Tag: Second Flotilla

The All-American/European anti-Israel flotilla

The Turkish Islamist organization IHH has decided not to participate in the upcoming flotilla attempt to break the blockade of Gaza. As reported last week, IHH was under pressure from the Turkish government to drop out of the flotilla, presumably because the timing doesn’t look right for Turkey to precipitate an armed confrontation with Israel. (After the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010, Turkey warned that it might provoke just such a confrontation by providing a naval escort for future flotillas.)

This will mean no Turkish ships in the flotilla. Earlier this week, the French ship pulled out of the flotilla when pressure from French Jewish groups prevented it from docking in Marseilles, where it was to load its activists.

The ships left in the flotilla are the US and Canadian “Boats to Gaza,” the Irish Boat, the Swiss-German Boat, the Italian Boat, the Greek Boat, the Netherlands Boat, the Norwegian-Swedish Boat, and possibly one or two Spanish Boats. (CrethiPlethi has a very extensive write-up from late May.) That tally squares roughly with the Wednesday statement of activist Adam Shapiro (founder of the International Solidarity Movement, or ISM) that about 10 ships, other than the IHH contingent, would sail in the flotilla, which will reportedly get underway next week.

Thus, it is ships sailing under the flags of NATO and the EU that will be attempting to break the blockade of Gaza. But not all the flags of NATO; only the flags that fly over the liberal, democratic, traditionally Christian nations. In the surreal progress of events, Islamic Turkey has dropped out.

As CrethiPlethi’s article reveals, proto-flotilla surges from elsewhere have yielded mixed results. Indonesia reportedly has a flotilla movement, but there has been nothing concrete from it in the way of a boat or any real publicity. Malaysia’s Perdana foundation, brainchild of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, has of course been behind actual flotilla ships, but none are sailing with the All-American/European flotilla this month. Perdana supported M/V Rachel Corrie in the 2010 flotilla, and most recently was behind the antics of M/V Finch, which made a separate attempt to break the blockade in May 2011.

Also in 2010, activists in Lebanon, Europe, and the US sought to mount the “women’s flotilla” that was to sail from Beirut. Lebanese authorities prevented it from leaving port on the occasion of its highest state of readiness, and it eventually came to nothing.

So we reach June 2011, and the All-American/European anti-Israel flotilla. It’s worth noting just a couple of the activists who will be participating – as they did last year – in the 2011 flotilla. Dror Feiler, ubiquitous spokesman of the Swedish Free Gaza Movement, is a revolutionary- and musician-about-town who hangs out with IHH, Hamas, and the bloodthirsty terrorists of Colombia’s Marxist FARC insurgency. Douglas Farah reported a year ago that the Swedish-Israeli Feiler was on the board of FARC’s external propaganda agency, ANNCOL. When Paul Reyes, FARC’s chief ideologue, was killed in 2008, Feiler left a comment at the website of a news story – about US activists who were mourning Reyes – recalling his visits to FARC, expressing his sympathy, and posting the link to a music video he had made featuring FARC revolutionary songs.

Paul Larudee is a San Francisco Bay-area activist and piano tuner who participated in the 2010 flotilla under the aegis of ISM and his own Free Gaza Movement of Northern California. Larudee was photographed in 2008 with other activists receiving medals from Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, long-time terrorist and protégé of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin. Famous for writing up his moving opportunity to stay at the home of a successful suicide bomber, Larudee ran afoul of Israeli officials when he attempted to enter the West Bank in 2006 after years of conducting anti-Israel activity (Larudee’s reported objective: to “tune more than 40 pianos in the Palestinian Authority area”).

Blogger Lee Kaplan went undercover to attend an ISM training session sponsored by Larudee in San Francisco, at which he learned to deceive Israeli immigration authorities and help Palestinians confound IDF soldiers (see here for the ISM connection with terrorists who participated in the London tube bombing). Larudee is now planning to send an aircraft to break the blockade of Gaza, as discussed in his interview on Iranian television with British nutball politician George Galloway, the former MP who spoke candidly to Arab media of having given cars and cash to Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, and then lied about it to the English-language media.

So it’s down to the Western fringe leftists, who merit the title “useful idiots” as much as anyone ever has, and Hamas. That’s who is still planning, as of right now, to aim a gaggle of ships flying the flags of our nations at the Gaza coast and try to break the blockade, so that Israel can’t keep weapons from flowing to Hamas. If all the activists wanted to do was deliver humanitarian aid, they have two sound alternatives available: having it trucked in from Israel or having it trucked in from Egypt. But, of course, that’s not what their goal is, as they have already acknowledged.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

via The All-American/European anti-Israel flotilla « The Greenroom.

June 19, 2011
Israel Warns Of Using Force If New Flotilla Heads to Gaza

By ETHAN BRONNER

TEL AVIV — Israel made clear on Thursday that if a new flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists sought to break its naval blockade of Gaza like the one a year ago when its commandos killed nine people, the Israeli military would use force again, including boarding the ships and confronting the activists.

“We will do anything we have to do to prevent a boat from breaking the blockade,” a top naval official said in a briefing for foreign journalists. “If there is the same violence against our forces on board, there is a pretty good chance there will be injuries.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under Israeli military rules.

On Israel Radio on Thursday, the military’s chief spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said the army would stop any ship from entering Gaza. General Mordechai added, “There is an unequivocal directive from the government to enforce the naval blockade that is recognized by international law, and we will not allow it to be broken.”

The statements seemed part of a heightened effort to stop another flotilla and to pre-emptively explain Israel’s position if violence ensues.

Groups of Palestinian advocates in chartered vessels are scheduled to depart from a number of European ports this month and assemble into a flotilla heading toward Gaza to challenge Israel’s blockade and commemorate the deaths of a year ago.

Among those expected to participate is an American vessel with several dozen passengers, including the writer Alice Walker and an 86-year-old whose parents died in the Holocaust.

Because of insurance difficulties and political pressure, it remained unclear whether the ship on which last year’s deaths occurred, the Mavi Marmara of Turkey, would join the flotilla as planned. Israel, widely condemned for the commando operation, said that a year ago the ship was dominated by extremists who created the confrontations that resulted in the deaths.

A number of world leaders, including Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general; Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief; and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, have urged the flotilla organizers to drop their plans or wait and see how Gaza fares under changes in Egyptian and Israeli policies.

Four years ago, after Hamas took over in Gaza, Israel and Egypt closed off the territory, preventing most goods and nearly all people from going in and out. Israel began a naval blockade two and a half years ago when it invaded Gaza to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets into Israel.

But after the commando raid a year ago, international outrage over the deaths, along with the hardships in Gaza, contributed to a shift in Israeli policy. Israel eased its blockade, letting in more goods over land. After the revolution in Egypt this year, Egypt changed its policy toward Gaza, partly reopening its border to people. Today Gaza has plenty of goods available, but its economy remains devastated and unemployment is 40 to 45 percent.

Moreover, Israel continues the naval blockade. The government says its goal is to prevent Hamas from importing weapons by sea. In March, Israel stopped a vessel packed with weapons that it says were Gaza-bound.

This year an Israeli commission concluded that the blockade conformed with international law, as did Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara in international waters. The panel included two foreign legal experts who agreed with the conclusions. Turkey dismissed the report as lacking credibility.

Israel’s navy has been training for another flotilla and says it will use a number of tactics before boarding ships and do everything it can to avoid close contact with activists on board.

As it did last time, Israel says it will ask ships carrying aid to Gaza to dock in Israel or Egypt, unload the cargo and allow it to be driven in. Israeli officials say the flotillas’ goal is not to ship aid to the Palestinians, but to challenge and embarrass the Israelis.

The naval officer who briefed foreign journalists said that he did not believe that the coming flotilla would contain arms, but that Israel needed to enforce the blockade indiscriminately to defend against weapons imports by future flotillas. He said searches on board did not work because boats had many areas to conceal things, so the only reasonable way was for the cargo to be unloaded and driven to Gaza.

He said that many of those planning to take part in the flotilla were peace activists, but that they were naïve because “extremists will set the tone” if Israeli commandos board the ships.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 17, 2011, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Israel Warns Of Using Force If New Flotilla Heads to Gaza.

via Israel Warns Of Using Force If New Flotilla Heads to Gaza – NYTimes.com.

June 18, 2011
Organizer says flotilla to sail even if IH…

By BEN HARTMAN AND YAAKOV KATZ

06/15/2011 17:11

Free Gaza activist says Turkish participation desired, but not necessary, flotilla is about ‘Gaza occupation’ awareness, not humanitarian aid.

Photo by: Reuters/Emrah Dalkaya

The second Gaza flotilla will set sail in late June even without the support of Turkey’s IHH – the lead NGO in last year’s flotilla – which is reportedly considering pulling out of the initiative, an organizer told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

Speaking from Greece, Free Gaza member and International Solidarity Movement co-founder Adam Shapiro said the “Turkish participation is obviously something that we want to have as part of the overall flotilla but if tomorrow they decide to postpone [their participation] then we will continue.”

Shapiro said all of the other ships taking part in the flotilla are still finishing their preparations and are planning to set sail at the end of the month regardless of a report in the Turkish press on Wednesday that humanitarian relief foundation IHH is considering dropping out of the flotilla to concentrate on the Syrian refugee issue in southern Turkey.

Shapiro said that as opposed to reports that as many as 25 ships would take part in the flotilla, there are only 10 that are scheduled to sail later this month, with around 300 activists from dozens of countries taking part.

Meanwhile, Wednesday, the Israel Navy held a large-scale exercise to prepare its forces for the operation to stop the flotilla.

The exercise involved naval commandos from Flotilla 13 – better known as the Shayetet – as well as other naval units and special forces from throughout the defense establishment, who were being included in the operation as part of the lessons learned from the botched raid on the Mavi Marmara Turkish passenger ship last May.

The Israeli navy is under orders from the government to enforce the Israeli sea blockade over Gaza, which officials have said is crucial for preventing the flow of arms to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In recent months, the Navy has reviewed the operation to stop last year’s flotilla and has drawn a number of operational conclusions that it hopes will improve the upcoming operation to stop the new flotilla and prevent or at least minimize the loss of human life.

The Navy has been preparing rigorously for the operation, enlisting all of its Flotilla 13 commandos from the reserves and running different training models with various scenarios, from passive resistance – such as sit-downs – to potential gunfights and booby-trapped ships.

It is also preparing for the possibilities that commandos will encounter passive resistance or mercenaries armed with knives, saws, bats, as well guns.

Shapiro said the final departure date for the flotilla is not known but they are planning to meet in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the month and head towards Gaza.

Earlier on Wednesday, Turkish daily Hurriyet quoted IHH spokesman Huseyin Oruc as saying “we are reconsidering our plans. We cannot close our eyes to the developments on our doorstep.

“The international community is talking about an intervention in Syria, a development that would affect Turkey very much, as well as Palestine and peace in the region. All the factors are inter-linked and we must be looking at all of them,” Oruc told the newspaper.

“We will discuss the emerging conditions. Every country has its own balance. From our point of view, the developments in neighboring Syria are critically important,” he said.

Hurriyet also published that the IHH stated that the Turkish government did not force its hand in the decision, even though last week the paper quoted Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu as saying that “Israel should wait for a new Palestinian government to be set up and then lift the blockade on Gaza. The aid flotilla should also wait to see what happens with the Rafah border crossing being opened and to see how Israel perceives the new government.”

As of early this week, thousands of Syrian refugees had streamed into southern Turkey as the Assad regime stepped up its violent crackdown on the popular uprising that broke out in March.

Turkey has vowed to continue to help the refugees, but there are indications that they are anxious for the international community to help find a solution to the issue. The IHH’s reluctance puts into question whether the Mavi Marmara will sail for Gaza in late June as was originally planned.

Oruc said the IHH would make a decision by the end of the week.

When asked whether or not Egypt’s opening of the Rafah border crossing earlier this month has led to criticism of the flotilla, Shapiro said that Rafah “has not enabled any aid to actually get in. They’re allowing women and children and men over 40 to get out.”

He said the Rafah crossing “is not about aid, but then neither is our flotilla. It’s about raising awareness of the ongoing occupation in Gaza and the freedom of the Palestinians. The aid has always been secondary to the message of challenging the [Israeli] policy.”

Israeli human rights group Shurat Ha Din took credit for the cancelation of a French boat that was supposed to take part in the flotilla, but won’t sail because they were not able to secure insurance. French CMA CGM insurance and shipping company were going to insure the boat – the “Fleet of Freedom 2” but decided not to after recieving a letter from the group warning them of an impending lawsuit if they did.

via Organizer says flotilla to sail even if IH… JPost – Middle East.

June 16, 2011
Turkish FM urges int’l community to warn Israel, not Turkey, on flotilla

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has pointed to Israel as the party that should be receiving warnings over a second flotilla while responding to international calls on Turkey to prevent the flotilla from sailing to the Gaza Strip in breach of an Israeli naval blockade.

“Sometimes the international community has no courage to warn Israel and it chooses different ways,” Davutoğlu, speaking on Thursday, told Turkey’s Habertürk network in Konya, where he is campaigning for a parliamentary seat he hopes to win in general elections that are less than two weeks away.

Along with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a number of countries earlier called on Turkey to prevent the flotilla from sailing again so as to not increase tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Nine civilians, including eight Turkish nationals, were killed by Israeli naval commandos a year ago as a six-vessel flotilla, led by the Mavi Marmara, tried to breach the Israeli naval blockade on Gaza. Turkey demands an official apology and compensation to the families of the victims. Israel rejects this, claiming instead that its soldiers acted in self-defense.

Davutoğlu criticized the international community for warning Turkey instead of Israel, saying the international community sometimes lacks the courage to confront Israel. “This is not the correct position,” Davutoğlu said.

Noting that not only Turkish nationals participated in the flotilla last year, Davutoğlu said there will also be international participation in this year’s convoy, expected to set sail after Turkey’s parliamentary elections on June 12.

The Turkish foreign minister said efforts to portray the issue as bilateral tension between the two countries are only an attempt “to cover up a crime against humanity.”

“The blockade of Gaza is a crime against humanity. This is not correct, not legal,” Davutoğlu said, adding that Hamas and Fatah have agreed to join forces and that no rockets have been fired into Israel for months. “What is the purpose of the blockade then? We cannot sustain this international order if the security and sovereignty of a nation in one region of the world is considered more important than all other states. This is why this issue should be prioritized in the international sphere and why everyone must act responsibly,” Davutoğlu stressed.

He also balked at calls to prevent the flotilla from sailing and said that in democratic societies it is impossible to intervene in the work of civil society organizations.

via Turkish FM urges int’l community to warn Israel, not Turkey, on flotilla.

June 5, 2011
A UN Secretary General vs Freedom Flotilla 2

A UN Secretary General vs Freedom Flotilla 2

Humanitarian ships to sail to Gaza again, despite current UN disapproval and a previous attempt that turned deadly.

Richard Falk Last Modified: 02 Jun 2011 08:05

Freedom Flotilla 1 ships were intercepted by the Israeli navy, thereby denying Gaza of much-needed humanitarian aid following Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 to January 2009 [GALLO/GETTY]

It is expected that at the end of June, Freedom Flotilla 2 will set sail for Gaza, carrying various forms of humanitarian aid, including medical, school, and construction materials. This second flotilla will consist of 15 ships – including the Mavi Marmara from the first flotilla – sailing from Istanbul, but also vessels departing from several European countries, and carrying as many as 1,500 humanitarian activists as passengers. If these plans are carried out, as seems likely, it means that the second flotilla is about double the size of the first that was so violently intercepted by Israeli commandos in international waters on May 31, 2010, resulting in nine deaths on the Turkish lead ship.

Since that shocking incident of a year ago, the Arab Spring has changed the regional atmosphere, but it has not ended the unlawful blockade of Gaza, or the suffering inflicted on the Gazan population over the four-year period of coerced confinement. Such imprisonment of an occupied people has been punctuated by periodic violence, including the sustained all-out Israeli attack for three weeks at the end of 2008, during which even women, children, and the disabled were not allowed to leave the deadly killing fields of Gaza.

It is an extraordinary narrative of Israeli cruelty and deafening international silence. The silence was broken only by the brave civil society initiatives in recent years that brought both the symbolic relief of empathy and human solidarity, as well as the token amounts of substantive assistance in the form of much needed food and medicine. It is true that the new Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing a few days ago, allowing several hundred Gazans to leave or return to Gaza on a daily basis, but Rafah is not currently equipped to handle goods, and is available only to people, and so the blockade of imports and exports continues in force, and may even be intensified as Israel vents its anger over the Fatah/Hamas unity agreement.

Secretary General: No Flotilla

As the Greek coordinator of Freedom Flotilla 2, Vangelis Pisias has expressed the motivation of this new effort to break the blockade: “We will not allow Israel to set up open prisons and concentration camps.” Connecting this Gazan ordeal to the wider regional struggles, Pisias added, “Palestine is in our heart and could be the symbol of a new era in the region.”

A highly credible assessment of the Israeli 2010 attack on Freedom Flotilla 1 by a fact finding mission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council concluded that the Israelis had violated international law in several respects: by using excessive force, by wrongfully attacking humanitarian vessels in international waters, and by an unacceptable claim to be enforcing a blockade that was itself unlawful. Such views have been widely endorsed by a variety of respected sources throughout the international community, although the panel appointed by the UN Secretary General to evaluate the same incident has not yet made public its report, and apparently its conclusions will be unacceptably muted by the need to accommodate its Israeli member.

In light of these surrounding circumstances, including the failure of Israel to live up to its announced promise after the attack in 2010 to lift the blockade, it shocks our moral and legal sensibilities that the UN Secretary General should be using the authority of his office to persuade member governments to do their best to prevent ships from joining Freedom Flotilla 2. Ban Ki-moon shamelessly does not even balance such a call, purportedly to prevent the recurrence of violence, by at least sending an equivalent message to Israel insisting that the blockade end and that no force be used in relation to humanitarian initiatives of the sort being planned.

Instead of protecting those who would act on behalf of unlawful Palestinian victimisation, the UN Secretary General disgraces the office by taking a one-sided stand in support of one of the most flagrant and long lasting instances of injustice that has been allowed to persist in the world. True, his spokesperson tries to soften the impact of such a message by vacuously stating that “the situation in the Gaza Strip must be changed, and Israel must conduct real measures to end the siege.” We must ask why were these thoughts not express by the Secretary General himself and directly to Israel? Public relations is part of his job, but it is not a cover for crassly taking the wrong side in the controversy over whether or not Freedom Flotilla 2 is a legitimate humanitarian initiative freely undertaken by civil society without the slightest credible threat to Israeli security.

Appropriately, and not unexpectedly, the Turkish Government refuses to bow to such abusive pressures even when backed by the UN at its highest level. Ahmet Davutoglu, the widely respected Turkish foreign minister, has said repeatedly in recent weeks when asked about Freedom Flotilla 2, that no democratic government should claim the authority to exercise control over the initiatives of civil society, as represented by NGOs. Davutoglu has been quoted as saying, “[N]obody should expect from Turkey… to forget that nine civilians were killed last year […] Therefore we are sending a clear message to all those concerned. The same tragedy should not be repeated again.” Underscoring the unresolved essential issue he asked rhetorically, “[D]o we think that one member state is beyond international law?” Noting that Israel has still not offered an apology to Turkey or compensation to the families of those killed, Davutoglu makes clear that until such reasonable preconditions are met, Israel cannot be accepted “to be a partner in the region”.

Liberating Palestine: Arab Spring’s second stage

We should not overlook that further in the background of this sordid effort to interfere with Freedom Flotilla 2 is the geopolitical muscle of the United States that blindly (and dumbly) backs Israel no matter how outrageous or criminal its behaviour. And undoubtedly, this geopolitical pressure helps explain this attempted interference with a courageous and needed humanitarian initiative that should have been affirmed by the UN rather than condemned. It needs to be kept in mind that despite the near universal verbal objections of world leaders, including even Ban Ki-moon, to the Israeli blockade, no meaningful action has been yet taken by either governments or the UN in the face of Israel’s undisguised refusal to respect the requirements of belligerent occupation of Gaza as set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the First Additional Protocol appended thereto in 1977.

Liberating Palestine from occupation and refugee regimes should be a core, unifying priority of this second stage of the Arab Spring. Nothing could do more to manifest the external as well as the internal turn to democracy, constitutional governance, and human rights than displays of solidarity by new and newly reformist leaders in Arab countries with this unendurably long Palestinian struggle for justice and sustainable peace. It would also offer the world a contrast with the subservience to Israel recently on display in Washington, highlighted by inviting Binyamin Netanyahu to address an adoring US Congress, a rarity in the country’s treatment of foreign leaders paralleling the pandering speech given by president Obama to AIPAC, the Israeli lobbying organisation. It is unprecedented in the history of diplomacy that a leading sovereign state would so jeopardise its interests and abandon its values so as to avoid offending a small allied partner. It is in the American interest, as well as in the interest of the peoples of the Arab world, particularly the Palestinians, to unravel this mystery, and if not, to move the resolution of the conflict from Washington to the more geopolitically trustworthy auspices of Brazil, Turkey, Nordic countries, and even possibly Russia or China.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).

He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

June 4, 2011
US to offer Turkey peace process…

By JPOST.COM STAFF

06/03/2011 21:08

Ankara would host peace summit in exchange for restoring relations with Jerusalem, preventing upcoming flotilla, ‘Today’s Zaman’ reports.

The 'Mavi Marmara' Photo by: Reuters/Emrah Dalkaya

The Obama Administration may soon present the Turkish government with a proposition to stop the upcoming flotilla to Gaza and restore relations between Ankara and Jerusalem, Turkish daily Today’s Zaman reported on Friday.

The offer, first reported by Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, would involve Ankara hosting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, according to the report. The White House is expected to soon officially make the offer to Turkey.

Talks, which have been stalled since late last year after Palestinians demanded Israel extend a freeze of West Bank settlement building, would be resumed in Turkey following the model of the Madrid conference or the secret Oslo talks that followed in the early 1990s, Today’s Zaman reported.

Israel has been making great diplomatic efforts in recent weeks to pressure Turkey to stop a repeat of the Gaza flotilla that took place just over one year ago. Nine Turkish nationals were killed by Israeli commandos who boarded one of the six ships that attempted to break Israel’s blockade of the Strip. Another flotilla is expected to head for the Gaza Strip later this month.

Ankara, while reportedly warning its citizens of the dangers in making the sea voyage to Gaza, has said that it cannot prevent private citizens from making the journey. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu last month issued a warning to Israel, saying it should “not repeat the human tragedy it caused last year,” adding that Ankara would undertake “the necessary response to any repeated act of provocation by Israel on the high seas,” AFP reported.

On Thursday, Davutoglu issued a harsh response to international calls to stop flotilla participants from attempting to break the Israeli blockade. “Sometimes the international community has no courage to warn Israel,” the Turkish foreign minister said, adding that instead of warning Turkey, Israel should be receiving warnings about the flotilla, Today’s Zaman reported.

Davutoglu noted that like last year’s flotilla, whose participants hailed from a number of countries other than Turkey, the upcoming blockade-busting flotilla will include many international participants. In democratic societies, he added, governments cannot intervene to stop the work of civil society organizations, according to the report.

Amplifying up his rhetoric, a recent trend understood in Israel to be intended for domestic consumption ahead of upcoming elections, Davutoglu alleged that even the framing of eroded relations between Israel and Turkey as “bilateral tension” is merely an attempt “to cover up a crime against humanity,” Today’s Zaman reported.

Officials in Jerusalem in recent weeks, have been turning a deaf ear to Davutoglu’s anti-Israel rants because it does not want to play a role in the Turkish elections on June 12, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Much of Israel’s recent diplomatic activity is aimed at creating a more understanding diplomatic environment if the navy has to once again stop the flotilla.

Jerusalem has made clear that it will enforce the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz told the Knesset on Tuesday that Israel was prepared for the new flotilla. “The IDF learned the lessons of the [Mavi Marmara],” Gantz told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “The IDF will act to prevent any attempt to break the naval blockade.”

The navy has been conducting training exercises in recent weeks in conjunction with the air force in line with the lessons learned from last year’s flotilla. Members of the Israel Police and the Prisons Service, who specialize in quelling civilian violence, will participate in the operation to stop the flotilla together with the commandos from Navy Flotilla 13, better known as the Shayetet.

A senior navy officer said Israel was preparing a number of “surprises” for the ships that are expected to participate in the flotilla.

He said soldiers were under order to use force to “neutralize” armed protesters and attackers if necessary, but that the goal would be to take over the ships nonviolently and without casualties on either side.

Herb Keinon and Yaakov Katz contributed to this report.

via ‘US to offer Turkey peace process… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

June 4, 2011