Palestinians could benefit as Israel-Turkey relations fade

If you need any evidence that relationships in the Mid-East are incredibly complex things, burdened by centuries of shared histories, then this is it.

Authorities in Israel are in the process of evicting 500 Palestinians from a neighborhood in East Jerusalem so that they can turn the land into an Israeli settlement. An organization allied with the settlers’ claims to have bought the land from its original owner, Sheikh Jarrah, way back in the 19th century when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire. But now Turkey has stepped into the dispute, presenting Israel with land ownership documents from their Ottoman Empire archives that refute the settlers' purchase claim.

In the past, the Palestinians have repeatedly asked for access to the Ottoman archives to find evidence to back up their land ownership claims, but Turkey has always refused. Turkey was one of the few Islamic countries to have good relations with Israel, something they didn’t want to sour by getting in the middle of Israeli-Palestinian land disputes. But that changed early this year when Israel launched their military operation into the Gaza Strip. Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israel's President Shimon Peres got into an angry public exchange over Gaza at the World Economic Forum in January that ended with Erdogan storming off the stage after calling Peres a murderer. Now it seems Turkey's willing to open the archives.

Despite agreeing to freeze settlement construction on disputed lands as part of the "Road Map to Peace" agreement, Israel has continued to build housing blocs on land claimed by the Palestinians, and has been moving aggressively in recent months to clear several Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in order to build several thousand more units for Israeli settlers.

Whether the Turkish documents put a halt to these specific evictions remains to be seen - the Israeli courts said they would take several weeks to review the new information. There have been reports though of settlers previously using forged deed documents to evict Palestinians, including one where a Palestinian allegedly signed over land to a settlers group in 2004; the only problem was that the man in question actually died in 1961.