Israel ‘has never had any plans against Türkiye’: President Herzog

By Rania Abu Shamala

ISTANBUL (AA) – Israel’s president said his country has no intention of taking military action against Türkiye, the Times of Israel website reported Thursday.

Isaac Herzog’s statement came after a warning by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week that the Israeli government's “delusion of a promised land” will threaten Türkiye after Israel is done with its current targets, Palestine and Lebanon.

"The consequences of a ground operation in Lebanon will not be similar to (Israel’s) past occupations," Erdogan said.

"Driven by the delusion of a ‘promised land,’ after Palestine and Lebanon, the Israeli government will set its sights on our (Turkish) homeland," he warned.

During a meeting in Jerusalem with a coalition of US Jewish groups, Herzog said that Israel “has never had any plans against Türkiye.”

“On the contrary,” he added, “we have great respect for the people of Türkiye, and they have great respect for the people of Israel.”

“We have longstanding relations between the peoples, and the peoples will prevail over all voices that are adverse to friendship and coexistence,” he added.

Herzog also said that Israel's attacks will lead to a “historic change” that will enable the peoples of the region "to dwell together in the region and to move together towards peace, to contribute to each other, from the well-being of the region and their own respective peoples and humanity at large."

He did not mention how polls show that most people in Türkiye oppose Israel’s yearlong offensive against Gaza along with its decades-long mistreatment of Palestinians and whether Israel's government respects that.

In recent remarks, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich ignited controversy by suggesting an expanded “Greater Israel,” proposing a future extension of Israel’s borders beyond the Jordan River.

"Little by little," he responded in the documentary In Israel: Ministers of Chaos when asked about the possible expansion.

The far-right minister went so far as to claim that the city of Jerusalem would eventually extend to Damascus, Syria’s capital – some 300 kilometers (186 miles) away – in line with the "Greater Israel" concept based on religious interpretations of a "promised land."

This March, speaking in Paris, Smotrich controversially used a map showing neighboring Jordan – a nation of 11.5 million people – as also being within the borders of Israel.

Israel has been mounting massive airstrikes across Lebanon against what it claims are Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, killing at least 1,323 people, injuring over 3,700 others and displacing more than 1.2 million people.

The aerial campaign is an escalation from a year of cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of its offensive on the Gaza Strip, in which Israel has killed over 42,000 people, most of them women and children, since a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year.

Despite international warnings that the Middle East is on the brink of a regional war amid Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, it expanded the conflict on Oct. 1 by launching an incursion into southern Lebanon.