I was in New York last week as part of the Turkish delegation to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan devoted a substantial portion of his address to Gaza, stressing that the tragedy there is not merely a humanitarian catastrophe but a defining test of the international order. As he put it: “The values that emerged after World War II have suffered severe setbacks in the West, especially in Europe, due to Israel’s escalating aggression. We must recognize this fact: An Israeli administration guided by an obsession with promised lands is undermining regional peace and humanity’s shared achievements with its expansionist policies. This genocidal cadre must be held accountable under international law.”
This message finds an unexpected echo in research published by the Mitvim Institute, one of Israel’s most credible think tanks, which I had the pleasure of visiting in the past. Mitvim’s annual foreign policy survey, released just weeks ago, offers rare insight into the mindset of the Israeli public nearly two years after the Oct. 7 attacks. Too often, global debates focus solely on the decisions of the Israeli government while ignoring how ordinary Israelis view their country’s standing in the world. This year’s survey makes one thing clear: Even inside Israel, there is deep unease about where current policies are leading.
According to the findings, a majority of Israelis (57%) fear that their country is sliding toward the status of a “pariah state” due to its actions in Gaza. Israel’s international standing is rated poorly across political lines, with 70% of the public dissatisfied with the government’s diplomacy. At the same time, nearly two-thirds of Israelis (62%) still attach great importance to belonging to the liberal-democratic West, underscoring a tension between aspirations for legitimacy and the costs of ongoing occupation.
Understandably, Gaza sits at the heart of this dilemma. The survey shows that 55% of Israelis support an international package that would create a demilitarized Palestinian state, return hostages, dismantle Hamas’s rule in Gaza and normalize ties with the Arab world. Yet support for annexing Gaza and the West Bank has also risen to 35%, while 52% prefer the deployment of a multinational force, including moderate Arab states, as a temporary administration. These results reveal a divided society, but one that cannot escape the centrality of the Palestinian issue to Israel’s global future.
Equally notable are the survey’s findings on Türkiye. In light of Ankara’s growing influence in Syria, 44% of Israelis say their country should reach an understanding with Türkiye on dividing spheres of influence to avoid confrontation. Roughly equal shares prefer to regard Türkiye as a rival to be curbed or as a partner in stabilizing Syria. In other words, even in the Israeli public imagination, pragmatic engagement with Türkiye is more attractive than escalation.
For all the focus on statecraft and diplomacy, Gaza also forces us to confront uncomfortable questions at the human level. In a recent essay for El Mundo, Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran described the awkwardness of a beach in Greece, where the joyful arrival of an Israeli family unsettled other bathers. Their loud laughter, tattoos and Hebrew speech were instantly refracted through the lens of Gaza. Some wondered whether it was right to treat them as ordinary tourists. Others stayed silent, unsure if silence was civility or complicity. Temelkuran asks: Can ordinary citizens of a state accused of genocide remain “innocent” bystanders? Do tourists enjoying themselves become extensions of state policy? Or is joy itself a provocation when carried by those whose government wages war?
Together, Erdoğan’s speech at UNGA, the Mitvim findings, and Temelkuran’s essay highlight what many abroad overlook: that sovereignty, justice and public opinion are intertwined – from the halls of the U.N. to the polls in Israel to the beaches of Europe. As Türkiye continues to speak for Gaza and to defend the principle of a just international system, it does so not in isolation but against the backdrop of an Israeli public increasingly anxious about its trajectory, and a wider world wrestling with how to respond at every level. To sum up, Gaza is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is the mirror in which the future of the international system is reflected.
