JERUSALEM, June 5, (Agen-cies): Israel’s navy boarded a ship carrying aid to Gaza without incident on Saturday, five days after its commandos killed nine people on a Turkish aid ship while enforcing a blockade Washington has called unsustainable.
The Israeli navy, whose actions on Monday triggered an international outcry, took control of the Rachel Corrie and sailed it to the port of Ashdod where it docked on Saturday evening, the Israeli military said.
The cargo vessel had ignored the navy’s orders to divert and allow its cargo to be unloaded and inspected before delivery to Gaza.
The military said in a statement: “19 people were on board the boat including eight crew, all of whom will be transferred to the appropriate authorities in the Interior Ministry.”
The army said the ship had been boarded “with the full compliance of the crew and without incident”.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said all 19 people on board would be deported within hours.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: “Forces used the same procedures for Monday’s flotilla and Saturday’s boat but were met by a different response.
“On today’s ship and in five of the six vessels in the previous flotilla, (their boarding) procedure ended without casualties. The only difference was with one ship where extremist Islamic activists, supporters of terrorism, waited for our troops on the deck with axes and knives.”
Carrying Irish and other activists, the Rachel Corrie — named after a pro-Palestinian activist killed in Gaza in 2003 — was the latest attempt to break the four-year old blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza with the stated aim of stopping its Hamas rulers from bolstering their arsenal to fight the Jewish state.
“Israel will continue to exercise its right to self defence. We will not allow the establishment of an Iranian port in Gaza,” Netanyahu said.
Kevin Squires, national coordinator of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Dublin, one of whose members was aboard the Rachel Corrie, called the boarding of the boat “another brazen act of Israeli piracy”.
Turkish prosecutors have launched an investigation against top Israeli leaders over the raid on aid ships bound for Gaza which left nine people dead, Turkish press reports said Saturday.
If the prosecutor’s office in Bakirkoy, Istanbul, compiles enough evidence, it will press charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, the English-language Today’s Zaman said.
The charges would include murder, injury, attacking Turkish citizens on the open seas and piracy, it added.
The prosecutor’s office was not immediately available for comment.
The European Union will present in the coming days a proposal for lifting the Israeli blockade of Gaza, following a deadly raid this week on aid ships bound for the Palestinian territory, Spain’s foreign minister said Saturday.
Miguel Angel Moratinos, with Spain currently holding the rotating EU presidency, said he had spoken with the office of the bloc’s foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton.
“We spoke with the team of the chief (foreign) representative yesterday and we are going to make a proposal over the next few days so that situations like the ones that happened (this week) will not be repeated,” said Moratinos about the proposal for lifting the Israeli blockade put in place after the militant group Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip.
“The European Union can play a leading role in this situation,” Moratinos said when asked about the consequences of Monday’s raid on ships carrying humanitarian aid by Israeli forces that left nine people dead.
Spain had condemned the Israeli action and summoned the Jewish state’s ambassador to Madrid for an explanation.
Illegal
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Saturday Israel’s blockade of Gaza was illegal and should be lifted, and reiterated calls for an investigation into Israel’s raid on aid supply ships this week.
“International humanitarian law prohibits starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and...it is also prohibited to impose collective punishment on civilians,” Pillay said.
“I have consistently reported to member states that the blockade is illegal and must be lifted.”
She said that even if the blockade were proven legal under international law, Israel’s military operation against the flotilla on Monday had to be analysed alongside its obligation to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Autopsy
Nine Turkish activists killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot a total of 30 times and five died of gunshot wounds to the head, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported on Friday.
Autopsy results showed the men were hit mostly with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range, the Guardian said, quoting Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine which carried out the autopsies on Friday.
Israel said the marines who rappelled onto the Mavi Marmara fired in self-defence after activists attacked them with clubs and knives as well as two pistols snatched from the commandos.
The autopsy results showed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back, the Guardian said.
A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has U.S. citizenship, was shot five times from less than 45 cm (18 inches) away, in the face, the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back, it said.
Two other men were shot four times. Five of those killed were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, the Guardian quoted Buyuk as saying.
In addition to those killed, 48 others suffered gunshot wounds and six activists were still missing, he added.
Israel said the multiple gunshot wounds did not mean the shots were fired other than in self defence.
“The only situation when a soldier shot was when it was a clearly a life-threatening situation,” the Guardian quoted a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London as saying.
“Pulling the trigger quickly can result in a few bullets being in the same body, but does not change the fact they were in a life-threatening situation,” the spokesman said.
The newspaper quoted Haluk Ince, chairman of the council of forensic medicine in Istanbul, as saying that in only one case was there a single bullet wound, to the forehead from a distant shot, while every other body showed multiple wounds.
He said all but one of the bullets retrieved from the bodies came from 9mm rounds. Of the other round, Ince said: “It was the first time we have seen this kind of material used in firearms. It was just a container including many types of pellets usually used in shotguns. It penetrated the head region in the temple and we found it intact in the brain.”
No-one at Turkey’s forensic laboratory could immediately be reached for comment.
Turkey, Israel’s only Muslim ally, stepped up its rhetoric over the killings on Friday, accusing the Jewish state of betraying its own biblical law.