The Israeli President and the Palestinian President will make their speeches together, in the same session of the Turkish Parliament, on 12 November in Ankara, a senior Turkish diplomat in Jerusalem confirmed on Wednesday.

Does this mean any greater involvement of Turkey in the Middle East peace process? “We will do what they ask us to do”, the senior Turkish diplomat said. “So far, they tell us, just keep on doing what you are already doing”.

The Israeli and Palestinian Presidents have been invited as official guests of Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul.

The Turkish invitation to the Palestinian President was confirmed on Tuesday, when the Turkish Consul-General in Jerusalem, Ercan Ozer, visited the Muqata’a (Palestinian Presidential Headquarters in Ramallah). The Consul-General’s car, a black limousine with a red Turkish flag posted on a small pole on the right side of the car’s hood, was parked inside the court of the Muqata’a, not far from the new light beige-pink stone memorial to the late Yasser Arafat, which is undergoing final touches before its official inauguration next week.

The memorial has a square building reminiscent of the Kaaba in Mecca (but with large glass windows on all four sides) — which is apparently constructed over Arafat’s grave, and a square tower reminiscent of the minaret of a mosque, from which a green light was shining on Wednesday night. There has been a temporary memorial to Arafat, with a stone headstone referring to Arafat as a martyr, constructed in what is now used mainly as a parking lot — but which during the last two years of Arafat’s life under seige in the Muqat’a, during which there were periodic Israeli threats to kill him that even the Americans denounced, was full of stone and concrete pillars with metal rods rising through them, which were supposed to make it difficult for Israelis to launch a helicopter-borne assault on the compound. Arafat was evacuated by helicopter during his final agonies, and died in a Paris hospital in November 2004. Though rumors abound, an official French report is non-conclusive, and there is still no reliable information on the exact cause of death, although Israeli officials did not shy away from expressing their satisfaction.

The Muqata’a was built by the British during their military administration of Palestine after the defeat of the Ottoman empire in World War I, and it served as the headquarters of the British Government. The periphery of the compound was pounded by an Israeli assault in 2002 at the height of the Second Intifada, and many cars parked in the adjacent lot were crushed by Israeli tanks. Whole walls were sheared off, exposing rooms inside. During a visit to the Muqata’a in the spring of 2004, military officers seated in plastic garden chairs outside the main entrance shared apricots with a visitor, seated in plastic garden chairs outside the main entrance. Other military officers, seated a few floors above in similar chairs in totally exposed rooms, called out to the visitors to take a picture…but of course they didn’t really mean it. They were just joking, of course, because they were on alert for an imminent Israeli attack.

In the main courtyard of the Muqata’a on Wednesday, an honor guard appeared out of a building opposite the Presidential office, and the group of soldiers appeared a bit unused to their olive green suit uniforms with caps and shoulder epaulets in gold fringe with a touch of red. The honor guard was apparently raised to receive two ambassadors were presenting credentials – Brazil, who already has a representative office to the Palestinian Authority (PA), but who sent a new Ambassador; and Sri Lanka, who was accrediting an Ambassador to the PA for the first time.

Also on Tuesday, President Shimon Peres went personally to see Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and the two Israeli officials held a joint news conference to announce the invitation to speak to the Turkish Parliament (from what appeared in news reports later, the Israelis apparently did not mention the simultaneous invitation to the Palestinian President).

The Jerusalem Post reported that “Peres made the announcement on Tuesday at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after the two met for a working session. Olmert said no Israeli president had ever before addressed a Muslim parliament. The invitation to Peres to visit Turkey is of great significance, he said, and the invitation to speak in the parliament ‘is an extraordinary event’ … Peres said Turkey could ‘play a first-tier role in the peace process’, adding that the country’s moderate and democratic nature served as a counterweight to the extremist Islam embodied by Iran.”

The Jerusalem Post story added that “Peres emphasized the good relations that exist between Turkey and Israel. In addition to the positive ties Israel enjoys with Turkey today, Peres said, it should not be forgotten that Turkey provided a haven for Jews fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition more than 500 years ago. He said he was convinced that Turkey could also play ‘a very important role’ politically and economically in creating a climate for peace in the Middle East”. The Jerusalem Post report on the Presidents’ forthcoming visit to Turkey is here.

Peres is the main advocate of international assistance to improve the economic situation both in Israel and in the Palestinian territory, respectively — though the difference in the power and strength of the two economies is worlds apart. Though theAnd the Israeli squeeze on the Palestinians in the West Bank (despite the current charm offensive) as well as the tightening sanctions on the Gaza Strip is making the situation — as everybody says — desperate.

Recently, the Associated Press reported from Jerusalem that “Turkey’s government is to erect a memorial for its fallen soldiers from the Ottoman era near Islam’s third holiest site in Jerusalem, the Al Aqsa mosque compound, a senior official said Thursday … The memorial will be built outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, several meters east of the bitterly-contested holy site known to Muslims as the Al Haram Al Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. The Turkish government made the request several months ago, and was allocated 120 square meters (1,300 square feet) near a Muslim cemetery outside the Lion’s Gate, according to Khattib [an official of the Islamic Waqf who says that Jerusalem's Muslim authorities have granted permission for Turkish project to build a monument to Ottoman soldiers] … The Ottoman empire ruled Jerusalem from its capital in Istanbul for 400 years between 1517 and 1917, when the British army led by General Edmund Allenby captured the city during World War I. Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the Old City during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it. The Palestinians want to make Jerusalem the capital of their future state. Turkey mediated between Israel and the Waqf after a controversial construction project near Al Haram Al Sharif sparked a wave of protest across the Muslim world earlier this year”.

The AP story was picked up and posted here.

In 2005, Turkey transferred a copy of the Ottoman land archives to the Palestinian Authority.

Haaretz newspaper’s Danny Rubenstein reported on 11 October 2005 that “The Turkish government on Sunday gave the Palestinian Authority a copy of the Ottoman archive containing all documents pertaining to land ownership in pre-state Israel through 1916. The PA requested the records to support Palestinian land claims. The Palestinians say that these documents reflect the ‘true’ ownership of the land. One year later, in 1917, Britain drove the Ottomans out of the country and issued the Balfour Declaration, expressing support for the establishment of a Jewish state in what was then called Palestine. The Palestinians say these evens represented the start of ‘a Zionist takeover of their land, under the auspices of British imperialism’. Even before 1917, Jewish and Zionist institutions had purchased large tracts of land in Palestine from absentee landlords, who lived mainly in Syria and Lebanon. These landlords had previously leased their property to local farmers, but were happy to sell it for the right price, without giving a thought to their tenant farmers. Nevertheless, Palestinians view these sales as more legitimate than those that took place during the British occupation that began in 1917 … Ever since 1948, Palestinian institutions dealing with the refugee issue have been trying to obtain accurate records on the land and property that were lost when Israel was established. This effort has gained steam in recent years, but no Palestinian institution has come close to collecting all the relevant data.”.
The senior Turkish diplomat in Jerusalem said on Wednesday to this writer that a copy of the archives was transferred simply because the Palestinian Authority had asked for them. This transmittal followed the July 2004 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Wall, for which the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) submitted an extensive and interesting presentation which included details of the confused land registration system, and of Israeli land confiscation.

The senior Turkish diplomat in Jerusalem said that, at Israel’s request, the same archives were also later transferred to Israeli authorities.

The senior Turkish diplomat said that the use of these archives would be mainly to help resolve individual claims to title of lands in Palestine. He also said that the material had been open and available to anybody who wanted to come take a look in the Ottoman Archives — but nobody came, he noted.

Turkey and Britain abstained in the vote on UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947, which authorized the partition of the former British Mandate of Palestine, and the creation of two states — one Jewish and one Arab.

The Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed at the moment of the final British withdrawal from Palestine on the night of 14 May 1948.

The Arab state — Palestine — was proclaimed by the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat at a meeting of the PLO’s Palestine National Council in 1988. But it is still not in existence. The current American push to back Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is said to be aimed at the creation of this Palestinian state.