Turkey wants Gaza blockade lifted UN Security Council approves probe OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Israel said it would complete on Wednesday the deportation of all the pro-Palestinian activists seized in its raid on a Gaza aid flotilla and vowed to stop other ships from reaching the Hamas-run enclave. Amid international outrage over the deaths of nine people in the interception at sea, Turkey, which has recalled its ambassador from Israel, demanded that it lift its blockade of Gaza as a condition of restoring full ties. “The future of ties with Israel will depend on the attitude of Israel,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited commandos who took part in the raid and told them: “I came in the name of the Israeli government to say thank you.” Israel said it would deport 682 activists from more than 35 countries detained after the assault in international waters on Monday on six aid ships bound for Gaza. By midday on Wednesday, about 200 activists had been transferred from a holding center to Ben-Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, a Prisons Service spokesman said, and 123 passed through a border crossing into neighboring Jordan. The remaining activists would be released throughout the day, the spokesman said. All have been held incommunicado by Israeli authorities. Praising naval commandos for an operation that Israeli military affairs commentators have described as bungled, Barak said at the marines' base near the port of Haifa that they had carried out their mission under difficult circumstances. The captain of the Turkish-flagged Gazze, a freighter carrying the bulk of the aid, said the convoy was 68 miles outside Israeli territorial waters when he saw lights in the sea and sky and helicopters approaching. Israeli commandos then boarded his ship and subdued his crew. “They pointed two guns to the head of each of us,” Captain Huseyin Tokalak told a news conference in Istanbul after Israel released him. There were no casualties on his vessel. In an appeal echoed by Washington, the UN Security Council called for an impartial investigation of the deaths. Turkey, which recalled its ambassador in Tel Aviv, said three of the nine dead had been identified as Turks and a fourth had a Turkish credit card. Israel has not named publicly any of those killed. Davutoglu told a news conference in Ankara on his return from a US visit: “I see no reason for not normalizing the ties (with Israel), once the Gaza blockade is lifted and our citizens are released.” Another attempt to bust the blockade loomed on the horizon: The MV Rachel Corrie, a converted merchant ship bought by pro-Palestinian activists and named after an American woman killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003, set off on Monday from Malta.
