Activists sending more boats to challenge Gaza blockade despite deadly Israeli flotilla raid

New boats headed to Gaza to challenge blockade

JERUSALEM — Pro-Palestinian activists promised Tuesday to send two more boats to challenge Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as international outrage mounted over a botched Israeli raid that left nine people dead.

Also Tuesday, the U.N. Security Council called for an impartial investigation of Israel’s deadly raid, condemning the “acts” that resulted in the loss of life. After an emergency meeting and lengthy negotiations, the council agreed on a presidential statement that was weaker than that initially demanded by the Palestinians, Arab nations and Turkey.

Israeli officials have not identified the nine dead or the estimated 34 who were wounded in the raid, but said they would release the names of the dead later Tuesday. They said 50 of the 679 activists aboard the flotilla have been taken to Israel’s international airport for deportation. The others, they said, have refused to identify themselves and will remain in detention in a prison in southern Israel.

The renewed challenge to the three-year-old blockade of Gaza comes at a time of increasing criticism within Israel of the raid, which set off a firestorm of condemnation across the globe.

Israel has not allowed access to the activists who were taken off the six boats in the flotilla and there were conflicting accounts of what happened during the early Monday assault on the high seas.

Israel said it opened fire after its commandos were attacked by knives, clubs and live fire from two pistols wrested from soldiers after they rappelled from a helicopter to board one of the six vessels.

Late Monday, it released a grainy black-and-white video that it said supported its version of events, and Turkish TV also showed soldiers under attack.

But activists reporting before communications to the ships were cut said the Israelis fired first.

The flotilla was the ninth attempt by sea to breach the blockade Israel and Egypt imposed after the militant Hamas group violently seized the territory of 1.5 million Palestinians in 2007. Israel allowed five seaborne aid shipments to get through but snapped the blockade shut after its 2009 war in Gaza.

Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement that organized the flotilla said Tuesday that another cargo boat was off the coast of Italy en route to Gaza. A second boat carrying about three dozen passengers is expected to join it, Berlin said.

“This initiative is not going to stop,” Berlin said from the group’s base in Cyprus. “We think eventually Israel will get some kind of common sense. They’re going to have to stop the blockade of Gaza, and one of the ways to do this is for us to continue to send the boats.”

She denied Israeli assertions that activists attacked Israeli commandos first and alleged that the edited footage of attacks released by the Israeli military and Turkish TV had presented an inaccurate account.

She also denied that the activists were armed.

Israeli media reports immediately after the raid focused on the attacks on the commandos but by Tuesday, newspapers and analysts reflected another view: That Israel should not have sent commandos to board the ship and that intelligence-gathering was faulty. The front-page headline in one paper, Maariv, referred to the “debacle” of the raid alongside the “bravery” of the soldiers who were taken off guard.

Retired general Shlomo Brom asked why the ships’ engines weren’t sabotaged rather than boarded by commandos who slid down ropes from a helicopter on to the ships’ decks while wearing asbestos gloves that didn’t allow them to handle a weapon.

“The entire intelligence community had all the time it needed to follow the protesters’ plans and preparation. Drones provided constant streaming videos of the ships, and it’s safe to assume other means of tracing and sabotage were used: Signal jamming, signal tapping, possibly even live agents,” Brom said.

“And still, based on the commandos’ testimonies yesterday, it’s clear they were not prepared for what awaited them on the deck.”

Analyst Sever Plocker demanded the resignation of the defense minister, Ehud Barak.

“It doesn’t make a difference how the decision was made to fall into Hamas’ provocation trap,” he wrote on the front page of the country’s biggest daily, Yediot Ahronot. “Only one thing matters: Ehud Barak failed and must resign.”

Israel had urged the flotilla’s organizers not to try to breach the blockade, promising to transfer some, if not all of the cargo to Gaza if the boats agreed to dock at a southern Israeli port. The military said Tuesday that the first transfer would take place later Tuesday, but gave no further details on how much would be transferred or whether any goods would be withheld because they were considered a security risk.

Tensions along the Israeli-Gaza border were tense following the naval raid, and on Tuesday morning, the Israeli military said Gaza militants infiltrated Israel and exchanged fire with troops. Israeli rescue services said two militants were killed, but the military would not immediately confirm that.

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AP correspondents Karin Laub, Grant Slater and Matti Friedman contributed to this report.