- 24 juli 2011
Release of Palmer report postponed
UN report probing raid on first Gaza flotilla deferred in hopes Israel, Turkey reach compromise by new release date.
Jerusalem sources told Ynet Sunday that the Release of the UN's Palmer report, probing the raid on the first Gaza flotilla, has been postponed to mid-august.
The move is said to be in an effort to allow Israel and Turkey more time to reach a compromise as to its phrasing.
The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet said Sunday that the Palmer report on last year's Gaza-bound flotilla is expected to be released this week.
The United Nations inquiry into the deadly events which took place aboard Turkey's Marmara is led by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, who is assisted by two deputies – an Israeli one and a Turkish one.
Earlier Sunday, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that Palmer report has ruled that IDF soldiers boarded the ship with "the intent to kill.'
According to the report, Israel is considering compensating the families of the nine people killed aboard the ship, and intends to issue a statement regretting the loss of life - regardless of Turkey's demand for an official apology.
http://fwd4.me/07Ro
Report: UN panel rules IDF boarded Marmara 'to kill'
UN commission to publish findings on IDF raid on Turkish flotilla vessel, prompting Israel to debate whether to apologize to Turkey, newspaper says.
The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet said Sunday that the Palmer report on last year's Gaza-bound flotilla is expected to be released this week.
According to the newspaper, the UN-appointed panel to investigate the raid on the Mavi Marmara vessel has ruled that IDF soldiers boarded the ship with an intention to kill.
The Turkish daily claimed that this assertion is what prompted the debate within Israel's government on whether the Jewish State should issue an apology to Turkey. The Forum of Eight Ministers was expected to discuss the issue on Sunday.
According to the article, Israel is considering compensating the families of the nine people killed aboard the ship, and intends to issue a statement regretting the loss of life - regardless of Turkey's demand for an official apology.
The newspaper claimed that Israel is worried that such an apology will pave the way for international law suits to be filed against the IDF soldiers.
The newspaper went on to express optimism that Israel and Turkey are to make progress in improving ties when officials from both nations meet in New York on Tuesday. As per the article, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon is expected to confer with Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, among other officials. Sources in Jerusalem confirmed that Yaalon will be traveling to New York, but said that they are unaware that any such meeting was scheduled.
"I'm in favor of improving relations but this should not be at the expense of Israel alone," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said prior to Sunday's cabinet meeting. "It's in the interest of both countries to improve relations and the ball is in Turkey's court. There is no reason for Israel to apologize, there are soldiers who were sent to do their job mid-sea."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak also addressed the report: "I hope we won't have to answer these questions this week and that we have more time to fully examine the matter. It is our business to protect officers, commanders and soldiers from possible overseas lawsuits."
http://fwd4.me/07QX
Report: Panel to rule IDF boarded Mavi Marmara with intent to kill
Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that the Palmer Commission, which was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon to investigate last year's Gaza-bound flotilla, will rule that IDF soldiers boarded the Mavi Marmara vessel with an intention to kill.
According to the report, Israel is considering compensating the families of the victims killed aboard the ship, and intends to offer condolences despite Turkey's demand for a full-fledged apology.
http://fwd4.me/07Q8
Lieberman: No reason to apologize to Turkey
Cabinet ministers set to discuss last year's flotilla raid before UN committee issues Palmer Report.
The forum of eight ministers is scheduled to discuss the Palmer Report by a UN committee investigating last year's flotilla events on Sunday. The report is slated to be issued this week. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is against apologizing to Turkey for the deaths of nine activists, which Ankara is demanding in exchange for normalizing bilateral relations.
"I'm in favor of improving relations but this should not be at the expense of Israel alone," he said prior to Sunday's cabinet meeting. "It's in the interest of both countries to improve relations and the ball is in Turkey's court. There is no reason for Israel to apologize, there are soldiers who were sent to do their job mid-sea."
Lieberman claimed the issue will not cause a coalition crisis, even if an apology is offered. "This government has a lot more to do on the Turkish issue, as well as in the housing issue and others. We do not negotiate via the media."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak also addressed the report: "I hope we won't have to answer these questions this week and that we have more time to fully examine the matter. It is our business to protect officers, commanders and soldiers from possible overseas lawsuits."
Though the Palmer committee will only be presenting its findings to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon later this week, reports from earlier this month claimed that its members, international experts and representatives from turkey and Israel, determined that though the IDF used excessive force, the operation itself was legitimate.
The report's release was postponed by three weeks due to Turkey's refusal to accept its findings. An attempt to bridge the gaps between Jerusalem and Ankara in order to lessen the emphasis on support for Israel and criticism of Turkey – proved futile.
Minister Moshe Ya'alon said he did not see any possibility for reconciliation with Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.
National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau placed the blame on Turkey. "Turkey should be the one apologizing for being involved in the Marmara provocation and all signs show it is behind the IHH terror organization."
Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz also does not believes Israel should apologize. "We did not endorse violent action against the Turks and there is no room for compensation or lawsuits against IDF soldiers."
http://fwd4.me/07Q9 25 jul 2011, 19:40 , Respect -
Maria 25 juli 2011
UN delays Israel's flotilla attack report
The United Nations has once again delayed the release of a report into Israel's deadly attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in 2010.
The UN's findings about the brutal incident, which left nine Turkish activists dead and many others wounded, was expected out on Wednesday.
It is the second time that the publication of the report, known as the Palmer report, had been delayed. It was initially to have been released around July 8.
"The secretary general has decided to postpone the publication of the report and he decided to consult both sides before taking the decision," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP. He, however, refused to confirm reports suggesting that Israel had requested the delay.
According to Israeli sources, the long-awaited UN study will now be released on August 20.
Tel Aviv has been hard trying to mend its damaged relations with Ankara, devastated since the flotilla attack, before the publication of the report.
On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that he hoped the repeatedly deferred publication would again be pushed back in order to give Israel more time to settle the diplomatic dispute with Turkey.
Turkey has repeatedly said that relations between the two sides can only be restored if Tel Aviv apologizes for the attack, compensates the families of those killed and the injured, and lifts its deadly blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Israel has reportedly agreed to a payout but is resisting calls to apologize, proposing instead to express regret.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos attacked the six-vessel Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters to prevent the convoy from breaching its crippling blockade on the Palestinian territory.
In the assault, nine Turkish nationals, including a teenager with Turkish-US dual citizenship, were killed and dozens were injured.
Turkey said that some of the victims had been shot "execution-style" at point-blank.
Turkish post-mortem examinations also revealed that a total of 30 bullets were found in the bodies of the nine dead activists. One of the activists had been shot four times in the head.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/190735.html
Erdogan's 'Plan B': Downgrading Israel ties
Turkish newspaper reports prime minister considering options if Israel refuses to apologize for 2010 flotilla raid.
Turkish newspaper Hurriyet on Monday reported that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is considering moving to a "Plan B" which will see relations with Israel suffer further by downgrading the level of Turkey's diplomatic staff in Israel.
On Sunday, Erdogan said that he still expects an apology from Jerusalem. "We will wait for the Israelis' decision a certain period. If they don't apologize by this time we shall move to plan b," he said.
According to Hurriyet, "Plan B" means cooling down relations with Israel. One of the most significant steps will be downgrading the level of Turkey's embassy staff in Israel. Ankara recalled its ambassador following last year's flotilla event. It is also possible Turkey will not approve an Israeli ambassador to replace Gaby Levy.
On Sunday, the Turkish newspaper reported that the Palmer report has ruled that IDF soldiers boarded the ship with "the intent to kill.'
According to the report, Israel is considering compensating the families of the nine people killed aboard the ship, and intends to issue a statement regretting the loss of life - regardless of Turkey's demand for an official apology.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4099794,00.html 28 jul 2011, 17:57 , Respect -
Maria 28 juli 2011
Lieberman wants to eject Turkish workers amid showdown over ties with Turkey
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman wants to eject some 350 Turkish construction workers as Israel's relations with Turkey have spiraled after the 2010 flotilla attack.
Israeli ministers Ehud Barak and Lieberman have been at odds over whether to meet Turkey's condition of an apology over the attack before it would restore ties with Israel.
The workers were brought into Israel to upgrade tanks that the Israeli Military Industries was contracted to build under a defense agreement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a cabinet meeting on Wednesday to mull over Turkey's demands for an apology, compensation to be paid to the flotilla victims' families, and lift the blockade enforced on the Gaza Strip.
The war ministry wants to extend the workers' visas amid fears that ejecting the workers could dampen already dismal relations with Turkey.
http://fwd4.me/07lL
29 juli 2011
'Israel not to apologize to Turkey'
Israel has said it will not apologize for killing nine Turkish activists onboard the Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters last year.
Israel's cabinet minister Moshe Yaalon said he has recently held three rounds of talks with Turkey, and that they are demanding an apology.
“We are not ready to apologize,” Yaalon said.
However, he did hint that there might be a change in their stance as there are some disputes over the issue within the Israeli cabinet.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday, after meeting with US administration officials that Israel needs to find a way to compromise with Turkey, Ynet News reported.
"I'm not talking about an apology for the (Gaza) blockade or an apology for the flotilla, but about saying that if any errors were made during the operation - we regret them," he said.
"I don't like it … but it's not a bad thing to have reasonable relations with Turkey,” he added.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liebermen, however, has ruled out any apology.
The Israeli military attacked the Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea on May 31, 2010, killing nine Turkish nationals aboard the Turkish-flagged MV Mavi Marmara and injuring about 50 other activists that were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.
Since the attack took place, Turkey has demanded an apology.
Furthermore, Yaalon added that an upcoming UN report on the raid is expected to defend Israel's raid on the flotilla and the blockade of Gaza.
“The report includes very important conclusions for Israel, which put Turkey in the corner in terms of the justification for the blockade, the justification for stopping the flotilla and the justification for using force," Barak said when commenting about the upcoming UN report.
Israel has maintained a crippling siege of the Gaza Strip since 2007, and is facing mounting pressure from the international community to lift it.
Some 1.5 million people in Gaza are being denied basic rights, including the freedom of movement and the right to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education.
Rights activists have made several symbolic attempts, at times successfully, to break the blockade.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/191314.html 30 jul 2011, 14:03 , Respect -
Maria 30 juli 2011
Turkish FM denies change in demand for Israel apology
ANKARA, (PIC)-- Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has denied changes in his country's position regarding dismal relations with Israel.
He said that Israel must meet Turkey's conditions before Turkey would normalize relations with it.
Doing away with tensions that have occurred in the diplomatic ties between Ankara and Tel Aviv since Israel's attack on the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship requires that the Israeli government meet the conditions declared by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Davutoglu said in a press statement on Friday.
Those conditions include apologizing for the attack on the Gaza aid ship, paying compensation to the victims' families, and ending the five-year blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Davutoglu went on to describe the conditions as ''core principles'' before dampened relations could be restored, denying that any changes have taken place in Turkey's position.
Turkey's relations with Israel have steadily spiraled over the past few years and hit rock bottom in 2010 when an Israeli naval force intercepted and attacked a Turkish ship delivering much needed aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, killing nine activists on board and injuring many more.
http://fwd4.me/07tE
6 aug 2011
Turkey refuses to take part in joint naval exercises with Israel, USA
ANKARA, (PIC)-- Turkish officials said that their country’s fleet would not take part in the annual naval exercises “Reliant Mermaid” launched by USA and Israel in the Mediterranean Sea for the second straight year.
Turkish daily Zaman on Friday quoted foreign ministry officials as saying that no “joint” exercises could be launched with Israel in light of the tense relations between them.
The last Turkish participation in the decade old drill was in summer 2009.
Ankara refused to participate in last year’s maneuvers to protest the Israeli naval attack on the Turkish ship Mavi Maramara, which was among a fleet of humanitarian aid sailing to Gaza Strip, killing nine Turkish activists and wounding many others.
http://fwd4.me/08Ni 9 aug 2011, 10:28 , Respect -
Maria 8 aug 2011
Israel deputy PM: Turkey 'rude' to demand apology
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israel's deputy prime minister on Monday described as "rude" Turkey's demand that Israel apologize for the death of nine Turkish nationals killed in last year's raid on a Gaza bound aid flotilla, Israeli media said.
Speaking to Israeli Radio, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said "there was a provocation here that the Turkish government is also responsible for."
"It wasn't our side that spoiled relations, and I expect they will not [restore diplomatic relations] even after the apology," Yaalon told the radio station, according to Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post.
Israeli commandos raided a six-ship pro-Palestinian aid flotilla on May 31, 2010 killing nine activists aboard the leading vessel, the Mavi Marmara, and sparking global outrage.
A UN report into the incident has been repeatedly delayed, as ministers try to find a solution to the diplomatic impasse between the two countries.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=411582
11 aug 2011
Israel offers to double restitution instead of apology to Turkey
ANKARA, (PIC)-- Israel has offered to double compensation to the families of those killed in the May 2010 Mavi Marmara attack instead of officially apologizing for the attack as demanded by Turkey, the Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported on Thursday, quoting an Israeli political official.
The new proposal states that the amount to be paid to each of the nine Turkish victims’ families would be raised from US $50,000 to $100,000 in a bid to dodge the apology demand.
The official said Turkey has yet to respond to the offer which Israel hopes would end the diplomatic crisis between the two countries that followed the attack.
According to Ma’ariv, a meeting between Israeli and Turkish representatives is expected to be held in Washington next week in an effort to restore peace and end the crisis before the UN’s Palmer report based on investigations of what happened on the Mavi Marmara ship would be released.
Turkey has reiterated time and again its demands for an official apology, compensation, and an end to the Gaza siege before restoring damaged relations with Israel.
http://fwd4.me/08mo 18 aug 2011, 09:23 , Respect -
Maria 17 aug 2011
Report: Israel PM 'snubs Clinton' over Turkey apology
An activist wounded when Israel commandos seized a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza, reaches hospital in Ankara last June.
JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Israel has rejected a US request to apologize to Turkey over its 2010 commando raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed nine Turkish activists, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
Unsourced reports by Israel's two main radio stations said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday with a direct request that he make an apology -- but he turned her down.
"He said Israel has no intention of apologizing at this time and that he is waiting for the publication of a report by the UN secretary general," army radio said.
A United Nations report into the flotilla affair, whose publication has been postponed at least twice this year to allow time for the two sides to reconcile their differences, is due to be released on August 20.
Israeli daily Ynet earlier reported that Israeli diplomats in Washington had passed on a message from Clinton saying the Israel-Turkey crisis was interfering with US attempts to deal with the bloodshed in Syria.
A similar message was given to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak when he visited Washington in late July, when Clinton asked him to do everything in his power to resolve the crisis -- "including apologize," the paper said.
In May 2010, Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish ferry leading a six-ship flotilla attempting to break Israel's naval embargo on the Gaza Strip.
The botched operation left nine Turkish nationals dead and sparked a diplomatic crisis with Ankara, which immediately recalled its ambassador.
Since then, Turkey has demanded an Israeli apology for the bloodshed, as well as compensation for the victims' families.
Israel has steadfastly refused, although privately officials acknowledge that restoring the once-strong relationship with Ankara would be desirable.
The United States is looking to deepen its ties with Turkey, which shares a border with Syria, in a bid to better handle Syria's spiraling violence, and hopes an Israeli apology would facilitate that, Ynet said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=413929
18 aug 2011
Turkey 'plans diplomatic assault' after Israel refuses apology
TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma'an) -- Turkey plans to launch a diplomatic and legal assault on Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to apologize for the 2010 raid on the Gaza aid flotilla, Israeli media said.
Israel's Haaretz newspaper says Turkey now intends to implement "Plan B", which will include a campaign in UN institutions, with an emphasis on the International Court of Justice.
Turkey also plans to encourage the families of the nine victims to file suits against senior Israeli figures in European courts and reduce the level of ties with Israel, according to the report citing foreign ministry sources.
Prime Minister Recep Erdogan said Wednesday that as long as Israel does not "apologize, pay compensation and remove the embargo over Gaza, it is impossible to heal relations between Turkey and Israel."
Israel's 2010 botched operation left nine Turkish nationals dead and sparked a diplomatic crisis with Ankara.
A United Nations report into the flotilla affair, whose publication has been postponed at least twice this year to allow time for the two sides to reconcile their differences, is due to be released on August 20.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=414007
20 aug 2011
Turkey warns ties will worsen without Israel apology
ANKARA (AFP) -- Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned Saturday that relations with Israel will further deteriorate without an apology over a deadly 2010 flotilla raid.
"There can be no normalization with Israel if Turkey's demands are not met," the Anatolia news agency quoted him as saying during a visit to South Africa.
Diplomatic ties between Israel and Turkey have been in crisis since Israeli commandos staged a deadly raid on the international aid flotilla trying to reach Gaza in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade on the Palestinian territory.
Nine Turkish nationals were killed in the operation, and Turkey says its once-close relationship with Israel can only be restored with an apology for the deaths. Until now, Israel has refused.
A United Nations report into the flotilla affair, whose publication has been postponed at least twice this year to allow time for the two sides to reconcile their differences, was due to be released soon.
Davutoglu said that relations between his country and Israel would only worsen if an apology was not forthcoming following the report's release.
"Relations will not remain as they are now, they will deteriorate even more... The current situation cannot be sustained," he said.
According to Turkish diplomats, Ankara could further downgrade its representation in Tel Aviv. It maintained a charge d'affaires there after recalling its ambassador following the May 2010 raid.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=414806
21 aug 2011
'Turkey still waiting for Israeli apology'
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
Turkey says its relations with Israel will be strained further if Tel Aviv does not make a formal apology for its deadly attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in 2010.
"There can be no normalization with Israel if Turkey's demands are not met," the Anatolia news agency quoted Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as saying during a visit to South Africa on Saturday, AFP reported.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli navy commandos attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla while it was in international waters, killing nine Turkish nationals and wounding at least 40 others on the Mavi Marmara, one of the six vessels of the convoy.
Israel has rejected repeated calls from Ankara calling for it to pay compensation to the families of the victims and to issue a formal apology.
Davutoglu's reiteration of Ankara's demand comes as a United Nations report on the flotilla incident is due to be released soon.
Publication of the report has been postponed at least twice this year to allow time for the two sides to reconcile their differences.
But the Turkish foreign minister said that relations between his country and Israel would only worsen if an apology did not come following the UN report.
"Relations will not remain as they are now, they will deteriorate even more… The current situation cannot be sustained," he stated.
According to Turkish diplomats, Ankara could further downgrade its representation in Tel Aviv. It has only maintained a charge d'affaires there since recalling its ambassador after the May 2010 attack.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/194934.html 22 aug 2011, 16:08 , Respect -
Maria 22 aug 2011
UN once again delays flotilla report
The United Nations has for the third time postponed the release of a report on Israel's deadly attack on the Gaza-bound international aid flotilla in 2010.
The UN's findings about the brutal incident, which left nine Turkish activists dead and dozens of others wounded, was expected out this week.
According to Turkish foreign ministry, Israel is behind the delay in the publication of the long-awaited UN report, also known as the Palmer report.
"The demand to postpone (the announcement) came from Israel, like the previous demands," Selcuk Unal, the spokesperson for the Turkish foreign ministry told Turkey's Anatolia news agency on Monday.
This is while Israeli media claimed that Ankara had demanded the delay.
Tel Aviv has been hard trying to mend its damaged relations with Ankara before the publication of the UN report.
Turkey has repeatedly said that relations between the two sides can only be restored if Tel Aviv apologizes for the attack, compensates the families of those killed and the injured, and lifts its crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Israel has reportedly agreed to a payout but is resisting calls to apologize, proposing instead to express regret.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Tel Aviv ''definitely will not apologize to Turkey'' over the flotilla attack.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos attacked the six-vessel Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters to prevent the convoy from breaking the crippling Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip.
In the assault, nine Turkish nationals, including a teenager with dual Turkish-US citizenship, were killed and dozens of others were left wounded.
Turkey said that some of the victims had been shot "execution-style" at point-blank.
Turkish post-mortem examinations also revealed that a total of 30 bullets were found in the bodies of the nine dead activists. One of the activists had been shot four times in the head.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/195186.html
29 aug 2011
Turkey denied Netanyahu effort to delay release of Gaza flotilla report
Turkey claims Netanyahu attempting to buy time, add that they prefer an unfavorable report over waiting another two fruitless months; Palmer Report due to be published on Friday September 2.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested a few days ago that the Palmer Report on the Israel Defense Forces' raid of a Gaza-bound flotilla in which nine Turkish activists were killed, be delayed by six months.
The suggestion was made to the Turkish government and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, but Haaretz has learned that the Turkish government rejected Netanyahu's proposal, claiming it was not serious.
The UN investigative committee into the raid, headed by Geoffrey Palmer, is now due to publish the report this Friday, September 2.
The Palmer Report on the events that occurred on board the Turkish aid ship Mavi Marmara in 2010 has been delayed three times already, each time with the agreement of both Israel and Turkey, who made joint requests of the UN Secretary-General.
According to an official in Jerusalem, Netanyahu's latest suggestion to postpone the report's publication by six months was not warmly welcomed by the Turks.
Turkey saw Netanyahu's suggestion as an attempt to avoid reaching a decision on the reconciliation agreement and to stall progress. They explained that despite how problematic the report is for them, they would prefer for it to be published on September 2 than to wait another two grueling months, at the end of which it is not at all certain that Netanyahu would agree to apologize for what happened on board the Mavi Marmara.
An outline of the reconciliation agreement has already been approved by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and includes a softened Israeli apology for the events that occurred onboard the ship, in return for normalized relations with Turkey and a commitment on Turkey's behalf not to take legal proceedings personally against the Israeli soldiers and officers involved.
Turkey has said that if Israel does not apologize, it will carry out a series of actions detrimental to Israel-Turkey relations and that it would take legal action against Israel.
Netanyahu has avoided making a firm decision for a number of months regarding how Israel will deal with the situation.
He told senior American officials that despite that he is interested in accepting the outline of the agreement and apologizing to Turkey, he feared such a move would lead Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to withdraw from the coalition.
After Lieberman said he would not withdraw from the coalition, even if a decision was made to apologize to Turkey, Netanyahu changed his reasoning for postponing the report's publication, telling the Americans that he is not able to apologize, for he is under political pressure owing to the social protests.
Two weeks ago he informed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Israel would not apologize for the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid. Speaking with Clinton via telephone, Netanayhu said that Israel does not intend to adopt an outline to restore its relationship with Turkey.
An official in Jerusalem said that Netanyahu told Clinton that Israel does not oppose the publication of the Palmer Committee's report, but that the date of the report's release depends on Ban Ki-moon.
http://fwd4.me/0A8e 2 sep 2011, 08:13 , Respect -
Maria 1 sept 2011
Hamas nixes UN's flotilla probe
Hamas' spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri
Hamas has dismissed the UN's inquiry into the last year's lethal Israeli assault against an aid flotilla, which was bound for the Tel Aviv-blockaded Gaza Strip.
On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement's spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that the results of the investigation -- some extracts of which have been published in the The New York Times -- was 'unjust and unbalanced,' AFP reported.
"The UN report into the Israeli attack…will allow the [Israeli] occupier to shirk its responsibilities,” he said.
The probe, which was directed by the former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, is to be published on September 2.
It describes the Israeli aggression on the Turkish-led aid convoy as 'excessive,' but views Tel Aviv's now-four-year-old all-out blockade of the coastal sliver as legal.
"Israel's decision to board the vessels with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable," the report said.
"We have made it clear that we consider that Israel was entitled to impose the naval blockade. It follows that Israel was also entitled to enforce it,” it asserted.
Israeli naval commandos assaulted the six-ship civilian aid convoy known as the Freedom Flotilla on May 31, 2010, while it was carrying thousands of tons of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip in the international waters in the Mediterranean.
Nine Turkish human rights activists, including a Turkish-American national, were slain and around 50 others injured during the attack, which resulted in major strain in Ankara's ties with Tel Aviv.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/196967.html
Report Finds Naval Blockade by Israel Legal but Faults Raid
UNITED NATIONS — A long-awaited United Nations review of Israel’s 2010 raid on a Turkish-based flotilla in which nine passengers were killed has found that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is both legal and appropriate. But it said that the way Israeli forces boarded the vessels trying to break that blockade 15 months ago was excessive and unreasonable.
The report, expected to be released Friday, also found that when Israeli commandos boarded the main ship, they faced “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers” and were therefore required to use force for their own protection. But the report called the force “excessive and unreasonable,” saying that the loss of life was unacceptable and that the Israeli military’s later treatment of passengers was abusive.
The 105-page report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, was completed months ago. But its publication was delayed several times as Turkey and Israel sought to reconcile their deteriorating relationship and perhaps avoid making the report public. In reactions from both governments included in the report, as well as in interviews, each objected to its conclusions. Both said they believed that the report, which was intended to help mend relations, would instead make reconciliation harder.
Turkey is particularly upset by the conclusion that Israel’s naval blockade is in keeping with international law and that its forces have the right to stop Gaza-bound ships in international waters, which is what happened in the 2010 episode. That conclusion oversteps the mandate of the four-member panel appointed by the United Nations secretary general and is at odds with other United Nations decisions, Turkey argued.
The report noted that the panel did not have the power to compel testimony or demand documents, but instead had to rely on information provided by Israel and Turkey. Therefore, its conclusions cannot be considered definitive in either fact or law.
The Foreign Ministries in Turkey and Israel declined to comment publicly on the report, saying they preferred to wait for its official release. No one was available to comment in the office of the United Nations spokesman.
Israel considers the report to be a rare vindication for it in the United Nations. A United Nations Security Council statement at the time assailed the loss of life, and Israel faced widespread international condemnation. It thought that by offering to negotiate an agreement with Turkey that would stop the report’s publication, Turkish officials might soften their position.
But the two countries’ negotiations, which focused on some kind of apology from Israel and compensation for the victims — eight Turks and an American of Turkish descent — ended in failure. Israel says it is willing to express regret and pay compensation. But the Turks want a full apology. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he believed that apologizing would demoralize Israeli citizens and broadcast a message of weakness. Aides said he might reconsider at a later date if the Turks eased their demands.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said an apology and compensation would not be sufficient to return Turkey’s ambassador to Tel Aviv. Israel also has to end its naval blockade of Gaza, he insisted.
The report does recommend that Israel make “an appropriate statement of regret” and pay compensation, but the Turks say that formula does not express sufficient remorse.
The United Nations investigation into the events on the ship, the Mavi Marmara, which was sailing under a Turkish flag and was the largest of six vessels that were commandeered by Israeli commandos on May 31, 2010, was led by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, a former prime minister of New Zealand. He was aided by Álvaro Uribe, a former president of Colombia, along with one representative from Israel and another from Turkey.
The report takes a broadly sympathetic view of Israel’s sea blockade of Gaza.
“Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza,” the report says in its opening paragraphs. “The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”
The report is hard on the flotilla, asserting that it “acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade.” It said that while a majority of the hundreds of people aboard the six vessels had no violent intention, that could not be said of the I.H.H. Humanitarian Relief Foundation, the Turkish aid group that primarily organized the flotilla. It said, “There exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly I.H.H.”
It also said that the Turkish government tried to persuade the organizers to avoid an encounter with Israeli forces, but that “more could have been done.”
Regarding the boarding of the ship, the Palmer committee said Israel should have issued warnings closer to the moment of action and should have first turned to nonviolent options.
http://fwd4.me/0AUK 2 sep 2011, 16:17 , Respect -
Maria 2 sept 2011
What Israel, Turkey gained and lost from the UN flotilla report
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- A long-awaited UN report on Israel's lethal interception of a Gaza-bound Turkish activist ship appears to have both supported and rejected core arguments made by the former allies.
Following is an overview of the conclusions of the panel set up by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and headed by former New Zealand premier Geoffrey Palmer, and implications for the Israeli-Turkish feud.
Blockade
-- Israel's naval blockade on the Palestinian territory is "a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law". Its enforcement "may take place on the high seas and may be conducted by force if a vessel resists".
These findings clash with Turkey's condemnation of the blockade as illegal collective punishment. Turkey further argued that Israel's May 31, 2010 seizure of the Mavi Marmara in international waters was tantamount to "piracy" exacerbated by the killing of nine pro-Palestinian activists on board.
Turkey's position matches that of a UN Human Rights Council inquiry boycotted by the Israelis. The Palmer report's findings in favor of Israel's defense doctrine may have an impact on international opinion.
Bloodshed
-- Israeli marines who boarded the Mavi Marmara "faced significant, organised and violent resistance from a group of passengers ... requiring them to use force for their own protection". But the overall conduct of the interception was "excessive and unreasonable" and "no satisfactory explanation has been provided to the Panel by Israel for any of the nine deaths." The report called the loss of life "unacceptable".
This sequencing appears to support Israel's insistence that its men resorted to lethal gunfire in self-defense, after coming under attack. The Turks said shooting began before the first marines fast-roped to the Mavi Marmara's deck from helicopters, but the Palmer report describes this as "unlikely". It also states that two Israeli marines suffered gunshot wounds, though it stops short of backing Israel's disputed assertion that activists used firearms.
Israeli commanders may have been made vulnerable to legal scrutiny by the report's criticism of the timing of the Mavi ship takeover and their failure to try less forceful tactics.
Israel will no doubt also feel stung by report's blanket censure of how it accounted for the deaths. Jurists who put together Israel's submission to the Palmer panel said they had extensively documented the use of force by marines.
Diplomacy
-- While Turkey tried to avert the confrontation at sea, "more could have been done to warn the flotilla participants of the potential risks involved and to dissuade them from their actions". "There exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organisers, particularly (the Turkish Islamist charity) IHH."
Israel may read this passage as a rebuke of the Turkish government's relations with the IHH, which Israel has outlawed for supporting Hamas. Turkey has distanced itself from the IHH, saying it could not control the actions of private citizens.
Amends
-- Israel should make "an appropriate statement of regret" and "offer payment for the benefit of the deceased and injured victims and their families." Turkey and Israel "should resume full diplomatic relations." Separately, Israel "should continue with its efforts to ease its restrictions on movement of goods and persons to and from Gaza."
As Israel has already voiced "regret" and was snubbed by Turkey, which insists on a formal apology, the efficacy of Palmer's recommendation here is unclear.
Similarly, Israel broached sponsoring a fund for Mavi Marmara survivors but balked at Turkey's demand for compensation, saying that damages payments would amount to an admission of wrongdoing. The Palmer report's avoidance of the word "compensation" would appear to satisfy Israel's position.
Israel says it wants to get past the Mavi Marmara incident and restore ties with Turkey, but Turkey says its terms must first be satisfied. These include an end to the naval blockade on Gaza -- which Israel rules out, though it has eased overland access to the Palestinian territory.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417277
Israeli MP lauds expulsion of envoy
Israeli Arab lawmaker Hanin Zoabi
An Israeli lawmaker has praised Ankara's decision to expel the Israeli ambassador from Turkey, describing it the right response to Tel Aviv's endless disrespect for human life.
Israeli-Arab lawmaker Hanin Zoabi said on Friday that although the Turkish move was "strong and dramatic", but it was right.
Her remarks came shortly after Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador to the country and suspended all remaining military agreements with Israel in response to Tel Aviv's refusal to apologize for a deadly attack on a Turkish-flagged aid flotilla last year.
Nine Turkish activists were killed and many others were wounded after Israeli commandos attacked the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara in international waters.
The move was the "right response to a continued disregard of human life, of the pride of the nations of the regions, and of the sovereignty of neighboring states," Zoabi said, adding that "Turkey will not be the last country to put an end to Israeli arrogance and aggressiveness.”
Zoabi, who had participated in the flotilla of aid ships that tried to break the crippling Israeli blockade of Gaza in May 2010, was stripped off a number of her parliamentary rights and privileges for joining the humanitarian convoy.
Ankara-Tel Aviv relations, once close, soured following the attack. Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel shortly after the raid and cancelled joint military exercises.
Turkey has repeatedly said that relations between the two sides can only be restored if Tel Aviv apologizes for the attack, compensates the families of those killed and the injured, and lifts its deadly years long blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Israel has reportedly agreed to a payout but is resisting calls to apologize, proposing instead to express regret.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/197077.html
Palmer Report fails main objective?
UN commission probing raid on first Gaza flotilla falls short of resolving Israel and Turkey's differences; manages to hold both parties responsible for tragic results, while assigning no real blame.
The United Nations Palmer Report on Israel's raid of the 2010 Gaza-bound flotilla failed to accomplish its main objective – devising a compromise between Israel and Turkey.
Turkey announced on Friday that it will stand by its demand for an official apology from Israel, while sources in Jerusalem were adamant that no such apology will be offered.
The 150-page report managed to find fault in both Jerusalem and Ankara's actions, but assigns no real responsibility for the raid's tragic results other than alluding to the fact that the Turkish-based IHH, which was one of the flotilla's chief sponsors, operated out of "questionable motives."
The report, which was first published by the New York Times on Thursday evening, essentially sanctioned Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza Strip as a legitimate step rooted in national security interests – a conclusion Jerusalem sees as a feat, as the blockade has been repeatedly used to discredit Israel and delegitimize its efforts to thwart Gaza terror.
"The blockade satisfied the customary international law requirements for the imposition of a blockade, including the requirements of notification, effectiveness and enforcement," the report said.
"Israel is complying with its humanitarian obligations… The blockade does not constitute collective punishment of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip."
The report did, however, censure the IDF's use of "excessive and unreasonable" force during the Marmara takeover, which left nine people dead.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to receive the full report later on Friday.
'Report has no grasp on reality'
IDF sources criticized the report's determination that the Naval Commandos involved in the raid used excessive force, blasting the conclusions as having a "no grasp on reality."
"It is very easy to analyze an event after the fact and point to what should have been done. The IDF and the Navy have drawn the necessary conclusion, but should IDF soldiers be assaulted in a future incidents, we cannot guarantee that the other party wouldn’t suffer casualties," a defense establishment source told Ynet.
Neither the Defense Ministry nor the IDF have issued an official response to the report at this time.
The report's core conclusions are as follows:
1. The events of May 31, 2010 should not have ended as they did, and extensive efforts should be applied to ensure they do not happen in the future.
2. The principle of free maritime movement can be subjected to exceptions under international law. Gaza's militant groups pose a true threat to Israel and it imposes a naval blockade as a legitimate way to prevent weapons from finding their way into Gaza via its waters. The matter in which the blockage is enforced coincides with international law.
3. The Gaza-bound flotilla was not a governmental initiative.
4. While people have the right to express their political views, the flotilla's attempt to breach the Gaza blockage was reckless. The majority of the sail's participants bore no violent intention, but the true intentions of the organizers, and especially thos of the IHH, raise serious concerns; as they brought about a potential escalation that could have been avoided.
5. Neither Israel nor Turkey initiated the incident. Both countries applied measures meant to avoid harming human lives, peace and international security. Nevertheless, more could have been done to alert the sail's participants of the potential risk involved, and dissuade them from taking part in it.
6. Israel's decision to board the Marmara using the forces it did with no final warning to the vessel was exaggerated and unreasonable. Non-violent options should have been explored further. Once the force had boarded the ship, and faced with the resistance it met, Israel should have reevaluated its options.
7. The Israeli forces encountered significant, organized and violent resistance by a group of the Marmara's passengers, which called for the use of force in self defense.
8. The loss of life and injuries suffered by passengers as a result of the Israeli forces' actions in unacceptable. Israel has failed to provide the commission with a satisfactory explanation as to the nine deaths, and especially as to findings indicating that some of the fatalities were shot multiple times, including at close range and in the back.
9. Once the raid was over, the Israeli authorities did mistreat the passengers, pending their deportation. Such mistreatment included intimidation, the confiscation of personal belongings and delaying consular services.
'Media owes us an apology'
Members of the Turkel Committee that was named by the government to probe the events of the raid, were overall satisfied with the Palmer Report, which they said concurred with most of their findings.
"The Palmer Report is one of the most favorable international reports ever complied on Israel," a source close to the committee said. "The report clearly states that the blockade is legal and that the decision to board the Marmara was legally sound… The biggest accomplishment is that the report legally differentiates between the naval blockade and the issue of the crossings."
The committee, the sources added, would like to see the Israeli media "apologize for portraying us as a group of senile old men whose report was a rubber stamp. The media should say it's sorry."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4117002,00.html
State officials stress: Israel won't apologize to Turkey
State officials addressing the Palmer Report on the Marmara raid have clarified that Israel regrets the loss of life but will not apologize for its soldiers' acts of self-defense.
"Israel, like any other country, has the legitimate right to defend its citizens and soldiers," one of the officials stressed.
http://fwd4.me/0AWH
Turkish president: Palmer Report null and void
Turkish President Abdullah Gul reportedly said Friday that as far as Turkey was concerned, the Palmer Report was "null and void."
The president's made his statements following Turkish Foreign Minister Davatoglu's announcement over Turkey'd intention to downgrade diplomatic relations with Israel. Turkey announced that the Israeli ambassador would be expelled over Israel's refusal to apologize for Gaza flotilla raid.
http://fwd4.me/0AWF
Israel forms team to fight lawsuits over flotilla attack
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Israel has decided to form a special legal team to fight possible lawsuits against its military staff in the international criminal courts.
The Israeli Attorney General and Ministry of Justice have been bracing for likely lawsuits against Israel’s military personnel who participated in the lethal attack of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara ship that killed nine activists on board, Israeli media outlets said.
According to reports, the team consisting of legal experts and consultants will weigh all judicial and legal dimensions enveloping the possibility. The Israeli military leadership has already officially approved the move.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed last month to move to Plan B should Tel Aviv continue to refrain from apologizing over the attack before the release of the Palmer report.
The UN commissioned report into the attack was officially slated to be released Friday but was leaked to the New York Times earlier on Thursday.
According to the Plan B, Turkey threatened to diminish its diplomatic, military, and economic relations with Israel. On Friday, after the report was released, the Israeli ambassador to Turkey was expelled and military ties were frozen.
Top Israeli legal experts told media outlets that the Palmer report could open the door for the prosecution of Israeli military personnel.
http://fwd4.me/0AW9
Why the Palmer-Uribe report on Israel’s flotilla attack is worthless
Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez has been criticized for his abuses of human rights defenders
Turkey has imposed sanctions on Israel following Turkey’s rejection of a UN report on Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla last year.
In the latest developments on Friday morning, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu rejected the findings of the report and announced unprecedented sanctions on Israel saying “it’s time for Israel to pay a price.”
From 7 September, diplomatic ties will be reduced to the lowest level, all Turkish-Israeli military agreements will be canceled, and Turkey will support victims of the Israeli attack on the flotilla to pursue justice through legal cases.
Crucially, Davutoglu affirmed that Turkey does not recognize the blockade of Gaza which the Palmer report attempted to justify, and which a UN Human Rights Council official fact-finding mission had already ruled to be illegal. Turkey will also challenge the Israeli siege of Gaza through international legal channels.
Palmer report attempts to whitewash attack on flotilla, justify Israeli siege
A leaked copy of the Palmer report into Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May 2010 was published by the New York Times on Thursday, a day before its expected official release by the UN Secretary General.
On 31 May 2010, Israel attacked the largest ship in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, killing 9 people on board.
Publication of the report had been delayed several times as Turkey and Israel attempted to negotiate a settlement. Turkey demanded an apology for the attack, compensation for victims and an end to the siege of Gaza. In his statement today Davutoglu said Israel had passed up many opportunities to resolve the issue.
The four-member committee that wrote the Palmer report was appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and was chaired by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer and vice-chaired by former president of Colombia Alvaro Uribe.
This panel is in addition to an official UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission which reported last September that Israel’s attack on the ships was illegal.
According to the The New York Times article on the Palmer report, the Palmer panel:
has found that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is both legal and appropriate. But it said that the way Israeli forces boarded the vessels trying to break that blockade 15 months ago was excessive and unreasonable.
The report, expected to be released Friday, also found that when Israeli commandos boarded the main ship, they faced “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers” and were therefore required to use force for their own protection. But the report called the force “excessive and unreasonable,” saying that the loss of life was unacceptable and that the Israeli military’s later treatment of passengers was abusive.
An initial examination of the report indicates that these many of findings are not credible on their face for a number of reasons including the composition of the panel, its reliance on Israel which has controlled and withheld most of the evidence, and a skewed and politicized perspective which ignores the realities of Israel’s decades-long violent occupation of Gaza.
Palmer panel was stacked for Israel and includes notorious human rights abuser
As Jose Antonio Gutierrez and David Landy explained on The Electronic Intifada in August 2010, the panel was selected almost entirely according to Israel’s dictates:
The commission is composed of four persons, one chosen by Turkey, one chosen by Israel and two chosen from a list provided by Israel. The latter two are former Prime Minister of New Zealand Geoffrey Palmer, who will be the chair, and Uribe, who will serve as vice-chair. While Palmer, an expert in international law, is an uncontroversial choice, the appointment of Uribe is as perplexing as it is shocking. It appears that “balance” in this commission involves balance between someone versed in international and human rights law and someone who is adamantly opposed to it. This notion of balance fatally weakens this commission even before it has started, and tarnishes the process of international law.
Uribe himself has a long and notorious history of violating human rights on a massive scale, attacking human rights defenders and organizations, and expressing contempt for any notion of law that restrains states from engaging in almost any kind of violence they desire.
Gutierrez and Landy on Uribe’s record in Colombia:
In June 2010 an international human rights mission investigated the biggest mass grave in the western hemisphere — containing some 2,000 execution victims who had been dumped there since 2004 — which had just been discovered in the Colombian town of La Macarena. At the same time Uribe travelled to that very locality but not to pay his condolences to the victims’ families, or guarantee that an investigation would determine what happened there. Instead, he went to visit the local military base — exactly the same people that, according to victims’ reports, filled that mass grave with its grisly contents — to praise them for their work.
On Uribe’s attacks on human rights defenders, Gutierrez and Landy write:
Uribe’s scorn for human right defenders is notorious. According to Human Rights First, “President Uribe and other administration officials have branded [human rights defenders] as terrorist sympathizers and have insinuated that illicit connections exist between human rights NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and illegal armed groups. Irresponsible comments by government officials in Colombia put the lives of human rights defenders at even greater risk and threaten to undermine the value and credibility of their work” (“Human Rights Defencers in Colombia”).
In September 2009 Colombia was visited by Margaret Sekaggya, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders from the UN Human Rights Commission. Sekaggya found that constant problems faced by human rights defenders in Colombia include “Stigmatization [of human rights defenders]
* by public officials and non-State actors;
* their illegal surveillance by State intelligence services;
* their arbitrary arrest and detention, and their judicial harassment;
* and raids of nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs) premises and theft of information” (“Report of the Special Rapporteur …,” 4 March 2010, pp. 13-18 [PDF]).
Public officials in Colombia constantly attack human rights defenders and members of the political and social opposition as aides of “terrorists,” that is, left-wing guerrillas.
Uribe has led these attacks, calling human rights defenders “rent-a-mobs at terrorism’s service who cowardly wave the human rights flag,” “human rights traffickers,” “charlatans of human rights,” “bandits’ [ie. guerrillas] colleagues,” “intellectual front of the FARC [the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia]” and he has stated that “Every time terrorists and their supporters feel they will be defeated, they resort to denouncing human rights violations.”
This is just a small selection of Uribe’s verbal attacks on human rights organizations in his own country, but he has also referred to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as “rats.”
Uribe’s alliance with Israel
During Uribe’s term, Colombia, which is one of the top three recipients of US military aid along with Israel and Egypt, developed a close military alliance with Israel, as Gutierrez and Landy explain:
In recent years, according to news reports, Israel has become Colombia’s number one weapon supplier, with arms worth tens of millions of dollars, “including Kfir aircraft, drones, weapons and intelligence systems” being used against opponents of the Colombian regime (“Report: Israelis fighting guerillas in Colombia,” Ynet, 10 August 2007). According to a senior Israeli defense official, “Israel’s methods of fighting terror have been duplicated in Colombia” (“Colombia’s FM: We share your resilience,” 30 April 2010).
There is a reason that Latin Americans often refer to Colombia as the “Israel of Latin America,” and indeed why Colombian President-elect Juan Manuel Santos, ex-Minister of Defence and right hand of Uribe, expressed his pride at such a comparison (“Santos, orgulloso de que a Colombia lo comparen con Israel,” El Espectador, 6 June 2010).
As Gutierrez and Landy also point out, top officials in Uribe’s administration, including the president himself, frequently expressed full support for Israel’s fight against what it terms “terrorism.”
Israel withheld and manipulated evidence
The Palmer panel cannot be described in any sense as an independent investigation. As the report states:
The Panel received and reviewed reports of the detailed national investigations conducted by both Turkey and Israel. Turkey established a National Commission of Inquiry to examine the facts of the incident and its legal consequences, which provided an interim and final report to the Panel along with annexes and related material. Israel provided the report of the independent Public Commission that it had established to review whether the actions taken by the State of Israel had been compatible with international law.
The Panel reviewed these reports and further information and clarifications it received in written form and through direct meetings with Points of Contact appointed by each government.
The report adds:
In particular, the Panel’s means of obtaining information were through diplomatic channels. The Panel enjoyed no coercive powers to compel witnesses to provide evidence. It could not conduct criminal investigations. The Panel was required to obtain its information from the two nations primarily involved in its inquiry, Turkey and Israel, and other affected States.
The panel therefore interviewed no survivors or witnesses. Only Israel controlled most key physical evidence – the ship itself and the belongings and recordings of all the passengers and the weapons Israel used in carrying out the attack. The panel did not have uncensored access to the massive amounts of evidence in the form of photo and video from passengers on board that Israel has stolen, hidden and refused to release or return. As a consequence, of these crippling limitations, the report states:
It means that the Panel cannot make definitive findings either of fact or law. But it can give its view.
The panel also implies that its own independence is further in question because:
It will be clear from the above that the essential logic of the Panel’s inquiry is that it is dependent upon the investigations conducted by Israel and Turkey.
In contrast, the UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission report published last September went much beyond merely commenting on information provided by governments. That fact-finding mission:
conducted interviews with more than 100 witnesses in Geneva, London, Istanbul and Amman.
And in addition to information provided by governments, the Human Rights Council also relied on information
including the evidence of eyewitnesses, forensic reports and interviews with medical and forensic personnel in Turkey, as well as written statements, video film footage and other photographic material relating to the incident.
Perhaps because of its thoroughness, Israel refused to cooperate with the Human Rights Council fact-finding mission, just as it refused to cooperate with the Goldstone report.
Accusations of “violent resistance”
The Palmer panel report claims:
Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection. Three soldiers were captured, mistreated, and placed at risk by those passengers. Several others were wounded.
Given the fact that Palmer panel did not gather any evidence of its own, its conclusion that the Israeli military attackers who boarded the Mavi Marmara under cover of dark in international waters, faced “organized and violent resistance” can be given no more credibility than any common or garden Israeli military press release.
While Israel has repeatedly made such claims, it never produced independent evidence of it and – as noted – is still concealing evidence.
Nevertheless, the video footage that did escape Israeli confiscation showed:
Indiscriminate live fire by the Israeli attackers
A working journalist who appears to have been executed
Evidence of targeted assassination of at least one passenger
Even the deeply flawed Palmer report is forced to admit:
The loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force by Israeli forces during the take-over of the Mavi Marmara was unacceptable. Nine passengers were killed and many others seriously wounded by Israeli forces. No satisfactory explanation has been provided to the Panel by Israel for any of the nine deaths. Forensic evidence showing that most of the deceased were shot multiple times, including in the back, or at close range has not been adequately accounted for in the material presented by Israel.
Moreover, the propagandistic Israeli claims that their soldiers were mistreated were belied by photographs that showed passengers giving aid and protection to Israeli attackers who had been disarmed.
It is possible of course that passengers defended themselves against a terrifying Israeli assault in dead of night with a full military arsenal that included assault helicopters and elite commandos against a civilian ship.
Indeed, footage shows terrified passengers hiding and attempting to fend off indiscriminate fire with sticks in a blood-stained stairwell. But to equate any of this to “organized and violent resistance” that could in any way justify Israel’s execution-style killings is completely absurd.
The blockade is “legal”
The Palmer report’s assertion that the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza is legal and necessary for “security” echoes the other aspects of the report that accept Israeli military propaganda as given.
By privileging the security of Israel, the occupying power, the report also ignores the rights and needs for security of the Palestinian people in Gaza who are being collectively punished and who have been subjected to decades of indiscriminate Israeli military attacks in which thousands of civilians have been killed and injured.
Yet this opinion of the Panel is, as the report states, not binding in any legal sense. But more importantly, it has no bearing at all on the assault on the Mavi Marmara, which Israel attacked in international waters as it was moving away from the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-controlled coast of Palestine.
Israel’s claim that it needs to blockade people it is violently victimizing in order to prevent them obtaining any means means whatsoever to defend themselves can only be made by wholly ignoring the context of Israel’s violent occupation of Gaza and decades of well-documented war crimes.
Israel is not in a defensive position in which it can claim a “security” need to impose a blockade. Israel is the military aggressor which for decades from 1967 until 2005 violently colonized the Gaza Strip, placing settlers there in blatant violation of international law. Since 2005, Israel has continued to occupy besiege, harass, attack and kill civilians in Gaza with almost no respite culminating in the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of civilians during the 2008-2009 “Operation Cast Lead.”
A perfect example of Israel’s wanton violence was its unprovoked series of attacks on the Gaza Strip last month which killed more than two dozen people, including children.
Human Rights Council fact-finding mission and legality of Israeli blockade
The UN Human Rights Council had already concluded that Israel’s interception of the flotilla was illegal because the blockade was unjustified:
[i] In evaluating the evidence submitted to the Mission, including by OCHA oPt [Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories), confirming the severe humanitarian situation in Gaza, the destruction of the economy and the prevention of reconstruction (as detailed above), the Mission is satisfied that the blockade was inflicting disproportionate damage upon the civilian population in the Gaza strip and that as such the interception could not be justified and therefore has to be considered illegal.[/i]
It also concludes:
The Mission considers that one of the principal motives behind the imposition of the blockade was a desire to punish the people of the Gaza Strip for having elected Hamas. The combination of this motive and the effect of the restrictions on the Gaza Strip leave no doubt that Israel’s actions and policies amount to collective punishment as defined by international law.
and that:
the blockade amounts to collective punishment in violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.
Palmer panel went against international consensus on blockade
Moreover, the Turkish appointee on the Palmer panel, Süleyman Özdem Sanberk, noted in a dissenting statement rejecting large parts of the report:
On the legal aspect of the blockade, Turkey and Israel have submitted two opposing arguments. International legal authorities are divided on the matter since it is unprecedented, highly complex and the legal framework lacks codification. However, the Chairmanship and its report fully associated itself with Israel and categorically dismissed the views of the other, despite the fact that the legal arguments presented by Turkey have been supported by the vast majority of the international community. Common sense and conscience dictate that the blockade is unlawful.
Also the UN Human Rights Council concluded that the blockade was unlawful. The Report of the Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission received widespread approval from the member states.
Freedom and safety of navigation on the high seas is a universally accepted rule of international law. There can be no exception from this long-standing principle unless there is a universal convergence of views.
The intentions of the participants in the international humanitarian convoy were humanitarian, reflecting the concerns of the vast majority of the international community. They came under attack in international waters. They resisted for their own protection. Nine civilians were killed and many others were injured by the Israeli soldiers. One of the victims is still in a coma. The evidence confirms that at least some of the victims had been killed deliberately.
The wording in the report is not satisfactory in describing the actual extent of the atrocities that the victims have been subjected to. This includes the scope of the maltreatment suffered by the passengers in the hands of Israeli soldiers and officials.
After Goldstone, protecting Israel
Based on what was known before its report became public, and now that we have read the report, it is clear that the Palmer panel was no more than political exercise by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to whitewash Israel’s attack on the flotilla and protect it from any real accountability.
After Israel and the United States’s all out war on the Goldstone report detailing Israeli war crimes in Gaza, it appears that international officials are unwilling to repeat the experience.
Indeed, an exclusive report on The Electronic Intifada in June 2010 revealed intense diplomatic efforts to undermine Turkey’s push for an independent UN investigation into Israel’s flotilla attack.
The Palmer panel was stacked from the start to ensure Israeli impunity, not to provide truth for the victims and survivors of the Mavi Marmara.
http://fwd4.me/0AVT
Hamas welcomes Turkey's decision to expel Israeli envoy
Hamas on Friday welcomed Turkey's decision to expel the Israeli ambassador to Ankara over Israel's refusal to apologize for the Marmara raid.
"We welcome this decision and see it as a fit response to the crimes against the international flotilla that tried to breach the siege," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said. Hamas also slammed the Palmer Report as "unfair and unjust."
http://fwd4.me/0AVe
Turkey cuts all military ties with Israel
Turkey has suspended all its military ties with Israel and has expelled Israel's envoy from Ankara over Tel Aviv's refusal to apologize for last year's deadly attack on a Gaza-bound flotilla.
The Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made the announcement in a press conference on Friday and said, “The time has come for Israel to pay for its stance that sees it above international laws and disregards human conscience."
"At this point the measures we are taking are: The relations between Turkey and Israel will be downgraded to second secretary level. All officials over the level of second secretary, primarily the ambassador will turn back to their country at the latest on Wednesday," AP quoted Davutoglu as saying.
Relations between Turkey and Israel began to deteriorate after the Israeli military attacked the Gaza-bound relief aid convoy Freedom Flotilla in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea in May 2010, killing nine Turkish citizens on board the Turkish-flagged M.V. Mavi Marmara and injuring at least 50 other activist that were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/197024.html
Update: UN report: Gaza blockade legal, Israel used excessive force
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A UN report on Israel's deadly raid against a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza has found that the naval blockade was legal but commandos used excessive force in the May 2010 incident.
The New York Times, citing a leaked copy of the document to be released Friday, reported that it found Israel used "excessive and unreasonable force" after meeting "violent resistance" from some of the passengers.
Israel and Turkey have been in dispute over an apology for the May 31, 2010 raid in which nine Turkish activists were killed.
Former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer led the UN-mandated investigation into the raid on the flotilla that was attempting to take aid to the Gaza Strip through an Israeli blockade.
Diplomatic relations in brink
The release of the report has been delayed several times this year. Turkey has demanded an apology for the deaths, Israel has refused and there had been no agreement on the final version of the report.
Palmer's report recommends Israel provide Turkey "an appropriate statement of regret" and pay compensation for deaths and injuries, but neither side has accepted this formula.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday on the fringes of the Libya Contact Group meeting in Paris, where she urged Turkey to prevent further deterioration of its relations with Israel, according to a report on Israel Radio.
Davutoglu had warned on Thursday that diplomats would launch "Plan B", and referred to possible sanctions, if Israel fails to apologize when the report is published, in an interview with Turkish daily Today's Zaman.
The foreign minister said in a press conference Friday that its demands remain unchanged.
On Friday, Israeli daily Haaretz cited senior foreign ministry officials saying Turkey could expel Israel's ambassador and downgrade diplomatic relations, as Israeli officials told the press that no apology would be issued.
Report finds fault on both sides
The report criticized "Israel’s decision to board the vessels with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding."
But it accused the flotilla of "acting recklessly" by attempting to breach Israel's blockade of Gaza.
Events surrounding the deaths of nine passengers remain contested.
While the report finds "most of the deceased were shot multiple times, including in the back, or at close range" and this has "not been adequately accounted for" by Israel, it adds that forces met violent resistance from passengers requiring self-protection.
Report writers said they could not determine whether Israeli commandos used live fire before landing on the vessel, a key point of contention.
Israel and Turkey spar over conclusions
In responses from both countries included in the report, Israel and Turkey rejected its findings.
But as the leaked report emerged, the countries attempted to emphasize the conclusions seen as more favorable to their governments.
Einat Wilf, an Israeli lawmaker and member of the Knesset foreign affairs commission, told AFP the report "clearly exonerates Israel on the main issues regarding the legality of the blockade, the legality of stopping incoming ships in international waters and the existence of violence, resistance to the Israeli soldiers."
An Israeli official who declined to be identified told AFP on Friday: "We will announce our acceptance of the report after its official publication, with specific reservations."
Meanwhile, Turkish officials insisted on focusing on Israel's refusal to apologize.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417172 3 sep 2011, 09:07 , Respect -
Maria Turkey expels Israel diplomats after UN report
(1:00) Turkey Expels Israeli Ambassador
ANKARA (Reuters) -- Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador and senior Israeli diplomats and suspended military agreements on Friday, the day after it emerged a UN report said Israel had used unreasonable force in a raid on a Gaza-bound ship that killed nine Turkish nationals.
Stung by Israel's refusal to meet demands for a formal apology, pay compensation for families of the dead, and end the blockade of Palestinians living in the Gaza enclave, Turkey announced it was downgrading ties with the country further.
"Turkey-Israel diplomatic relations have been reduced to a second secretary level. All personnel above the second secretary level will be sent home by Wednesday at the latest," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference in Ankara.
Turkey's reaction to the long-awaited report, which also declared that Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip was legal, deepened Ankara's rift with Israel.
Israel's ambassador Gabby Levy was currently in Israel and canceled plans to return to Turkey on Thursday.
Immediately after the attack on the aid convoy last year, Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Israel, suspended joint military exercises, and barred Israeli military aircraft from Turkish airspace.
On Friday, Turkey went a step further by putting military pacts with its erstwhile ally on ice.
"All military agreements have been suspended," Davutoglu added.
Davutoglu said some of the report's findings were questionable and that Turkey did not recognize the legitimacy of the blockade of Gaza.
"Turkey will take all measures which it sees as necessary for freedom of navigation in the eastern Mediterranean," Davutoglu said.
"Turkey does not recognize Israel's blockade of Gaza. It will secure the study of this blockade at the International Court of Justice. We are beginning initiatives to get the U.N. General Assembly moving (on this)," he added.
He also said support would be given to Turkish and foreign victims to seek justice from courts. One of the nine Turks killed was a U.S. citizen.
The report, prepared by a panel headed by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, is expected to be formally handed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon later on Friday and officially released then.
The New York Times posted on its website on Thursday a copy it had obtained.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417243
Turkey gives "Israel" ultimatum for apology
ANKARA, (PIC)-- Ahmet Oglo, the Turkish foreign minister, has specified Thursday an ultimatum to the Zionist entity to apologize for the crime it had committed against Turkish human right activists on Mavi Marmara where nine Turkish citizens were killed and dozens wounded.
According to Oglo, the ultimatum would be the day the UN promulgates its fact finding report on the incident, adding that if "Israel" failed to apologize till that date then Turkey would implement an alternative plan.
The UN was about to announce its fact finding report last May but postponed it on the request of the parties involved. The last request was made by Israeli premier Binyamin Netanyahu who urged the UN committee tackling the investigation to defer the promulgation for six months.
"We have evaluated the Israeli request, but it is impossible for us to wait for six months for the committee to announce its report. Turkey's position in this regard is very clear, we have taken a decision and we will fulfill that decision. Turkey would implement sanctions on Israel that "Israel" itself and other international parties know very well," said Oglo.
The UN secretary-general is expected to announce the report at the beginning of September this year.
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Press statement by H.E. Mr. Ahmet Davutoglu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, regarding Turkish-Israeli relations
Distinguished Members of the Press,
You all know very well the reason why I will deliver this statement today.
Approximately 15 months ago on the 31st of May 2010, Israel carried out an armed attack in the international waters of the Mediterranean, against an international aid convoy in which hundreds of passengers from 32 countries participated to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza.
During this attack, Israeli soldiers killed 9 civilians, 8 of whom were Turkish and 1 was a US citizen, they injured many passengers and also forcefully brought the ship and its passengers to Israel.
These people were subjected to all sorts of degrading treatment throughout their two-day captivity at the hands of Israel.
Dear Friends,
Approximately 15 months have elapsed since this unlawful attack.
However, the concrete facts remain unchanged.
I find it necessary to repeat them.
The Israeli attack took place in international waters.
Those killed by Israeli soldiers were innocent civilians.
Those, whose lives were claimed, were civilians who wished to respond to the cry for help of the Palestinian people under the plight of the blockade enforced by Israel in violation of international law and human values.
War is a harsh reality of the history of humanity.
And war, above all, is the gravest violation of the human right to life, which constitutes the most sacred value.
Indeed, all civilizations have developed the concept of a “just war” in order to regulate even war according to certain rules.
For this reason, the use of military force has been restricted by very strict conditions in the United Nations Charter.
Furthermore, it is for the conviction of the sanctity of the right to life, that even when the war is warranted, the killing of innocent civilians is accepted as a war crime.
However, Israel, not in war but in peace time, not in a military but a civilian convoy; killed civilians who participated in a peaceful event organized to bring aid to innocent people suffering under a cruel embargo. This is the picture!
Moreover, it did so, neither in its territory nor territorial waters, but in international waters, where freedom of navigation prevails as the most fundamental principle of international law.
The crime committed by Israel is not a simple offense.
It is international law that has been violated.
It is the conscience of humanity and the most fundamental human value, the right to life that have been violated.
There is an irreversible truth:
And that is, the fact that attacking civilians in a ship part of an aid convoy, firing multiple times at unarmed people at the back of their neck is a crime against humanity.
This crime cannot be covered under any guise nor justified under any circumstances.
One other thing must also be underlined.
No state is above the law.
The world is currently changing.
Those who claim the lives of civilians, or commit crimes against humanity are sooner or later brought before justice and face trial for their crimes.
Neither the Israeli Government who ordered the attack against the Mavi Marmara nor the ones that actually carried out the attack are above or immune from the law. They all must be held accountable.
In fact, they have already been convicted by the conscience of humanity.
Distinguished Members of the Press,
You will recall that, as Turkey, we promptly acted to ensure that this clear crime would not go unpunished and that justice would to take its course.
To this end, within hours of the Israeli attack we called for an urgent session of the UN Security Council that very same day.
In my speech before the UN Security Council, I stated that humanity had drowned in the waters of the Mediterranean with this Israeli attack which totally disregarded all norms of law, human conscience and values of humanity.
Indeed, the UN Security Council, in the first hours of 1 June 2010, adopted a Presidential Statement with the agreement of all its members -an agreement of the entire international community.
With this Statement, the Security Council called for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards, into the tragedy caused as a result of Israel’s use of armed force.
Furthermore, the UN Human Rights Council based in Geneva, adopted a resolution by which it established a Fact-Finding Mission comprising highly prominent and specialized lawyers and launched an investigation process into the attack.
The UN Secretary General also set up an Inquiry Panel in line with the call by the Security Council.
As Turkey, we have fully cooperated with the Panel. We provided every contribution to speed up the investigation process and submitted our national report.
Whereas Israel, despite being represented in the Panel, continuously acted with the intention to delay its work.
Again, as you all very well know, we requested the Government of Israel to issue a formal apology and pay compensation to the families of and those close to the deceased. Moreover, we continued to emphasize that the blockade enforced against Gaza, which was explicitly criticized in the UN Security Council Presidential Statement, must be lifted.
We also declared that if our conditions were not met, the Turkish-Israeli relations would not be normalized.
On the other hand, upon being informed by the Government of Israel of its readiness to meet with Turkey with a view to apologize from the Turkish public and pay compensation to the families of and those close to the deceased, we held a total of 4 rounds of meetings at different times.
During these meetings, agreement was reached a couple of times between the Turkish and Israeli delegations negotiating the texts of an agreement, which accommodated our claims for an apology and compensation.
Indeed, ad referendum agreement was reached for the first time over two separate texts as a result of the meetings held in Geneva upon the request by the Israeli Prime Minister following Turkey’s contribution to the relief efforts to put out the forest fires in Israel in December 2010. This agreement was also endorsed by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. However, due to the disagreements within the Israeli Council of Ministers, this agreement could not be implemented.
Throughout this process, all the delays in the publication of the Palmer Commission’s report- I am emphasizing this since we are faced with a serious press manipulation- were caused as a result of the Government of Israel’s request for additional time to form its internal consensus over apology and compensation, in other words every postponement was at the request of the Government of Israel.
The last request made by Israel for a 6 month-additional period was not accepted by Turkey. Because it was understood that all these requests for delay were aimed at prolonging the process.
The leaking to the press of the report, to which neither Turkey nor Israel is a side, bearing only the signatures of its Chair Palmer and Vice-Chair Uribe, and before it was officially submitted to the UN Secretary General on 1 September, is quite thought-provoking in this sense. Yesterday I spoke in a frank manner to the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-moon on this subject. He expressed great astonishment and dismay that this report which had not yet been submitted to him and whose details he was not yet fully acquitted with would be leaked to the press as it had. Unfortunately, the Israeli side has not acted in a manner compatible with State solemnity and confidentiality in this process.
First of all it should be stated that this report reflects only the views of the people abovementioned.
The report clearly establishes and expresses the crimes committed by Israeli soldiers and other officials.
In this respect, it explicitly concludes that attacking vessels with substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone was excessive and unreasonable.
It also states that the loss of life and injuries caused by Israeli soldiers was unacceptable, none of the nine deaths was accounted for by Israel and that the evidence showed that most of the deceased were shot multiple times, including in the back, or at close range.
The report clearly documents serious mistreatment of passengers, including physical mistreatment, harassment and intimidation, unjustified confiscation of belongings and denial of consular assistance.
The report however alleges that the inhumane blockade enforced by Israel against Gaza is lawful.
It is not possible and even out of the question to accept this approach.
The Fact Finding Mission, comprising highly competent and specialized lawyers mandated by the UN Human Rights Council have reported that the Gaza blockade is unlawful. They clearly documented this in their work following the incident last year.
This conviction was both endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council and supported by the UN General Assembly.
When this is the case, clearly then the controversial views put forward by the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Panel exceeding their mandates are based on political motives, rather than on legal grounds.
Turkey in no way accepts this approach, which jeopardizes the functioning and integrity of the panel.
Turkey totally rejects this approach, which it finds incompatible with the letter and spirit of the Presidential Statement adopted by the UN Security Council by consensus.
In this vein, we are determined to refer this issue to the competent international legal authorities.
Dear Friends,
Turkey’s stance against this unlawful act of Israel from the first moment has been very clear and principled. Our demands are known.
Our relations with Israel will not be normalized until these conditions are met.
At this juncture, Israel has wasted all the opportunities it was presented with.
Now, the Government of Israel must face the consequences of its unlawful acts, which it considers above the law and are in full disregard of the conscience of humanity. The time has come for it to pay a price for its actions.
This price is, above all, deprivation of Turkey’s friendship.
The only side responsible in reaching this stage, is the Government of Israel and the irresponsible act of the Government of Israel.
In this context, our Government has decided to take the following measures at this stage:
1. Diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel will be downgraded to the Second Secretary level. All personnel starting with the Ambassador above the Second Secretary level, will return to their countries on Wednesday at the latest.
2. Military agreements between Turkey and Israel have been suspended.
3. As a littoral state which has the longest coastline in the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey will take whatever measures it deems necessary in order to ensure the freedom of navigation in the Eastern Mediterranean.
4. Turkey does not recognize the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel. Turkey will ensure the examination by the International Court of Justice of Israel's blockade imposed on Gaza as of 31 May 2010. To this end we are starting initiatives in order to mobilize the UN General Assembly.
5. We will extend all possible support to Turkish and foreign victims of Israel’s attack in their initiatives to seek their rights before courts.
Distinguished Members of the Press,
I would like to emphasize another point.
We in Turkey, we are the representatives of an understanding that advocates peace instead of eternal conflict and wants to establish justice instead of tyranny. Our foreign policy is based on this fundamental understanding.
That is why, in the same manner that we have raised our voice against the massacres in Bosnia, in Kosovo, we have also shown our reaction following the brutal Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Today, the Government of Israel must make a choice and the time has come to make that choice.
Those who rule Israel need to see that it will only be possible to ensure real security by building a real peace.
They should also understand that the path to building real peace passes through the strengthening of friendships, not by murdering citizens of friendly countries.
However, it is also clear that the current Government of Israel is incapable of seeing this simple reality and comprehending the consequences of the huge changes taking place in the Middle East.
On this occasion, I would like to emphasize that the measures we have adopted and we will adopt are linked only to the current Government of Israel's attitude.
Our aim is not to harm or jeopardize the historic Turkish-Jewish friendship, on the contrary, we aim to encourage the Government of Israel to correct this mistake that does not befit this exceptional friendship.
Turkey has always demonstrated a sincere and constructive attitude regarding the prevention of developments that adversely affect regional and global peace and stability and has always sought to correct their negative impact.
Turkey has made known her demands and expectations in a very clear manner from the beginning and has done her part.
I would like to underline it once more.
The Government of Israel is the responsible party for the point we have reached today.
As long as the Government of Israel does not take the necessary steps, we will not be able to revert from this point.
I thank you.
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Maria 3 sept 2011
Hamas condemns UN report on Israeli raid on Mavi Marmara
(2:12) Hamas condemns UN report on Israeli raid on Mavi Marmara [Gaza, PressTV]
Zahhar: UN flotilla report biased, justifies siege on Palestinians
GAZA, (PIC)-- Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahhar accused Saturday the UN-commissioned Palmer report into Israel’s 2010 flotilla attack of not being neutral, as it deemed the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip legal.
He also called on Turkey to take further sanctions against Israel.
“When the report says the siege is legal, it justifies Israel’s blockage of any party or movement that wants to break the siege on 1.5m Palestinians in Gaza,” Zahhar said in a statement to Lebanon’s Al-Safir newspaper.
“The report has a clear bias against Turkey and the Palestinians and clearly comes as a result of Israel-American pressure,” he said.
“It is reasonable that Turkey would expel the Israeli ambassador and cut its ties with Israel,” Zahhar declared.
In a separate statement, Sawasya center for human rights in Gaza stated that the Palmer report’s justification of the Gaza siege makes the world community an accomplice in Israel’s five-year blockade, adding that the report gives Israel a “new green light” to commit more war crimes against the Palestinians.
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European ministers urge Turkey-Israel dialogue
SOPOT, Poland (AFP) -- European foreign ministers including France's Alain Juppe and Germany's Guido Westerwelle on Saturday urged Israel and Turkey to resume dialogue after a rift over a deadly Israeli flotilla raid.
"Our wishes are like those of the UN secretary general who said that this dispute between Israel and Turkey must be resolved through dialogue and mutual understanding, not via other means," Juppe told reporters at an informal EU foreign ministers meeting in the Polish Baltic Sea port of Sopot.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon appealed Saturday for Turkey and Israel to make up after Ankara took retaliatory measures over Tel Aviv's May 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla which left eight Turks dead.
"The German government is very worried by the recent dispute between Turkey and Israel," Westerwelle said at a separate press conference in Sopot Saturday, urging "all parties" to seek a solution.
Their words were a message sent loud and clear to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who was pressing his country's bid to join the EU at the Sopot meeting Saturday.
Davutoglu, who attended the EU talks on Saturday morning as Turkey is a candidate for membership of the bloc, refused all comment on the incident as well as contact with the international press.
"I don't give statements on the way", he told AFP as he headed for the airport.
Israel on Friday reiterated its refusal to apologize to Ankara for the raid. Meanwhile, NATO member Turkey suspended bilateral military ties with Israel and expelled Israeli ambassador Gaby Levy.
The Turkish measures came after a leaked copy of the UN-mandated report criticized Israeli troops for using "excessive" and "unreasonable" force when boarding the ferry Mavi Marmara in international waters on May 31, 2010, leading to the deaths of nine people.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417430
Abu Zuhri: Palmer report ‘unfair, unbalanced’
(0:26) Hamas criticized UN's Gaza-bound flotilla report
GAZA, (PIC)-- Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri criticized the UN commissioned Palmer report into Israel’s 2010 flotilla attack, describing it as “unfair and unbalanced”.
The report, which ruled the Israeli siege of Gaza as legal, affords Israel the opportunity to avoid responsibility, Abu Zuhri said in a press statement on Friday.
However, the UN report criticized Israel’s interception of the Gaza-bound flotilla saying the operation used excessive force, but in contrast called the flotilla mission a “reckless act”.
The Palmer report released on Friday added that Israel’s decision to attack the flotilla with heavy force at a location far from the Gaza Strip, and to board the ships without final warning is considered as use of excessive and unjustified force.
The Palmer Committee chaired by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer called on Israel to issue a statement expressing regret over the attack and to pay compensation to the families of those killed and injured.
In his statement, Abu Zuhri lauded Turkey over its decision to expel the Israeli ambassador and further reduce once strong diplomatic ties with Israel in the wake of the attack.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared earlier that his country had downgraded its diplomatic ties with Israel to the level of second secretary and froze all security agreements between the two countries.
Israel's May 2010 attack of the Gaza aid flotilla left nine Turkish activists dead and dozens injured.
Davutoglu reiterated that Turkey rejects Israel's siege on the Gaza Strip and would officially request that the United Nations and its Security Council would study and pass a resolution with regard to the five-year blockade.
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Foreign ministry: Palmer report not objective
GAZA, (PIC)-- The Palestinian foreign ministry in Gaza has criticized the Palmer report on the Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla, expressing surprise at its finding regarding the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip.
It charged that the report lacked “objectivity and professionalism”, which made it default on the siege and its “destructive consequences”, adding that the siege is one of the results of occupation.
The report justified Israel’s “oppressive and illegal siege”, which most countries of the world deemed unacceptable and should be lifted, the ministry said, and expressed absolute rejection of such justifications that only allowed Israel to continue its blockade and aggression against the Gaza Strip.
The ministry asked the UN to revise its position regarding the siege on Gaza since it owns specific reports on the degree of oppression and suffering that befell the Strip as a result of the siege.
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Turkey vows legal action against Israel
Turkey says it will seek legal action against the Israeli regime for its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound relief aid Flotilla last year after Ankara further downgraded its ties with Tel Aviv.
"Turkey will take legal actions against the Israeli soldiers and all other officials responsible for the crimes committed and pursue the matter resolutely," Turkey's embassy in Washington said in a statement, Reuters reported.
The threat came after a UN report said that Israel had used unreasonable force in its raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea in May 2010, during which nine Turkish activities were killed.
The report also described Israel's naval blockade on Gaza, which has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the impoverished territory, as 'legal.'
One day after the UN report was leaked to The New York Times, Ankara suspended all its military ties with Tel Aviv and has expelled Israel's envoy from Ankara over the regime's refusal to apologize for the attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla.
"Turkey also reaffirms that relations between Turkey and Israel will not normalize as long as Israel does not apologize and refuses to pay compensation for what it has done," said Ankara's embassy in Washington in a statement.
Turkey's President Abduallah Gul also said that expulsion of the Israeli envoy is just the first step in many possible measures taken against Israel if it persists in its refusal to apologize.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Saturday expressed his optimism that the two former allies could mend ties.
"I sincerely hope that Israel and Turkey will improve their relationship," Ban told reporters in the Australian capital, Canberra.
"Normal relationship will be very important in addressing all the situations in the Middle East, including the Middle East peace process," he said.
Observers believe Ban's statement and the recent UN report that legitimizes Israel's brutal siege of Gaza and its attack on a relief aid convoy reflect Tel Aviv's undue influence on the world body.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/197176.html
UN allows Israel to get away with murder
The long-awaited United Nations inquiry into Israel’s attack on the Mavi Marmara, the flagship of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, on May 31, 2010 has ruled that Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip is both legal and appropriate.
The UN-mandated inquiry also ruled that Israel’s action, in which nine Turkish citizens were killed, was “excessive” but not a violation of international law and has held both Israel and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla activists responsible for the violence.
This is a miscarriage of justice.
According to the UN investigators, the occupied and the occupiers are now the same and there’s no difference between the killers and the killed.
Israel and some other privileged countries are allowed to flout intentional law.
For example, the Israelis have been allowed to steal a people’s homeland, build homes and farms there, and confine 1.6 million people in a 360-square-kilometer coastal territory. They have also been allowed to make life a living hell for the Palestinians by besieging them from three sides and coercing former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to do the same on the fourth side of the Gaza Strip.
But according to the UN, all this is “legal and appropriate” since the oppressors are given certain privileges by the Western powers and the oppressed are just characters from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.
And the Palestinians cannot get even the simplest condemnation of the Zionist regime from the UN, even if it launches a full-scale military assault on the people of Gaza, kills over 1400 civilians, and destroys schools, hospitals, mosques, and the infrastructure of the territory.
UN panels do not regard this as a violation of international law and specifically the Geneva Conventions, which clearly state that the occupier is responsible for providing the basic necessities of life to the people of the occupied territory.
According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the occupier is bound to “ensure the food and medical supplies of the population” as well as “agree to relief schemes on behalf of the… population” and maintain “public health and hygiene.”
Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention are related to the protection of civilians in time of war.
Article 55 says: “To the fullest extent of the means available to it the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.
“The Occupying Power may not requisition foodstuffs, articles or medical supplies available in the occupied territory, except for use by the occupation forces and administration personnel, and then only if the requirements of the civilian population have been taken into account. Subject to the provisions of other international Conventions, the Occupying Power shall make arrangements to ensure that fair value is paid for any requisitioned goods.
“The Protecting Power shall, at any time, be at liberty to verify the state of the food and medical supplies in occupied territories, except where temporary restrictions are made necessary by imperative military requirements.”
Article 56 states: “To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.
“If new hospitals are set up in occupied territory and if the competent organs of the occupied State are not operating there, the occupying authorities shall, if necessary, grant them the recognition provided for in Article 18. In similar circumstances, the occupying authorities shall also grant recognition to hospital personnel and transport vehicles under the provisions of Articles 20 and 21.
“In adopting measures of health and hygiene and in their implementation, the Occupying Power shall take into consideration the moral and ethical susceptibilities of the population of the occupied territory.”
But it seems that none of this applies to Israel, according to the UN.
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UN chief urges Israel, Turkey to improve ties
CANBERRA (Reuters) -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Turkey and Israel on Saturday to improve their relationship and accept the recommendations of a UN report into the deaths of nine Turkis in Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound ship.
Relations between Turkey and Israel have deteriorated since the UN report was made public on Thursday. Turkey has expelled Israel's ambassador and frozen military cooperation after the report failed to prompt an apology from Israel.
Ban said strong ties between Turkey and Israel, which both share a border with Syria, were important for the Middle East and the future of the Middle East peace process.
"I sincerely hope that Israel and Turkey will improve their relationship," Ban told reporters in Canberra after talks with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
"Both countries are very important countries in the region. Their improved relationship, normal relationship, will be very important in addressing all the situations in the Middle East, including the Middle East peace process.
Ban said he would make no comment on the specifics of the report, written by a panel headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer.
"My only wish is that they should try to improve their relationship and do whatever they can to implement the recommendations and findings of this panel's report," he said.
The report found Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip was legal, but that Israel used unreasonable force when its commandos raided the ship, despite meeting strong resistance from those on board.
The rift between Turkey and Israel comes despite US efforts to encourage a rapprochement between two regional powers whose cooperation it needs to address changes sweeping the Middle East.
Ban is in Australia on his way to the Pacific island nations of Solomon Islands and Kiribati. He will also attend a meeting of Pacific Islands leaders in New Zealand, where he will discuss the threats of climate change.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417342
Israel: No plans to apologize to Turkey
TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma'an) -- Israel will not apologize to Turkey despite the expulsion of its ambassador, state officials clarified Friday according to reports in the Israeli media.
"Israel, like any other country, has the legitimate right to defend its citizens and soldiers," they stressed, according to the Israeli news site Ynet. "The State of Israel hopes a way will be found to overcome the disagreements, and will continue to work to achieve this goal."
The sources said that during the raid, Israeli soldiers boarded the Marmara ship without any lethal weapons, the news site reported. "The soldiers on board had no intention of hurting anyone," they said.
"Once the soldiers were attacked brutally by dozens of violent IHH activists, armed with clubs, knives and steel tubes, the troops were forced to defend themselves."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417284
Palestinian factions back Turkey for expelling Israel envoy
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip have welcomed the Turkish decision to expel Israeli diplomats from Ankara after a critical UN report about Israel's raid on the 2010 freedom flotilla.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri welcomed Turkey's decision to expel the ambassador. He said the decision was a normal reaction after Israel's "crime against the freedom flotilla and Israel’s refusal to lift the siege on Gaza."
The Popular Resistance Committees has also welcomed the decision and its spokesman praised Turkish positions "which are always in support of Palestinian rights."
The Ansar Al-Mujahedeen movement, another Gaza-based group, praised Turkey and its people’s position in support of Palestine and called on Turkey to end all relations with Israel.
The movement called on Islamic countries to take similar steps.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417309 3 sep 2011, 17:59 , Respect -
Maria 'Turkey must cut all ties with Israel'
Lawmaker Hossein Naqavi
A senior Iranian lawmaker has urged Turkey to take serious action towards completely severing its ties with Israel, downplaying Ankara's recent expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.
“[Turkey's] contracts and contacts [with Israel] are still in place with the expulsion of the ambassador of the [Israeli] regime,” member of the Majlis (Parliament) National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Hossein Naqavi told Fars News Agency on Saturday.
“If Turkey has the intention of taking practical measure vis-à-vis the Zionist regime [of Israel], [it] must display this practical measure by terminating and revoking its contracts with this regime,” he noted.
On Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the country had suspended all its military ties with Tel Aviv and expelled Israel's envoy from Ankara.
The measures came in response to Israel's refusal to apologize for its attack on an aid flotilla, which set sail for the Tel Aviv-blockaded Gaza Strip in May 2010. Israeli soldiers attacked a Turkish-flagged aid convoy, killing nine Turkish activists and injuring many others.
At the time, the Israeli military claimed that its commandos opened fire only after being attacked with clubs and knives and acted in self-defense. But activists on board the Mavi Marmara said Israeli troops started shooting as soon as they boarded the ship.
A UN inquiry into the deadly incident also blamed Israeli troops for using excessive force after boarding the aid ship.
"Forensic evidence showing that most of the deceased were shot multiple times, including in the back, or at close range," the long awaited UN report also known as the Palmer report said.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/197269.html
As Turkey Freezes Israel Ties, Critics Decry "Whitewashed" U.N. Report on Gaza Flotilla, Blockade
(7:12) As Turkey Freezes Israel Ties, Critics Decry "Whitewashed" U.N. Report on Gaza Flotilla, Blockade
UN report results in diplomatic stand-off: Turkey-Israel
(1:35) UN report results in diplomatic stand-off: Turkey <=> Israel [ITN]
Israel lauds U N flotilla report Video Reuters com
(1:35) Israel lauds U N flotilla report Video Reuters com
Israel Troubles
(25:00) Israel Troubles-News Analysis-09-02-2011 1 x viewed
Update: Turkey to raise Israel's blockade at ICJ
ISTANBUL (Reuters) -- Turkey said on Saturday that it would apply next week for an investigation by the International Court of Justice into the legality of Israel's naval blockade of Gaza.
Speaking to Turkish state-run television during a gathering of European foreign ministers in Poland, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also reiterated Turkey's support for efforts to win recognition for a Palestinian state through the United Nations.
On Friday, Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador and froze military agreements with Israel after a UN report on the killing of nine Turks during an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound ship a year ago failed to trigger an apology from Tel Aviv.
Aside from demanding an apology, and compensation for families, Turkey also insists Israel ends the blockade of Palestinians living in Gaza.
Israel says the blockade is needed to stop arms reaching militants from the Hamas movement that controls Gaza.
The UN report concluded that the blockade was "a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons entering Gaza by sea" .
Davutoglu said Turkey did not accept that conclusion, noting that it contradicted the UN Human Rights Council's findings.
"We will start the application process to International Court of Justice within the next week, for an investigation into what the Gaza blockade really is," Davutoglu told TRT news channel.
Turkey has also said it will pursue criminal cases against Israeli officials responsible for the killings of the nine Turks, one of whom was a US citizen.
Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, regarded as a hero in the Muslim world for championing the Palestinian cause, is expected to go to Egypt later this month for a visit that could deepen the rift with Israel.
There is speculation that Erdogan might go to Gaza through Egypt's Rafah border crossing to show solidarity with the Palestinians.
While both Turkey and Israel are allies of the West, the two have become estranged in recent years, largely because of the Palestinian issue.
A Turkish official said there were tentative plans for Erdogan to visit Egypt on Sept. 12, and, without specifying where, the official said Erdogan might go to another location during the trip.
Davutoglu warned Israel that the democratic forces unleashed by the Arab Spring would stoke animosity toward Tel Aviv unless it changed its policies.
"Israel has to make a choice, the Arab Spring will bring about a significant enmity against Israel if it fails to change its attitude regarding regional issues," Davutoglu told TRT news channel.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417457
Palestinian Authority criticizes UN flotilla report
RAMALLAH (AFP) -- The Palestinian Authority on Saturday condemned a UN report into a deadly Israeli raid on a Turkish-led aid flotilla as a political document not based on international law.
"This report is terrible and negative. It's a purely political report, it's not legal," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said of the report on the May 2010 raid which killed nine Turkish activists.
"It's a political report that is not based on international law, but on the contrary, it violates international law, because the Gaza Strip is still under Israeli occupation," he told AFP.
"Israel's actions against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip has reached the level of war crimes," he said.
The UN report leaked on Thursday accused Israel of acting with "excessive force" in raiding the six-ship flotilla as it tried to sail to Gaza in breach of an Israeli blockade.
But it endorsed the legality of Israel's naval blockade of the coastal enclave, which Israel says is necessary to prevent the ruling Hamas movement from obtaining weapons.
The raid led to a deep crisis in ties between Israel and Turkey, and the report was delayed several times while the former allies tried to patch up their differences and repair relations.
Turkey demanded Israel apologize for the deaths, compensate the relatives of victims and lift the blockade on Gaza, terms all rejected by the Jewish state.
In the wake of the report's publication, Turkey said it was expelling Israel's ambassador to Ankara and suspending military agreements with Tel Aviv.
It also rejected the UN report and warned it would take its case against Israel to the International Criminal Court.
While Hamas said the report was "unjust" and lacked balance, Israel has said it accepts the findings with some reservations, though it has not outlined its specific objections.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417455
UN flotilla report provokes angry reactions in Gaza
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The UN report into Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla has provoked angry reactions in the Gaza Strip.
The report, made public Thursday, found that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza was legal but commandos used excessive force in the May 2010 incident, in which nine civilians were killed.
Written by a panel headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, the report said the naval blockade "was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law."
Gaza resident Jamal Zarra told Ma'an that no people in the world were besieged like the unarmed population of the Gaza Strip.
"How can the blockade be legal while we don't have medicines in hospitals, and our movement is restricted?"
He said international law had become subordinate to the permanent member states of the UN Security Council, while the rest of the world was "helpless."
Meanwhile, Popular Committee against the Siege spokesman Ali Nazli asked if international law "would allow besieging and starving 1.7 million people in Gaza, depriving them of medicine and humanitarian needs?"
He urged the international community to pressure Israel to end the occupation and to hold Tel Aviv accountable for its aggression on the coastal enclave.
Talal Ukal, a political analyst from Gaza said the report was "political, lacking professionalism, violating international laws and contradicting former declarations by UN officials who said the blockade on Gaza was illegal."
Director of the Palestinian Human Rights Center Hamdi Shaqoura says Palmer's report "is worthless because it stemmed from political incentives."
"What we are interested in is the UN Human Rights Council which considered the blockade illegal and collective punishment against Palestinian population," Shaqoura added.
Amnesty International said Friday that the recommendations of Palmer's report were "insufficient."
The human rights organization said a call for Israel to continue easing restrictions on movement of goods and people to and from Gaza failed to capture the spectrum of rights due to Gaza residents.
"This means allowing exports as well as imports, fully opening all the crossing points under Israeli control, allowing Gazans to use arable land inside the Strip currently off limits due to the open-fire rules employed by the IDF [Israeli army] in the 'buffer zone,' allowing Palestinian fishermen access to their coastal waters, and allowing travel between Gaza and the West Bank," Amnesty said.
The Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, an Israeli organization, also criticized the report as "a failed attempt to achieve political compromise."
"Stopping ships to Gaza for reasons of security is legal – the civilian closure of Gaza is not," Gisha said in a statement, adding that international law required Israel "to allow freedom of movement for people and civilian goods to and from the Strip, subject only to individual security inspections."
Gisha added: "The Palmer Commission did not review Israel's overall closure of the Gaza Strip, still in place today. For it to conform to the principles of international law, Israel must remove the sweeping restrictions on export of goods, movement of people between Gaza and the West Bank and entrance of construction materials."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417439
Gul: Palmer report non-existent for Turkey
ANKARA, (PIC)-- Turkish president Abdullah Gul said on Friday that Turkey considered the UN inquiry panel's report (Palmer report) on the Israeli attack last year on Mavi Marmara ship "non-existent."
Replying to a question on the Palmer report's not suggesting an apology for Turkey, Gul told reporters in Istanbul, "Such a report does not exist for us."
The president said Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu's latest remarks on the Palmer report reflected the position of the Turkish state.
"In fact, such measures should have been taken earlier, but in an effort to give chance to some ally countries' good-intentioned efforts, we have waited until today," Gul stated.
"Perhaps, certain circles could not understand our state's determination to show that incidents of the past are not forgotten and that we will always protect the rights of our citizens. The measures announced today constitute the first step. In line with the progress of events and Israel's stance, further measures can be taken in the future," he added.
Gul noted that the Israeli government did not have any reliability or strategy.
"Turkey, as the most powerful country in this region, will not only protect its own rights but also the rights of all the peoples in need. The international community should also be aware of that," the president stressed.
Israeli troops killed eight Turkish activists and an American of Turkish descent in the May 31, 2010 raid on Freedom Flotilla aid convoy in international waters.
In addition to not suggesting an apology for Turkey, Palmer report shockingly said that Israel's blockade of Gaza was legal.
In this regard, Al-Mizan center for human rights said that the UN probe committee led by Geoffrey Palmer, the former premier of New Zealand was "biased and unreliable."
The center added that Palmer report violated the international consensus and earlier many human rights reports that criminalized Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip.
"In stark contrast with the position of the international community, the probe committee's report (Palmer report) concluded that the siege imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip did not violate the international law and considered it a legal measure responsive to Israel's security and military needs," the center underlined.
The center emphasized that the formation of Palmer probe committee has always been questionable, especially since there was an earlier similar independent committee that was formed by the UN human rights council to investigate the attack and the blockade on Gaza.
This independent committee submitted its report to the human rights council at its 15th session, which criminalized both the attack on Freedom Flotilla and Gaza siege.
The UN human rights' probe committee highlighted in its report that Israel's blockade on Gaza was illegal and mass punishment violating the international law, especially article 33 of the fourth Geneva convention, Mizan center noted.
This committee's report concurred with the position of the Red Cross which confirmed in many reports that Israel's blockade of Gaza was mass punishment against civilian population and clearly violated its obligations under international humanitarian law, the center added.
It also pointed that Palmer report contradicted as well Goldstone report and the position of the international community in general against Gaza siege.
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Rights orgs: Gaza siege illegal, Palmer recommendations fall far short of justice
Major rights organizations say that recommendations made by a UN panel inquiry into Israel’s deadly use of force on the Mavi Marmara aid ship last year do not provide effective remedy for the victims and their families. The report was expected to be released today by the UN secretary-general but a copy was leaked yesterday to The New York Times.
The Palmer report, named after the former prime minister of New Zealand who chaired the panel of inquiry, which included former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Israeli and Turkish representatives, recommends that Israel apologize to and compensate the families of those killed and injured during the maritime raid.
In his blog on The Electronic Intifada today, Ali Abunimah describes the Palmer report as “worthless,” given that the panel was “stacked for Israel” and includes “notorious human rights abuser” Uribe.
In a special report for The Electronic Intifada last summer titled “Uribe’s appointment to flotilla probe guarantees its failure,” Jose Antonio Gutierrez and David Landy detail Uribe’s long and shocking list of human rights abuses.
Abunimah also criticizes the report as it heavily relies on Israel as a primary source, which has “controlled and withheld most of the evidence.” As Amnesty International noted today, “The Panel did not have the power to compel witnesses to testify and based its review on the Israeli and Turkish national investigations into the incident, which reached very different conclusions.”
Amnesty: apology, compensation not justice
Statements issued by rights organizations today also find fault with the report.
While generally welcoming of the Palmer report, in its statement Amnesty International describes the report’s recommendations as less than full justice for the victims:
Amnesty International stresses, however, that an apology and compensation are only two elements of victims’ right to an effective remedy, which also includes accountability through criminal prosecutions where sufficient evidence is available.
The Palmer report also finds Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza — which the activists aboard the Mavi Marmara and other other ships among the Gaza Freedom Flotilla were attempting to break — to be legal, even though the Mavi Marmara was attacked in international waters.
This “finding” is essentially a hasbara gift to the Israeli government, which will use it to whitewash the cruel human experiment that is the siege on Gaza.
Amnesty International states:
The question of the legality of this closure regime, often referred to as the Gaza “blockade”, was not directly addressed by the Palmer report, which focused on the naval blockade of Gaza. The report does, however, note that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is “unsustainable”, and it calls on Israel to “continue with its efforts to ease its restrictions on movement of goods and persons to and from Gaza”.
Amnesty International believes that this recommendation is insufficient. Gaza’s 1.5 million residents should not simply be seen as recipients of humanitarian assistance, but as people with rights to health, education, work, an adequate standard of living, and freedom of movement, all of which continue to be violated by the Israeli-imposed siege. Israel should completely lift its illegal siege on Gaza, which violates the prohibition on collective punishment in the Fourth Geneva Convention.
This means allowing exports as well as imports, fully opening all the crossing points under Israeli control, allowing Gazans to use arable land inside the Strip currently off limits due to the open-fire rules employed by the IDF [Israeli military] in the “buffer zone”, allowing Palestinian fishermen access to their coastal waters, and allowing travel between Gaza and the West Bank, which are considered as one territory under the Oslo Accords and international humanitarian law.
The Palmer report’s finding that the naval blockade is lawful should not be interpreted to mean that the entire closure regime imposed on Gaza is legal. (emphasis mine)
Center for Constitutional Rights: Israel cannot impose naval blockade
The New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights also issued a statement today critical of the Palmer report, using even stronger language than Amnesty:
The Center for Constitutional Rights strongly denounces the conclusion by the Secretary-General’s Panel of Inquiry that the naval blockade of Gaza is legal, a finding that is inconsistent with international law as set forth by CCR in a legal analysis, and contradicted by conclusions of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission to investigate violations of international law resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla, as well as numerous human rights organizations.
Under international law, Israel cannot impose a naval blockade on Gaza, a territory it continues to occupy by exerting effective control over it. The blockade also constitutes collective punishment prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, and has caused excessive and disproportionate harm to the civilian population. The blockade of Gaza has led to a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, widespread failure of public infrastructure, and chronic unemployment due to the blockade’s systemic undermining of Gaza’s economy.
The Center for Constitutional Rights does, however, agree with the panel that the human rights and humanitarian situation in Gaza is “unsustainable, unacceptable and not in the interests of any of those concerned.”
Notwithstanding the flawed legal analysis and suspect composition of the Panel of Inquiry, it does make some factual findings that are worth noting. The panel found that the way in which Israel boarded the flotilla was excessive and unreasonable, and that Israel had no satisfactory explanation for how nine passengers were killed, all of whom the evidence showed were unarmed. The panel found that United States citizen Furkan Dogan was shot multiple times, shot at extremely close range, and shot in the back of his head, and that the evidence suggests he may already have been lying wounded when the fatal shot was delivered.
The families of the nine passengers who were killed, the many passengers who were injured, and all those who have yet to receive their stolen property from Israel, including evidence, have a right to redress, justice and accountability. The United States government must assist the family of American human rights defender Furkan Doanan in particular in their quest for justice, and disclose any information it has on Israel’s attack on the flotilla. (emphasis mine)
Toward this end, the Center for Constitutional Rights adds:
In June 2010, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed eight Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the US government’s knowledge of, and actions in relation to, Israel’s attack on the flotilla. After fruitlessly working for nearly a year to obtain responses from the agencies, on May 24, 2011, CCR filed a civil complaint against eight departments of the United States government in order to get adequate responses. CCR has also been working with Professor Ahmet Dogan, the father of Furkan Dogan, the US citizen killed on the Mavi Marmara, to advocate for accountability in the United States.
In February of this year, Kristin Szremski interviewed Ahmet Dogan for The Electronic Inifada. Szremski reported: “[Dogan and his lawyers] want to ask the United States to initiate its own investigation into Furkan’s death. Dogan also wants to know why American authorities have shown such little interest in the execution of his son.”
The family of Furkan Dogan and the other eight victims of the flotilla raid still wait for justice for their loved ones.
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Amnesty: UN flotilla report recommendations 'insufficient'
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The recommendations of the UN-sponsored Palmer report into Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla do not go far enough, Amnesty International said Friday.
The international rights group also said the report, written by a panel headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, does not imply Israel's blockade on the coastal strip is lawful, but simply addresses the naval blockade.
Amnesty welcomed the UN's finding that the Israeli army used "excessive force" in its takeover of the lead ship, the Mavi Marmara, in which nine Turkish nationals were killed.
This "concurs with Amnesty International’s assessment" and with the September 2010 findings of a UN Human Rights Council probe into the incident, a statement from the group said.
But Amnesty said recommendations of the latest report, released on Thursday, were "insufficient".
The human rights organization said a call for Israel to continue easing restrictions on movement of goods and people to and from Gaza failed to capture the spectrum of rights due to Gaza residents.
"This means allowing exports as well as imports, fully opening all the crossing points under Israeli control, allowing Gazans to use arable land inside the Strip currently off limits due to the open-fire rules employed by the IDF [Israeli army] in the 'buffer zone,' allowing Palestinian fishermen access to their coastal waters, and allowing travel between Gaza and the West Bank," Amnesty said.
The statement also noted that victims of the Israeli raid were due more than the report's recommendation of an "appropriate statement of regret."
"An apology and compensation are only two elements of victims’ right to an effective remedy, which also includes accountability through criminal prosecutions where sufficient evidence is available," the group said.
Amnesty added its own recommendation in response to the UN panel's mandate to pose how to avoid such events recurring.
"The best way to avoid similar incidents is for Israel to fully and immediately lift the siege imposed on Gaza since June 2007, and allow Gazans to rebuild the homes, schools, clinics and infrastructure destroyed by the Israeli military," the statement said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417367
Report: Turkey navy to escort aid ships to Palestinians in Gaza
An Israeli naval vessel
Turkish officials tell Hurriyet Daily News that Turkish navy will strengthen presence in eastern Mediterranean Sea to stop Israeli 'bullying'.
The Turkish navy will significantly strengthen its presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea as one of the steps the Turkish government has decided to take following the release of the UN Palmer report on the 2010 Gaza flotilla, Turkish officials told the Hurriyet Daily News.
"The eastern Mediterranean will no longer be a place where Israeli naval forces can freely exercise their bullying practices against civilian vessels," a Turkish official was quoted as saying.
As part of the plan, the Turkish navy will increase its patrols in the eastern Mediterranean and pursue "a more aggressive strategy".
According to the report, Turkish naval vessels will accompany civilian ships carrying aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Another goal of the plan is to ensure free navigation in the region between Cyprus and Israel. The region includes areas where Israel and Cyprus cooperate in drilling for oil and gas.
Additionally, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan instructed his foreign ministry to organize a trip for him to the Gaza Strip in the near future.
"We are looking for the best timing for the visit,” a Turkish official was quoted as saying. “Our primary purpose is to draw the world’s attention to what is going on in Gaza and to push the international community to end the unfair embargo imposed by Israel.”
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Norman Finkelstein The Whitewashed UN Report on Gaza Flotilla
(12:47) As Turkey Freezes Israel Ties, Critics Decry "Whitewashed" UN Report on Gaza Flotilla 1 of 2 1 x viewed
(8:49) As Turkey Freezes Israel Ties, Critics Decry "Whitewashed" UN Report on Gaza Flotilla 2 of 2 1 x viewed 4 sep 2011, 08:51 , Respect -
Maria 4 sept 2011
OIC censures UN report on flotilla attack
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned the UN report on Israel's deadly attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla, Mavi Marmara, in 2010.
OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said in a statement on Sunday that the organization “cannot accept any report that would whitewash Israel's attack on the humanitarian flotilla and condone Israel's illegal blockade against the Palestinian civilians,” AFP reported.
“The UN Panel of Inquiry's Report failed to reflect an objective and unbiased position,” Ihsanoglu added.
A recent UN report by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer concluded that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza was a “legitimate security measure.” The report blamed Israeli troops for using excessive force after boarding the Freedom Flotilla.
The Israeli military attacked the Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea on May 31, 2010, killing nine Turkish nationals aboard the Turkish-flagged MV Mavi Marmara and injuring about 50 other activists that were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.
Ihsanoglu also expressed his support for Turkey's recently declared plans to take Israel to the International Criminal Court at The Hague over the deadly incident.
The world's largest Muslim body also demanded another independent inquiry into the 2010 attack, calling on the international community to exert “as much pressure as possible” on Israel to end its blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador and suspended all military agreements with Tel Aviv on Friday over its refusal to apologize for the deadly attack.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/197399.html
Radwan: Palmer report 'biased and illegitimate'
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Senior Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said Sunday that a UN report on Israel's deadly raid of a Gaza-bound aid boat was illegitimate and biased to Israel.
The report, released Friday, was written by a panel headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer. It found that Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip was legal, but that Israel used "excessive and unreasonable force" when its commandos raided the ship and killed nine Turkish civilians on board.
Speaking at a march to protest the report in Gaza City, Radwan said Palmer's findings contradicted other UN reports which considered Israel's blockade a war crime.
He called on the International Courts of Justice to bring justice to Palestinians.
Turkey said Saturday that it would apply next week for an investigation by the International Court of Justice into the legality of Israel's naval blockade of Gaza.
Despite Palmer's findings that Israeli soldiers used excessive force during the May 2010 flotilla raid, Tel Aviv refused to apologize for the killing of nine Turks and on Friday Ankara expelled Israel's ambassador and froze military agreements with Israel.
Aside from demanding an apology, and compensation for families, Turkey also insists Israel ends the blockade of Palestinians living in Gaza.
Radwan praised Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and thanked the Turkish people for supporting Palestinians.
He also urged activists to send more aid convoys to the Gaza Strip.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=417547
Islamic Jihad welcomes Turkish punitive steps against Israel
GAZA, (PIC)-- The Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement hailed the Turkish government for taking punitive measures against the Israeli occupation state in response to its intransigence and arrogance.
"Ankara's declaration to minimize the level of relations with the occupation entity and suspend the military cooperation with the Zionists is an important prelude to isolating this entity as it is alien to the region," Islamic Jihad stated in a press release on Saturday.
The Movement urged all Islamic and Arab countries that have relations with the Israeli occupation to take similar firm decisions and hasten to stop their ties completely with it.
"Such decisions must be immediately announced and translated into action without delay in order to be more effective and deterrent to the Zionist savagery," it added.
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PM: Israel will not apologize to Turkey
Benjamin Netanyahu adamant that Israel's actions during 2010 Gaza flotilla raid fall within its right to self-defense. Jerusalem regrets loss of life, he says; 'I hope we can mend our relations with Turkey'.
"Israel has the right to defend itself," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, in his first official reaction to Turkey's decision to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Israel, following the release of the UN's Palmer Report.
"We do not have to apologize for the fact that Naval Commandos defended themselves," Netanyahu said during Sunday's cabinet meeting.
The UN's report, he said, proved what Israel already knew: "We have the full and basic right to defend ourselves from a violent IHH attack, and we don't have to apologize for trying to prevent arms smuggling to Hamas terrorists and for defending our citizens and our children.
"Just as IDF soldiers and commandos defend us, we will defend them – in any international forum," he added.
"Israel regrets any loss of life and I hope we can find a way to mend our relations with Turkey," Netanyahu said. "Israel never sought to see the situation deteriorate, nor do we wish it to remain like this."
The UN-commissioned report, which reviewed the events of the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, found that Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza is legal, but expressed concerns over what it called the IDF's "excessive use of force" during the raid, which resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish citizens.
Turkey rejected the report's conclusions as biased and announced it was expelling the Israeli ambassador to Ankara and downgrading diplomatic relations with Israel to second-secretary level.
On Firday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said that as far as Ankara was concerned, the Palmer Report was "null and void."
Ankara also announced it would be exploring its options against Israel with the International Court of Justice.
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'Israel, US pushed UN flotilla report'
(25:00) Israel Troubles-News Analysis-09-02-2011 1 x viewed
Israel and the US have blackmailed the UN to whitewash its recent report on Israel's 2010 deadly attack on a Gaza-bound flotilla, a former US Senate candidate told Press TV.
“I think it is very clear that Israel and the US are involved in the blackmail of many people involved in the UN to come out with this sort of whitewash,” said former American Senatorial candidate Mark Dankof on Saturday, referring to the UN report.
The recently leaked UN report said that Israel had used "excessive" force in its raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
The probe, also, described Israel's now-four-year-old all-out blockade on the Gaza Strip as legal.
“It seems to me that whether you are looking at the activities of [the] people of the central banking community that were clearly pressuring [United] Nations' states, to go along with the whitewash of Israel, or you are talking about the situation where the US is using its direct influence upon these UN member states, through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is clearly a representative of the Israeli lobby, for all practical intensive purposes, this is why we see what we see,” Dankof pointed out.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli military forces waged a deadly assault on a six-ship aid flotilla while it was in international waters en route to the besieged Gaza Strip.
Nine Turkish nationals, including a Turkish-American teenager, were slain and more than 40 others were injured onboard the vessel Mavi Marmara, with the incident leading to a major diplomatic strain in the bilateral ties between Ankara and Tel Aviv.
Turkey has been demanding Israel to make a formal apology for the action, pay compensation to the families of the victims, and lift the Gaza siege in order for the strained relations to be normalized between the two countries.
On Saturday, Turkey suspended all its military ties with Israel and expelled Israel's envoy from Ankara over Tel Aviv's refusal to apologize for the aggressive act.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/197312.html 5 sep 2011, 11:29 , Respect -
Maria 5 sept 2011
Bahar: Taking Israel to the ICJ best response to Palmer report
GAZA, (PIC)-- Deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council Ahmed Bahar welcomed Turkey’s decision to take Israel to the International Court of Justice, saying it was the best response to the Palmer report which was biased to Israel.
In a statement on Saturday evening, Bahar called on the ICJ to stand for “justice and equity”, adding that the court faces “a real test” in the light of the Palmer report, which he said was politically motivated.
Bahar also called on the Arabs and Muslims to take a stance in support of Turkey’s decision and one which defends the Palestinians in international forums amid “Zionist aggression”.
He lauded Turkey for defending the Palestinians’ rights and major causes which he said Israel wants to extinguish as the world community remains silent over Israel’s racist practices against the Palestinians.
He also called on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League, and other Arab and Muslim groups in international organizations and UN bodies to unify positions on the same pattern as Turkey in a way that would ensure an end to the siege on Gaza.
Turkey has decided to challenge Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip with the ICJ after a UN investigation panel into a Gaza aid flotilla attack ruled the siege as legal. The report likewise legitimized Israel’s lethal interception of the flotilla but said that Israel used excessive force in doing so.
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Lawyers for Freedom Flotilla victims reject Palmer report
ISTANBUL, (PIC)-- Lawyers for the victims of Freedom Flotilla massacre strongly denounced the UN report (Palmer report) about Israel's deadly attack on an aid convoy of six ships on May 31, 2010 in international waters of the mediterranean sea.
The lawyers expressed their condemnation in response to leaked documents from a report submitted to the UN by its probe committee led by former New Zealand premier Geoffrey Palmer.
Lawyer Ramadan Nyaba said what was leaked from Palmer report was very reprehensible especially since it coincided with the world day of peace which fell on the first of September.
Nyaba affirmed, on behalf of other lawyers, that they would take all legal measures against Israel, especially with the international criminal court in the Hague, noting they have documents supported by confessions made by Israeli soldiers who carried out the attack.
Nyaba added that the lawyers filed a complaint on behalf of the victims with the court in the Hague and accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity.
In this regard, deputy head of freedom and justice party in Egypt Isam Al-Aryan criticized Palmer report for legalizing Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip and giving it the right to starve one and a half million people.
Aryan hailed Turkey for rejecting this report and the steps it has taken against it and urged the Arab and Islamic governments to support the Turkish position and the moves it intends to take with the international court of justice against Israel and Palmer report.
For his part, Sheikh Hafez Salama, a senior commander from the Egyptian popular resistance during Suez war in 1973, demanded the military council in Egypt to take a position similar to the one taken by Turkey and expel the Israeli ambassador.
"The Turkish government expelled the Zionist ambassador from its territory and severed its ties with the occupation entity for not apologizing for shedding the blood of its Turkish sons during the attack on the Ship Marmara of the Freedom Flotilla, so we must act exactly as Turkey did," Sheikh Salama stated in a press release.
Many Egyptian political and national figures have demanded lately their government and the military council to expel the Israeli ambassador from Cairo in response to his state's latest crime which claimed the lives of Egyptian soldiers and injured many others.
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OIC and Arab League criticize the Palmer report
CAIRO, (PIC)-- The UN-commissioned Palmer report into Israel’s 2010 attack that killed nine activists on board a Gaza aid flotilla has drawn heavy criticism from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League, and human rights organizations.
The report, which was disseminated by media on Thursday, concluded that the Israeli navy used excessive force while seizing the flotilla en route to the Gaza Strip. However, it deemed Israel’s maritime blockade of the Strip as legal.
In a statement on Sunday, OIC secretary-general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said the report by the investigating committee, headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, “failed to reflect an objective and unbiased position,” as it deemed Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip as legal.
“The OIC cannot accept any report that would whitewash Israel’s attack on the humanitarian flotilla and condone Israel’s illegal blockade against the Palestinian civilians,” he said.
In a separate statement, the Arab League’s deputy secretary general in charge of the occupied Palestinian and Arab territories Mohammed Sabih said the report could be taken by Israel as a pretext to continue its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
He said that the report harms the reputation of the United Nations, adding that it is against the international law to impose a siege on a country because of political reasons, and that the siege is banned under collective punishment laws covered by the Geneva Conventions.
The Palestinian Human Rights Center also condemned the UN report, accusing the committee that UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon appointed to hold investigations that led to it was in fact a distinctly political panel of investigators, what led to purely political results.
The PHRC ruled out that legal opinions according to international law could conclude that Israel’s siege on Gaza would be legal.
The PHRC also accused the panel of not being professional, also saying that it opposed the legal views of various experts of international law and UN human rights bodies, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, all of which consider the siege illegal.
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Give the Palmer report the contempt it deserves
By Khalid Amayreh in Israeli-occupied Jerusalem
On Friday, 2 September, a pro-Israeli body at the United Nations released a brazenly unbalanced report concluding that Israel's four-year blockade of some 1.7 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was "legal" and "within the barometers of international law."
The scandalous report, dubbed as the Palmer report, also concluded that the manifestly criminal Israeli assault on a Turkish ship carrying solidarity activists and humanitarian materials to besieged Gazans, which occurred 18 months ago and killed at least nine Turkish citizens and injured many others, was also legal.
The report was reportedly prepared by a group of fanatical Zionists who thought that Israel could do nothing wrong and that its victims, whether Turks or Arabs, were either terrorists or sub-humans whose lives had no sanctity whatsoever.
The obscene disregard of truth inherent in that infamous and biased document showed that professionalism and objectivity were the last things on the minds of that commission's members.
Indeed, the victims of the Gaza siege, which ironically is yet to be lifted, have every right under the sun to cry out to the seventh heaven, in anger and bitterness, wondering what right the Nazi-like entity, Israel, ever had to withhold medicine and food supplies, fuel and other basic necessities from the people of Gaza.
To justify its murderous and enduring blockade, which killed ( and continues to kill) thousands of innocent people, including children, and devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands others, Israel invoked the mantra of arms smuggling into Gaza .
However, the truth of the matter is that under the rubric of preventing the alleged smuggling of weapons into the coastal enclave, Israel repeatedly demonstrated that it was hell-bent on starving ordinary Gazans by denying them badly-needed medicine and by ruining their originally meager economy, causing real starvation with catastrophic proportions.
In fact, some Zionist officials boasted rather gleefully and sadistically about Israel's ability to make the people of Gaza go on a diet. Unfortunately, the sickening remarks were not prominently featured in the Jewish-controlled American and western press whose coverage of Israeli criminality fell markedly short of basic professional standards.
In the final analysis, when people, including Jews, think, behave and act like the Nazis, these people ought to be compared with the Nazis, let alone treated as the Nazis were treated.
Failing to hold these comparisons due to "special sensitivities" such as the fear of being branded "anti-Semitic" is both a betrayal of human conscience and professional standards.
Gaza is not a state, it is rather an impoverished and heavily-populated coastal enclave packed with refugees who had been forced to flee their native towns and villages at the hands of terrorist Jewish gangs coming from Eastern Europe .
Israel claimed ad nauseam it left Gaza for good. However, the truth of the matter is that the Nazi-apartheid regime retained its erstwhile tight control of Gaza's territorial water, border crossings as well as air space.
And when the Islamic liberation movement, known as Hamas, won meticulously internationally observed elections, Israel lost its composure and decided to impose draconian sanctions encompassing everything entering Gaza or coming out of the blockaded territory.
The criminal siege, which many courageous international observers compared with the Nazi siege of the Ghetto Warsaw during the Second World War, was always made to produce maximum suffering and pain thanks to a never-ending series of criminal aggressions that mainly targeted innocent civilians.
Israeli leaders, most of them are actually certified war criminals, were quoted on several occasions as saying that the targeting of innocent Palestinian civilians by the Israeli occupation army was meant to force the civilians to rise up against their elected government.
There is no doubt that the deliberate and planned targeting of innocent children by Israel is a criminal act. Even Israeli human rights organizations, such as B'tselem, admit that it is.
The fact, that the whoring press and TV networks in New York , London , or Montreal don't see it this way doesn't make the reality of Israeli criminality any less nefarious.
A genocide or an attempted genocide doesn't become less evil if and when perpetrated by Jews. This is what Israel's ignorant supporters in the West ought to realize, the sooner the better.
In light, one is prompted to treat the Palmer report with the contempt it deserves. In the final analysis, judging murder, including haphazard murder, as legal because Jews are involved is the ultimate expression of moral bankruptcy, dishonesty and maliciousness.
The same thing applies to the other conclusion about the murderous attack on Marmara, the Turkish aid ship sailing in international waters in May 2011. That ship was carrying peaceful activists who wanted to reach the shore of Gaza to deliver urgently-needed relief materials, including milk, to besieged Gazans.
Yet, instead of allowing the ship to proceed to its destination unhindered, the Gestapo-like Israeli marines ganged up on innocent and unarmed men and women, riddling them with bullets from all sides.
The Turks and other activists onboard Marmara never ever posed any real threat to the Jewish Rambos. How could they possibly do that, unless we adopt the proverbial criminal logic that it was the victims' heads and chests that hit the bullets, not the other way around, which puts the blames decidedly on the victims.!
Unfortunately, the government of Israel resorted to hasbara and lies and stone-walling to escape responsibility, claiming that its soldiers' lives were endangered, a claim that shouldn't be dignified by commenting on it.
Moreover, in an effort to come out clean of this murderous obscenity, Israel made numerous insinuations about the humanitarian organization that planned and chartered the aid voyage, calling it terrorist.
Well, the Jewish state and its numerous mouthpieces of mendacity would automatically call anyone giving the Palestinians a helping hand terrorist even if the that one were Jesus Christ or Moses, the son of Amram.
This is their way of demonizing and dehumanizing their victims, just as the Nazis did several decades ago.
It is really heartening that the Turkish government has decided to show Israel that Turkish blood is a red line and that Israel could no longer mobilize its Free Mason tools in Turkey to bully the Turkish leadership to grovel before Jewish feet. These days are over.
The reported decision to expel the Zionist ambassador from Ankara, along with the planned downgrading of security relations with the Jewish Reich in occupied Jerusalem, should only be the beginning of a new strategic approach on the part of Turkey toward Israel, an approach that must demonstrate to Jews and non-Jews alike that Muslims are human beings, too, and have dignity like everyone else.
http://fwd4.me/0Ah0 6 sep 2011, 14:17 , Respect -
Maria 6 sept 2011
Erdogan labels Israel a supporter of "State Terror" over flotilla findings
Istanbul (Pal Telegraph) - Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, accused Israel of behaving like a “spoiled child” as he declared a freeze on military trade between the two countries in response to Israel’s refusal to apologise for a 2010 raid on a ship carrying activists trying to reach the Gaza Strip.
Relations between the two countries have deteriorated in recent days following the publication of a UN report which both said Israel had the right to control access to waters off Gaza and accused it of using excessive force in the 2010 raid.
The ship, the Mavi Marmara, was part of a flotilla of activist vessels trying to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Eight Turkish citizens and one US-Turkish dual national died on the ship.
Labelling Israel a “spoiled child” and a supporter of “state terror”, Mr Erdogan said on Tuesday that Turkey was suspending all trade “relations related with defence” with the country because of its refusal to apologise.
Trade between the two countries totalled almost $3.5bn last year. One casualty may be a $141m deal to upgrade Turkish F16 fighter jets with Israeli-made electronics.
But the growing dispute between the two countries may also have regional consequences.
Mr Erdogan is planning to visit Egypt next week to sign a strategic partnership agreement – a trip that may include travelling across the border to the Gaza Strip – and his stance could put pressure on Cairo to harden its own line towards Israel.
Turkey announced last week that it was expelling senior diplomats from Israel’s embassy in Ankara, freezing defence ties and planning measures to protect shipping in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In recent days, Israeli and Turkish passengers have complained of being harassed and humiliated at Istanbul and Tel Aviv airports respectively and on Tuesday Mr Erdogan said Turkey would take a more “visible” presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The sharp deterioration in relations has alarmed Israeli officials and the broader public alike, heightening an already mounting sense of diplomatic and regional isolation.
“We are deliberately adopting a policy of restraint,” said an Israeli official. “We want to contain the problem and solve the problem, and that won’t be done by exchanging harsh words.”
Israeli officials are worried above all else that Turkey’s confrontational posture will eventually be mirrored by Egypt and Jordan – the only Arab countries with diplomatic ties to Israel – leaving Israel without a single ally in the Muslim world.
Israeli analysts argue that Mr Erdogan’s planned visit to Egypt will be a critical test. Israel fears that the Egyptian leadership will allow the Turkish leader to cross into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a move that would hand a crucial political victory to the Islamist group and mark a painful snub to Israel.
Mr Erdogan said on Tuesday he would only make a final decision whether to visit Gaza once he was in Egypt and would do so in consultation with Cairo.
“If the Egyptians allow him to visit, it is a new era in relations between Turkey and Egypt,” said Alon Liel, a former Israeli envoy to Ankara. “We will do everything possible to prevent that but if they do allow it, it will be a dramatic shift in regional diplomacy.”
Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, added that Turkey’s stance would have important consequences in the US. “Israel’s supporters in Washington are going to mobilise against Turkey in a big way,” he said. But he added that Turkey had been “extraordinarily shrewd” by agreeing last week a Nato missile defence deal long sought by the US – so demonstrating its value to its Nato partners.
The current Turkish-Israeli tensions are expected to undermine all aspects of the relationship – from trade and military ties to culture and sporting events.
The most high-profile Turkish-Israeli military deal of recent years – the sale of ten Israeli-made Heron drones to the Turkish air force – will not be affected. The $150m deal was finally completed last year, when Turkey took delivery of the drones.
But the 2008 deal to supply Israeli-made electronic imaging systems to the Turkish fleet of F-16s could now be frozen. Turkey was due to take delivery of the units in the next 12-18 months. The Israeli companies involved are IAI and Elbit.
A less serious, but perhaps more visible, test of the Turkish-Israeli relationship is likely to come next week, when the football teams of Besiktas Istanbul and Maccabi Tel Aviv meet in the group stage of the Uefa Europe League. The match will take place in Istanbul, in front of one of the most passionate home crowds in Turkey.
“If I was a supporter of Maccabi, I wouldn’t go to Istanbul,” said Mr Liel. (Financial Times).
http://networkedblogs.com/mET3d
Justice ministry: Palmer report politicized and not professional
GAZA, (PIC)-- The Palestinian ministry of justice said the Palmer report on Israel's deadly attack on Freedom Flotilla aid convoy and Gaza siege was politicized, non-professional and not up to the size of the crime committed by Israel.
Assistant deputy minister Osama Saad told on Monday a news conference in Gaza that the phrases used in Palmer report were significantly mild and softened towards Israel and did not reflect what happened to unarmed aid activists in international waters.
Saad stressed that the report deliberately ignored the legal facts found in international law that criminalizes attacks on civilians, legitimized the inhuman blockade imposed on Gaza and gave Israel the green light to commit more crimes.
He noted that Palmer report was contrary to the consensus formed by international institutions and parties which are well-known for their credibility and had already submitted their reports in this regard to the UN such as Goldstone report, Folk report and the Arab League report.
The Palestinian official demanded the UN general assembly to reject Palmer report, consider it non-existent and adopt the other reports that criminalized the blockade imposed on Gaza.
The official hailed the moves taken by the Turkish government against Israel, including its intention to take legal action against it.
http://fwd4.me/0Ams