Gaza flotilla attack: Turkish activists get heroes' welcome
Hundreds of activists deported from Israel following a bloody raid by Israeli commandos on a pro-Palestinian flotilla returned to a hero's welcome in Turkey early today. Nine bodies were on the first plane.
Deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc and several Turkish lawmakers welcomed them at the airport after Turkey pressured Israel to release the detainees, most of whom are Turkish. Others were from Arab countries, Europe and the US.
"They faced barbarism and oppression but returned with pride," Arinc said.
A few thousand jubilant relatives and supporters, waving Palestinian and Turkish flags, burst into applause outside the airport, chanting "God is Great!" They later walked to the perimeters near the tarmac to see their loved ones. Another crowd celebrated their return in downtown Istanbul.
"Turkey is proud of you!" the crowd chanted as they shouted "Down with Israel!"
Three air ambulance planes carrying wounded activists had landed in Ankara earlier. They were bussed to a medical centre to undergo treatment, NTV television said.
The flotilla aimed to break a blockade that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip and carry food and other supplies to the Palestinians who live there.
Earlier, Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, rejected calls to lift the blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, insisting the ban prevents missile attacks on Israel. He labelled worldwide criticism of his navy's bloody raid on a pro-Palestinian flotilla as "hypocrisy".
"This was not the Love Boat," Netanyahu said in an address to the nation, referring to the vessel boarded by commandos, setting off clashes that led to the deaths of nine activists. "It was a hate boat."
While Israeli officials spent most of the day trying to contain the flood of diplomatic condemnation of the raid, Netanyahu was anything but conciliatory in his first nationally broadcast comments since Monday's military action.
"Israel is facing an attack of international hypocrisy," he said, asserting that the Jewish state is the victim of an Iran-backed campaign to arm the Hamas rulers of Gaza with missiles that could hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Netanyahu said the aim of the flotilla was to break the blockade, not to bring aid to Gaza. If the blockade ended, he warned, hundreds of ships would bring in thousands of missiles from Iran, to be aimed at Israel and beyond.
The result, he said, would be an Iranian port on the Mediterranean. "The same countries that are criticising us today should know that they would be targeted tomorrow," Netanyahu said.
Seven planes were being used to deport 527 activists to Turkey and Greece, Israeli interior ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said. Seven other activists remained in Israeli hospitals for treatment of wounds suffered during the Israeli raid, she said.
After all the planes took off, the Israeli foreign ministry said three activists remained in detention over "documentation and other issues". The three were from Ireland, Australia and Italy.
About a dozen female activists scuffled with security officers at the airport but were quickly subdued by authorities, Israeli officials said. Officials said no charges would be filed and the women were deported as planned.
The UN, Europe and others harshly criticised Israel after its commandos stormed the six-ship flotilla in international waters, setting off the clashes. About 700 activists – including 400 Turks – were trying to break the Israeli and Egyptian naval blockade of the Gaza Strip by bringing in 10,000 tons of aid.
Turkey's parliament urged its government to review all ties with Israel as the country prepared to welcome home Turkish activists who had been detained after the raid.
Israel rejects claims that Gaza – which has been under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since the Islamic militant group came to power in 2007 – is experiencing a humanitarian crisis. Israel says it allows more than enough food, medicine and supplies into the territory.
As Netanyahu rebuffed calls to lift the blockade, cabinet minister Isaac Herzog indicated Israel would oppose calls from the UN and others for an independent investigation of the raid.
"We are the last nation [that] you can say doesn't check itself," he told The Associated Press, while acknowledging that Israel was facing serious diplomatic trouble. "We are trying to take full control of this crisis management and move forward."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the US is "working to improve the humanitarian conditions" in Gaza, but he also stressed the Obama administration was "greatly supportive" of Israel's security and "that's not going to change".
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, also did not call for an end to the blockade, but she pressed Israel to allow greater access to humanitarian relief supplies.
The Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, has appealed to Israel to let a private Irish ship deliver its aid cargo to Gaza, but he admitted that Israel would probably block the ship because part of the cargo was concrete, which Israel bans from Gaza because it might be used by Hamas.
The 1,200-ton ship Rachel Corrie is also carrying wheelchairs and other medical supplies, organisers said. It was named after a US student crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting against house demolitions in Gaza. The ship was supposed to join the aid flotilla but was delayed by mechanical problems and is waiting off the Libyan coast.
Those aboard include Máiread Corrigan, a 1976 Nobel peace prizewinner from Northern Ireland, and Denis Halliday, who previously ran UN humanitarian aid programmes in Iraq.
Israel dropped plans to prosecute dozens of pro-Palestinian activists detained in the raid, opting instead to deport them all immediately in an apparent effort to limit the diplomatic damage from the raid.
"Keeping them here would do more damage to the country's vital interests than good," Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein wrote in the order.
In Turkey, Yavuz Dede, the vice-president of the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, alleged Israel had failed to account for all the passengers and crew on the six ships and was deliberately delaying the activists' departure to cover up the missing persons.
"We see this delay in the planes' [taking off] as an attempt to disguise the loss of people," Dede told a press conference at the foundation's Istanbul headquarters.
The Israeli interior ministry, however, said all those aboard the aid convoy had been accounted for. Haddad listed 702 activists being deported and seven still in Israeli hospitals. She said five were taken to the Lebanese border and repatriated there.