Normalisierung der Beziehungen zwischen Irak und Israel?

Es ist ein Artikel von TRT, das dem türkischen Präsidenten und seiner AKP nahe steht und deshalb mit einer gewissen Vorsicht zu lesen, schließlich schiesst türkische Propaganda gerade wieder besonders gegen Israel. Und doch bewegt sich etwas und in der Tat gab es in letzter Zeit einige Treffen zwischen irakischen und israelischen Politikern:

Since the New Year alone, Israeli media and the Israeli foreign ministry have confirmed that “prominent” and “influential” Iraqi political actors have secretly visited Israel and the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Mohammed Ali al Hakim, said that it would be Iraqi policy to support a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

That’s a severe climbdown from not even recognising Israel’s right to exist to granting it de facto recognition. But why is Iraq gradually moving into Israel’s orbit? (...)

So what changed? How can a country so implacably hostile to Israel suddenly be sending secret delegations and announcing that they would be seeking a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? The answer is quite simply that the entire calculus changed after the 2003 Iraq War.

While other parliamentarians and even pro-Iran militant groups threatened to find and punish those who had made the trips to Israel, there have been signs of an Iraqi political consensus on the desire to seek stronger ties with an enemy state since Saddam’s regime came to an end.

It is no secret that Israel and Iraqi Kurdish leaders are close friends with Tel Aviv consistently supporting Kurdish independence and even deploying its foreign intelligence agency Mossad to assist the Kurds on numerous occasions.

Closer to the power centre in Baghdad, former lawmakers such as the Arab liberal Mithal al Alusi visited Israel on at least two occasions in 2004 and 2008, and was even indicted on charges of “visiting an enemy state”.

Alusi has been outspoken on seeking closer ties to Israel, saying that there was no occupation of historic Palestine and that the two countries should share intelligence to combat Iran. His indictment was eventually quashed by the Supreme Federal Court that ruled that it was no longer a crime for Iraqi citizens to visit Israel, showing how the judiciary was used to legitimise interactions with Tel Aviv.

However loud the pro-Iran camp in the Iraqi parliament and militia groups may be today in calling the Kurds and liberals traitors, they too have their skeletons to contend with.