as part of its attempt to present such international groups as biased.

"That battle isn't over. It will go on, but we've achieved plenty of victories," Vatikay says. "Today, what these organizations say isn't accepted as the gospel. People are suspicious of them, dig into their activity."

The next major crisis was the Mavi Marmara flotilla, in which Turkish activists aboard a ship sailing to Gaza to break the siege was raided by IDF naval commandos, and the botched mission resulted in the deaths of several of the Palestinian sympathizers on board. Here, too, groundwork had been laid – but for the wrong event.

"We were prepared for the flotilla a few weeks ahead of time. We held meetings and got tactics ready. We were prepared for a riot, and we got a terrorist incident. We failed: from the prime minister, who was abroad; to the commandos, who hadn't prepared for a fight; and ourselves – material went out too late and it took us hours to respond properly. That led us to make changes."

Q: Such as?

"From how we prepare, to new procedures and allocation of resources, to professional questions such as setting up a special department in the IDF Intelligence Corps that is devoted to tracking organizations and activities like these."

To a large extent, the lessons learned from the Goldstone Report and the Marmara fiasco were implemented in Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. "From the very start we realized that we needed to take action to bolster the legitimacy of the operation, both at home and abroad. We brought the prime minister to southern Israel along with foreign ambassadors, and we showed them a display of Hamas weapons, so they would know what was being used against us and understand that we had no choice."

Q: That didn't prevent the ongoing campaign of delegitimization.

"True, but the world was more sympathetic to our needs, and remember – that was an operation in which 2,000 Palestinians were killed. Anyone who expected that international opinion would stand up and salute us is welcome to wake up [to reality], but we managed to do damage control and push back on a number of bad decisions by international institutions."

Part of that was a result of moving to more sophisticated mechanisms for use in public diplomacy, mostly in the battle against inaccurate information put out by the other side.

"In one instance, the Palestinians claimed that a tank shell killed 40 civilians. The rest of the world started to run headlines damaging to us. We shut it down quickly with information from the Shin Bet that indicated that not only had we fired at a location used to launch mortars [at Israel] – including the names of the Palestinians who had been doing the shooting – no civilians had been killed there at all. That information didn't bring opinion around to our side, but it balanced things. It stopped that incident from blowing up into a PR catastrophe like the cases of Mohammed a-Dura or Kafr Kana."

The limits of what is allowed

As head of the public diplomacy office, Vatikay took part in every major development, certainly in the diplomatic-security arena. There were few meetings in which he wasn't present.

"Netanyahu has a deep understanding of public diplomacy. I've worked with four prime minister. Each one was different, and Netanyahu is definitely a statesman – a leader who is well-known and admired in the world, a man with a deep understanding of a variety of subjects that allows him to handle the difficult challenge that is the state of Israel."

Vatikay says that Netanyahu is very meticulous and goes into the details. He understands that his personal involvement is critical to achieving PR goals.

"Nothing happens for no reason. There are preliminary steps, deep thought, meetings about how and what we want to achieve with every move. We talk about what we hope to achieve and the potential harm. No matter the field – diplomacy, security, economics, or anything else – public opinion is critical, and we need to address it. It's not just a matter of PR so people will like us; it's a significant part of deterrence, of our power, and sometimes our legitimacy to act. That doesn't mean everyone will be happy about it, but our goal is for them to let us operate."

Under that framework, the PR office put together the campaign Israel is waging against Iran. That activity is carried out through a number of tools and methods, both open and secret. The campaign has four goals: to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons; to oppose the JCPOA nuclear deal in its 2015 form; to act against Iran and its satellites when it comes to missiles and terrorism; and to limit Iran's regional influence.

That activity required Vatikay to coordinate closely with many different officials, including some that are less public, like the Mossad and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. The nuclear archive the Mossad brought back from Tehran was secured in a field operation, but the PR aspects were just as important.

"For months, we worked as a small, secret team on how we would put it out and market it. It wasn't easy to decide what we wanted to make public – there were 50,000 documents and 50,000 CDs [in the archive] and we needed to maintain secrecy for fear things would leak and cause damage." According to Vatikay, the operation was a great success: "It's a fact that even President Trump cited [the operation] as one of the main reasons why he decided to withdraw from the nuclear deal."

This work demands close coordination between two worlds that generally don't coexist well: intelligence and PR.

"In the past, the intelligence agencies saw us as the enemy, or at least a threat. As the years went by, they learned that the information they collect can, and often should, serve the PR effort."

"The Iran nuclear archive was an example of that, and the Hezbollah missile infrastructure in Lebanon, which the prime minister exposed in a speech to the UN General Assembly, is another. Both these reports were preceded by plenty of arguments between the intelligence people and the PR people about what, if anything, should be made public."

Q: In the past, the intelligence people usually won.

"It led us to work together. Every time the prime minister takes part in a diplomatic visit in Israel or abroad, there is a computer presentation that includes an overview of the area that we prepare with the intelligence folks. The idea is to send these messages in a clear, simple way, without putting sources in danger. When you show a foreign leader a presentation like that, and he understands it, that's a diplomatic coup that affects our image in the world."

Q: Nevertheless, there are areas in which Israel is less successful. The fight against BDS, for example.

"That's a main focus of the entire system. Personally, I think it [BDS] is a real threat with potential for major damage, mostly in terms of economics and image. We need to fight it with all our might, but in a smart way, because there's a thin line between legitimate criticism of Israel in the world, even if we aren't crazy about it, and what is out of bounds. Our challenge is how to explain to the liberal world that we see ourselves as part of it, that what is happening here is not black and white."

Part of that is understanding that every incident could potentially harm Israel's image, and so every incident must be handled, preferably ahead of time. Years ago, Vatikay woke up to a news report that said the Defense Ministry had completed a lengthy project that was designed to institutionalize separate transport for Jews and Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. The international media exploded. Israel was embarrassed. "The idea was reasonable, to prevent terrorist attacks, but the execution was a failure, especially because there was no forethought about the PR damage it would cause. We took it to the prime minister, who cancelled the plan."

On the other hand, the home demolitions in Tzur Baher in east Jerusalem last week went quietly. "We were careful to present them as a civil matter, not a defense one. The spokespeople were selected accordingly, mostly from the Foreign Ministry, and a few officials from COGAT," Vatikay explains. "In general, we've learned that unlike Israel – the world does not like military people. For big events, you need to use few spokespeople, different languages, and preferably women, as well."

Image is everything

The demolitions were the last event Vatikay handled. He stayed in the office until late that night, and the next day, left for the private sector, without fanfare.

Q: This job must have had plenty of frustrations.

"When the country is in a complicated but justified situation, and there are large audiences you can't reach, and worse – when you see the actions being taken against us."

The solution, he says, is to invest a lot more in public diplomacy: not only in terms of budget, but also the best personnel, and make them part of the decision-making process.

"We must be aware of what is happening in the world and take action to be influential players. There are entire systems operating against us that have hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, and anyone who wants to oppose that influence needs to act. Image isn't just when someone is talking – if the Foreign Ministry invests in an agricultural project in Africa, or if the Homefront Command sends a delegation to a disaster area somewhere in the world, it improves our image. The problem is that costs money, but it's an excellent investment: we get much more back than we put in."

"In recent years, we've managed to create a better image for Israel in the world. Take the Palestinian issue: until a few years ago, it was clear that they were the good guys and we were the bad guys, the recalcitrant ones who didn't want peace. Today, the picture is balanced. It's not that we're seen as peaceful, but it's clear to everyone that there are two sides to the coin. The Trump administration has played a big part in that, but so has our work here. The result is not only the number of countries who have diplomatic ties with us or who cooperated with us without formal diplomatic ties, but mainly that the world realized that the situation is complicated, and that not only is Israel not the problem, it's often part of the solution."

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The Mavi Marmara was a Turkish vessel that in 2010 attempted to breach the maritime blockade on the Gaza Strip. Upon approaching Gaza's waters, the Israeli Navy hailed the ship several times, ordering it to stop and turn around. The Marmara refused and Israeli commandos raided the ship. The operation was met with violence by the passengers, 10 Turkish nationals were killed and several Israeli soldiers were beaten.

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The incident caused a rift between Israel and Turkey, and the once warm diplomatic relations between Jerusalem and Ankara have become chilly, at best, despite Israel's $20 million reparations to the victims' families.

Despite the settlement, the ICC has recently ordered Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to reopen the investigation following an appeal by the IHH, which organized the flotilla led by the Mavi Marmara.

The Turkey-based IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation has been designated as a terrorist group by Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.

IHH Attorney Robert Feldmeier has reportedly presented Bensouda with a document he obtained on a special trip to Comoros, in Africa's east coast.

Feldmeier was seeking documentation suggesting the Marmara was sailing under a Comoros flag, as the IHH claims.

This is essential to any potential IHH proceedings against IDF soldiers in The Hague, as the ICC can only try cases involving countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute – the treaty that established the International Criminal Court – and neither Israel nor Turkey have joined it.

However, it appears the documents Feldmeier obtained revealed that the Marmara was not sailing under the Comoros flag. It also appears he was told that any registration to the contrary was made by a clerk who had no authority over the matter and was, in fact, fired over it.

This has prompted Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin, Israel Law Center, to argue that as neither Israel nor Turkey are party to the Rome Statute, the ICC lacks the jurisdiction to hear any case related to the Mavi Marmara.

"It's unclear to me why the ICC can't see that the IHH is using it. IDF soldiers who raided the Marmara have not committed any war crimes," she said.

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