ANKARA, June 6, (Agencies): Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Sunday to hold Israel to account over its “state terror” in the Middle East as thousands protested against the deadly raid on Gaza-bound aid ships.
The Israeli operation, in which nine Turks were killed, has plunged the fragile ties between the onetime strong allies into a deep crisis, with Erdogan hardening his strong criticism of the Jewish state.
Gaza “is a historical cause for us,” Erdogan said in a public speech in the northwestern city of Bursa, parts of which were carried by the CNN-Turk news channel.
“We object to those who force the people of Gaza to live in an open-air prison... We will stand firm until the blockade on Gaza is lifted, the massacres cease and the state terror in the Middle East is accounted for,” he added.
Israel has cut Gaza off from all but vital humanitarian aid in a bid to pressure the enclave’s rulers — the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas — to end rocket attacks on the south of the Jewish state.
Turkey recalled its ambassador to Tel Aviv and cancelled joint military exercises after last week’s raid, while demanding a formal apology from Israel.
Israel will be absent from the participants of international aerial exercises that the Turkish army said Sunday would take place in central Turkey on June 7-18 with planes from the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Spain and NATO taking part.
Ankara has also called for an independent international inquiry into the incident, which Erdogan said he discussed plans with UN chief Ban Ki-moon in a telephone conversation on Saturday.
But Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, told the Fox television channel that his country had “the ability and the right to investigate itself”, and would not participate in any international investigation.
In Ankara, some 6,000 to 7,000 people gathered under pouring rain, shouting “Damn Israel! Murderer Israel, get out of the Middle East!”, an AFP photographer said.
Some protestors set fire to a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as others held up a banner depicting him as a a pirate with a hook arm next to the inscription: “The Flotilla of Humanity Against Pirates”.
In Istanbul, some 1,000 people called on the government to expel Israeli diplomats.
Moroccan police said 35,000 people, including government ministers, held a protest in the capital Rabat where they trampled on Israeli flags.
In Lebanon, several hundred left-wingers burned Israeli flags at a demonstration near the US embassy while some 3,500 people, many wearing Palestinian headscarves, demonstrated in the northern French city of Lille.
Organisers of the aid flotilla have accused Israeli soldiers of firing indiscriminately in the raid on the Turkish ferry, Mavi Marmara, where the nine victims were killed. But they have also acknowledged that the activists attacked Israeli soldiers with metal bars.
Israeli officials say the soldiers responded only after they were attacked by the activists.
The mass-circulation Hurriyet newspaper on Sunday published photos of bloodied Israeli commandos being overpowered by those on board the ferry, which it said were recovered from a memory card obtained from an activist.
One of the photos shows an Israeli soldier holding the back of his head with one hand, with blood on his face and the front of his shirt torn open.
Media reports have said that Turkey’s justice ministry was mulling possible legal action against Israel while prosecutors in Istanbul have launched an investigation to build a possible case over the raid against Netanyahu, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
Escort
Meanwhile, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards are ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday.
“Iran’s Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities,” Ali Shirazi, Khamenei’s representative inside the Revolutionary Guards, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.
Any intervention by the Iranian military would be considered highly provocative by Israel which accuses Iran of supplying weapons to Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules Gaza.
Iran does not recognise the Israeli state and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often predicted its imminent demise.
Shirazi said Iran should encourage more international efforts to break the blockade. “We should expose our enemies to a spontaneous global action and not let them achieve their heinous goals,” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will continue to prevent ships from reaching the shore and creating “an Iranian port in Gaza”, a reference to Iran’s support for Hamas.
The Revolutionary Guards, with their own navy, air force and command structure separate from the regular armed forces, are seen as fiercely loyal to the Supreme Leader.
“If the Supreme Leader issues an order for this then the Revolutionary Guard naval forces will do their best to secure the ships,” Shirazi said. “It is Iran’s duty to defend the innocent people of Gaza.”
Lawmakers
Arab lawmakers would take Israeli leaders to concerned courts for their actions in the raid on an aid flotilla to Gaza earlier this week.
At the conclusion of an extraordinary meeting in Cairo, members of the Arab parliament decided to take action to bring an end of the four-year Israeli blockade on Gaza Strip.
According to a press release, the Arab legislators called for documentation of the attack on the convoy of six aid ships.
Nine Turks were killed in the dawn raid on Monday when Israeli commandoes stormed the Mavi Marmara, part of a six-vessel convoy.
The parliamentarians underlined significance of severing all types of covert and public efforts to normalize relations with Israel and direct and in-direct peace negotiations, a press release issued after the meeting noted.
Expel
Israel moved swiftly on Sunday to expel the latest group of activists trying to break its naval blockade on Gaza, as it resisted pressure for an international probe of a raid that killed nine Turks.
Israel’s powerful inner forum of seven ministers was to meet behind closed doors to seek ways to calm the international outcry over its deadly storming of a first Gaza-bound aid flotilla on May 31.
Global calls for an independent inquiry with foreign observers were to be weighed against Israel’s reluctance to submit itself to any form of international tribunal.
Israel’s ambassador to Washington said on US television that his country rejects any international investigation. “We are rejecting the idea of an international commission,” Michael Oren told “Fox News Sunday.”
“Israel is a democracy. Israel has the ability and the right to investigate itself, not to be investigated by any international board,” he added.
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which rules Gaza, meanwhile, hailed the latest bid to break Israel’s blockade.
“We condemn the continuing policy of terrorism implemented by Israel against the Palestinian people and activists for peace and freedom,” it added in a statement released from its base in exile in Damascus.
In a first batch, seven of 19 activists from the Rachel Corrie aid ship which tried to run the Gaza siege were expelled from Israel to Jordan on Sunday. The remaining 12 were due to be flown home overnight, officials said.
The five Irish nationals, including Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire, were expected to leave on a flight to Dublin leaving early on Monday at around 5:00 am (0200 GMT).
Until then, they were waiting in a special section of the airport without access to their mobile phones, although they had access to consular assistance, immigration officials said.
Their departure had been delayed because they had initially refused to sign papers clearing their deportation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, defending Monday’s deadly raid, insisted Israel would never allow a situation in which arms could be sent to Gaza’s Islamist rulers.
Israeli forces intercepted and took control of the boat on Saturday as it tried to reach Gaza, in a peaceful operation that contrasted with the May 31 raid when commandos stormed a Turkish boat packed with more than 600 passengers.
Israel says its commandos only resorted to force after being attacked as they reached the deck, but activists claim the soldiers started firing first.
Talks
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas was headed Sunday for talks in Washington with US President Barack Obama, stopping first in Turkey, amid heightened regional tensions after a deadly Israeli raid on an aid boat.
The Anatolia news agency said Abbas would meet President Abdullah Gul on Monday and attend on Tuesday the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA).
He was also to pay his condolences over the deaths of eight Turkish activists and a US-Turkish citizen who were killed when Israeli commandos stormed a Gaza-bound aid ship carrying more than 600 people last Monday.
The Turkish-owned boat was part of a six-ship flotilla trying to bust a four-year blockade imposed by Israel on the impoverished and overcrowded Gaza Strip. Another aid boat, the Irish-owned Rachel Corrie was intercepted on Saturday.
Abbas has accused Israel of “state terrorism” over the violent raid on the so-called Freedom Flotilla and said he would ask Barack Obama to make “bold decisions” on the Middle East when he meets the US president on Wednesday.
“The Palestinian people were facing state terrorism when Israel attacked the Freedom Flotilla. The Palestinian people and the entire world are confronted with this terrorism,” he said after the raid.
“We have seen daily examples of terrorism with the killings and the expulsions from houses, the confiscation of lands and the siege on Gaza,” said Abbas. “We ask the world, how long will this go on?”
His meeting with Obama will take place a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled talks with the US president and rushed home to deal with the political and diplomatic fallout of the raid.
The attack unleashed fury across the globe and particularly in Turkey — formerly Israel’s closest Muslim ally — which has recalled its ambassador to the Jewish state and scrapped joint military drills.
Ankara, which wants to see Israel punished for its botched operation, is pushing for an international probe into the incident in a call echoed by the Palestinian leadership.
Pixies
US alternative rock group The Pixies on Sunday cancelled their first-ever performance in Israel, the promoters said in a statement, with the band blaming the last-minute decision on “events beyond our control.”
The group was to have performed a single gig on Wednesday as part of five-day music festival in Tel Aviv, but pulled out just days after a deadly Israeli naval raid on a foreign aid flotilla, which has provoked a huge international backlash.
“It is with great regret that we announce today The Pixies’ decision to cancel their appearance in Israel on June 9,” promoter Shuki Weiss said in a statement, which also included an apology to fans from the band.
“The decision was not reached easily, and we all know well the Israeli fans have been waiting for this visit for far too long,” the band members wrote.
“We’d like to extend our deepest apologies to the fans, but events beyond all our control have conspired against us.”
The move came just days after two British bands pulled out of the same music festival, Pic.Nic 2010, which started on Saturday and runs until June 9.
London-based indie punk band Klaxons and Gorillaz, a hiphop project fronted by Blur’s Damon Albarn, were supposed to headline Pic.Nic 2010 but pulled out on Thursday in a move believed to be linked to the aid flotilla storming.
In recent months, Israel has been hit by a string of cancellations by high profile musicians, including Britain’s Elvis Costello, rock guitarist Carlos Santana and rap forefather Gil Scott-Heron, after they came under pressure over Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.
UN
The Israeli naval operation against six ships trying to break a blockade on Gaza that left nine people dead should be used as a reason for an end to the policy, a senior UN official said Sunday.
Nine activists died last week when Israeli commandos stormed an aid boat attempting to get through the blockade, which has been in place since 2007.
“We very much want to see what’s happened, or use what’s happened, tragic as it is, as an opportunity to try to... persuade Israel to change policy,” John Holmes, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs said.
“That’s the consequence we would like to see from all this.”
Holmes said the blockade was “unacceptable, counterproductive, (and) very damaging for the people of Gaza.”
“It’s not a sensible policy,” Holmes told AFP in Sydney.
“And I think there is a large amount of consensus about that now outside of Israel, that this is not an appropriate policy, it’s not helping to combat extremism.”
Holmes, in Australia for high-level talks with donors on humanitarian aid, said he was pleased that another aid ship which had been attempting to breach the blockade, the Rachel Corrie, had been dealt with peacefully.
The Irish-owned vessel was escorted into the southern port of Ashdod by two naval launches on Saturday after being commandeered by Israeli forces when it ignored orders not to head for Gaza.
The UN was in talks with Israel and donors on what to do with the 1,000 tonnes of aid and supplies on board the Rachel Corrie, Holmes said.