Israeli police jailed or deported on Tuesday hundreds of international activists arrested aboard Turkish-backed aid ships bound for Gaza in a naval operation that left nine people dead and sparked world outcry.
The U.N. Security Council met in emergency session to discuss Israel's storming of the flotilla, with most members of the 15-nation body calling for a thorough investigation.
"This is tantamount to banditry and piracy," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the council. "It is murder conducted by a state." Most of those who died in the incident were Turks, according to one senior Israeli officer.
Big questions were unanswered: notably, how far Israel could continue to blockade 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after condemnation from allies; and how Israeli commanders miscalculated the situation and dropped marines onto a Turkish ship where they felt they had to open fire to save their lives.
While diplomats worked on damage control, Israel's navy said it was braced to intercept another aid ship, MV Rachel Corrie, that could reach Gazan waters later on Tuesday or on Wednesday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, flying home from Canada after cancelling a White House meeting on Tuesday with U.S. President Barack Obama, planned to convene his cabinet on his return to Jerusalem, officials travelling with him said.
Some 700 activists, many Turks but including Israelis and Palestinians as well as Americans and many Europeans — among them politicians, a Jewish Holocaust survivor and Swedish author — were processed in and around Israel's port of Ashdod, where the six ships of the blockade-running convoy had been escorted.
They were detained incommunicado, ensuring no contradiction of Israel's version of Monday's events. The military said the nine activists were killed when commandos, who stormed aboard a Turkish cruise ship from dinghies and helicopters, opened fire in what Netanyahu said was self-defence.
The Interior Ministry said on Tuesday that 50 activists had been taken to Ben-Gurion Airport for voluntary repatriation. Around 629 had refused, and would be jailed while Israel weighed legal options. Some 30 were in hospitals with injuries.
Israeli Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said police were gathering evidence to prosecute activists who had set upon the marines with fists, batons, knives and gunfire.
"All those who lifted a hand against a soldier will be punished to the full extent of the law," he told Israel Radio.
European nations, as well as the United Nations and Turkey, voiced shock and outrage at the bloody end to the international campaigners' bid to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Once-close Muslim ally Turkey accused Israel of "terrorism" in international waters.
Many Security Council members criticised the Israeli action with degrees of vehemence, and said it was time for Israel's three-year-old blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza to be lifted.
It is a view shared by the United Nations executive.
Following a 90-minute open meeting, the council went into closed-door consultations. Diplomats said envoys were haggling over the text of a proposed statement by the council, a task that dragged on into the evening.
CAUTIOUS U.S. TACK
The European Union, a main aid donor to Palestinians, demanded an inquiry and an end to the embargo.
The International Crisis Group, a think-tank, called for a complete change of tack by world powers and Israel toward Hamas.
"The incident is an indictment of a much broader policy toward Gaza for which Israel does not bear sole responsibility," it said.
"Many in the international community have been complicit in a policy that aimed at isolating Gaza in the hope of weakening Hamas. This policy is morally appalling and politically self-defeating … Yet it has persisted regardless of evident failure."
Israel's most powerful friend, the United States, was more cautious — disappointing Turkey. President Barack Obama said he wanted the full facts soon and regretted the loss of life.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke by phone with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
Her spokesman, P.J. Crowley, said: "Ultimately, this incident underscores the need to move ahead quickly with negotiations that can lead to a comprehensive peace."
Netanyahu voiced regret at the deaths but vowed to maintain the three-year-old embargo to stop Iranian-backed Hamas from bringing arms to Gaza.
That pledge could soon be tested. Israel's Army Radio said the aid ship MV Rachel Corrie, named after an American activist killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip in 2003, would approach the port of Gaza imminently. A marines commander told the station his men were "ready" to intercept the ship.
The White House meeting had seemed intended to soothe ties with Obama, which have been strained by differences over peace negotiations with the Palestinians. But Obama also must balance support for Israel — popular with American voters — with understanding for an angry Turkey and other Muslim U.S. allies.
Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, no friend of Hamas, called the Israeli operation a "massacre".
His Fatah faction made some conciliatory noises to its Islamist rivals in Hamas, whose violent seizure of Gaza in 2007 prompted Israel to tighten a blockade on the coastal strip.
The bloodshed sparked street protests and government ire in Turkey, long Israel's lone Muslim ally in the region.
International outrage sounded more uniformly hostile to the Jewish state than during its offensive in Gaza, which killed 1,400 Palestinians in December 2008 and January 2009.
Israel said it launched that war to curb Hamas rocket fire on its towns. But it has found it harder to win understanding for an embargo limiting supplies to Gaza's civilians, including cement the U.N. says it needs to repair bomb damage.
