An entire country breathed a sigh of relief when it was announced that Natalie and Mordy Oknin had been released from prison in Turkey, thus ending the saga of their arrest after they photographed the palace of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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The fact that Israel was forced to rope in a third country in its attempts to free the Israeli couple – and use its good relations with head of the United Arab Emirates' intelligence services, as Israel Hayom reported – actually demonstrates how Israel's regional and international position and influence are being eroded.
The leaders of the UAE's intelligence and spy services had to join forces with Mossad Director David Barnea and give the head of Turkey's intelligence agency that the Oknins were innocent employees of Egged who had never been part of Israel's intelligence apparatus or worked for any of its security or spy agencies.
We still know relatively little about the diplomatic maneuvers Israel made to get the two civilians who had essentially been "kidnapped" by Turkish intelligence released, but according to high-ranking sources in Abu Dhabi, the moment the Emirates entered the picture and brought all their weight and influence to bear on the Turks, the strange compromise that ended the affair was reached in less than a day.
This demonstrates that the "legal steps" the Turks took against the Oknins were just diplomatic cover for the whims of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who does not hide his loathing for Israel, its citizens, and its leadership.
Since it turned out that the Turks were holding the Oknins (and had not even bothered to inform Israel's Foreign Ministry, as is accepted in cases like these), the Turkish president did everything he could to evade attempts to contact him by President Herzog, Prime Minister Bennett, and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
The Turkish excuse was that this was a legal procedure and like in all functioning states that have separation of powers between the judicial, legislative, and executive branches, the couple's lawyers and representatives of the Foreign Ministry, no matter how senior, who were sent to Turkey needed to operate through legal channels.
Even the Mossad's Barnea, who waded deep into the affair a few days ago in an attempt to bring an end to the saga, even offering his Turkish colleagues the unusual promise that the Oknins were not Israeli spies – was ignored by his counterpart there, who did not answer his phone calls.
As we know, the Turks changed their stance after Barnea and other senior Mossad officials enlisted colleagues from the UAE, primarily Emirati National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan, who has personal ties with Erdogan and his opposite number in Turkey.
Bin Zayed and other high-ranking Emirati intelligence officials stressed to their Turkish colleagues that they were vouching for Barnea's promise that the Oknin's had never been operatives in Israel's intelligence apparatus, thus paving the way for Mordy and Natalie's release and return to Israel a few hours later.
Even though the Oknin arrest affair exposed Israel's diminishing regional and international standing, as well as the risk to Israeli tourists visiting Turkey apart from the danger of terrorist attacks, there is one bright point in all the darkness of this bizarre story – the excellent relations being formed between Israel and the UAE, mainly when it comes to coordination on matters of security and intelligence between the states that a little over a year ago signed the Abraham Accords to normalize diplomatic and political ties.
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