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The North Atlantic Council on Wednesday agreed to allow Israel and four other non-NATO members to open diplomatic missions to its headquarters in Brussels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Israel’s case, permission to open an office in NATO \u2014 where ambassadors and attaches would have upgraded access to exercises, events and alliance-related procurement programs \u2014 has been blocked by Turkey, a member state whose assent was required by NATO’s rules of unanimous consent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The decisions make good on invitations first extended in 2011 to allow the seven members of the so-called Mediterranean Dialogue \u2014 which includes Israel and Jordan \u2014 and the Istanbul Initiative comprised of Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and UAE to open liaison offices to NATO.”The North Atlantic Council has agreed that, following their individual requests, Jordan, Israel, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait will establish diplomatic missions to NATO headquarters,” noted a May 4 statement from the 28-member alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turkey essentially severed ties with Israel, a former strategic and defense trade partner, following the killing of nine Turkish activists in a May 2010 raid of a ship aiming to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. For years, the two have been negotiating terms and conditions for renormalization of ties, and both sides have reported reaching a breakthrough stage in recent weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
“Implementation of this long-standing invitation shows that something is happening in the context of Israel-Turkish relations. Turkey has obviously relaxed its preventive policies,” said Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to the EU who helped craft the framework of the seven-nation Mediterranean Dialogue of 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Eran, Israel has maintained numerous direct and indirect channels to NATO, but none of them were operating directly out of alliance headquarters in Brussels. “Israel’s military attach\u00e9 in the Hague covers from a distance. It’s not a daily presence. So the fact that we’ll now have permanent and daily access to NATO headquarters provides greater opportunities for cooperation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n