ISRAEL IS considering how to respond to yesterday’s decision by the United Nations human rights council calling for an independent international investigation into Monday’s interception of the Gaza-bound flotilla.
The resolution, which also condemned Israel’s “outrageous attack”, was adopted with 32 countries voting in favour, three against and eight abstentions.
One option being considered by Israeli leaders is to set up a serious internal inquiry headed by a respected Israeli jurist.
Such a course of action, it is believed, would prevent a repeat of the international inquiry headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, considered biased in Israel, which followed the Gaza war in December 2008.
In a televised address to the nation last night, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu accused the international community of hypocrisy.
He warned that if Israel lifted the maritime blockade on Gaza, Iran would send huge amounts of weapons to the area, effectively setting up an Iranian port in the Mediterranean which will be a threat, not only to Israel, but to Europe as well.
With the exception of three passengers who are being treated in hospital for serious injuries sustained during the raid on the flotilla, all the other activists detained by Israel were deported yesterday.
Most of the almost 700 activists flew home. 126 detainees from Muslim states which do not have diplomatic relations with Israel crossed on buses to Jordan.
Israel had earlier vowed to prosecute those activists who participated in violent attacks against the Israeli commandos, but the mass deportation went ahead after Israel’s attorney general advised that the country’s best interests would be served by letting all the detainees leave as quickly as possible.
Defence minister Ehud Barak yesterday thanked the naval commandos during a visit to their base.
“We need to always remember that we aren’t north America or western Europe. We live in the Middle East, in a place where there is no mercy for the weak and there aren’t second chances for those who don’t defend themselves,” he told the soldiers.
Nicaragua yesterday suspended diplomatic relations with Israel in protest against the maritime raid, which Managua termed “an attack on a humanitarian mission in clear violation of international and humanitarian law”.
Monday’s raid prompted the worst crisis in Israeli-Turkish relations for years. Israeli diplomatic families serving in Turkey returned home yesterday.
One Israeli official compared the current anti-Israel sentiment around the world to the days following the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982, when Christian Phalangist forces murdered Palestinians in two refugee camps in an area of Beirut under Israeli control.
The tensions also spilled over to the Knesset plenum yesterday when some members of Israel’s parliament tried to stop an Arab-Israeli representative, who had participated in the flotilla, from speaking.
As Hanin Zoabi tried to speak, Miri Regev of the ruling Likud party shouted in Arabic “Go to Gaza, traitor. We don’t need Trojan horses in the Knesset.”
Knesset security guards had to intervene as scuffles broke out in the chamber.