Israel was working out details yesterday of a limited internal investigation into its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla and reportedly seeking US backing to add legitimacy to the probe.
The Forum of Seven senior ministers was meeting behind closed doors to discuss the composition of the proposed investigating committee, despite world calls for a far wider investigation of the May 31 raid in which commandos killed nine Turkish activists in international waters off Israel’s coast.
Media said the ministers would present their decisions to the US administration, whose backing is considered essential to help deflect harsh criticism of Israel for the raid and its crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The Yediot Aharonot newspaper said the ministers would have to decide on a different format should Washington deem that their proposal fails to meet the UN Security Council’s call for an impartial investigation “conforming to international standards.”
“We understand that the international participation in investigating these matters will be important to the credibility everybody wants to see,” US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said on Tuesday. “We’re in conversation with [the] Israelis and others about how to best accomplish this.”
The plan in its current form entails a panel of Israeli jurists, joined by two observers, one an American and the other from a European country, media said.
The Haaretz daily said the panel would lack investigatory powers, such as the right to issue subpoenas, and that its recommendations would not be binding.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has made it clear the special forces involved in the raid on the six-ship flotilla would not be questioned.
The committee may hear testimony from ministers, but will not be able to investigate on its own, Haaretz said.
The raid on the ships seeking to break Gaza’s blockade plunged Israel into a diplomatic crisis and led Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abruptly cut short a visit to Canada and postpone a trip to Washington.
He now plans to meet US President Barack Obama later this month, following a visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who was scheduled to hold White House talks later yesterday.
The talks come as the deadly raid turned the spotlight on the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza in 2006 after the capture of one of its soldiers and tightened the following year when the Islamist Hamas movement seized power.
Britain’s Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, reported that Israel is set to accept a plan under which it would ease the blockade in return for the international community agreeing a limited probe into the raid.
The seven ministers reportedly planned to discuss a possible easing of the blockade.
In Washington, Obama was expected to offer Abbas fresh US aid for Gaza.
Obama would also try to ensure that heightened Middle East tensions over last week’s deadly Israeli commando operation do not derail sputtering US-led peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.
Obama is likely to assure Abbas he will press Israel to loosen its Gaza blockade and allow in more humanitarian supplies, but at the same time the US leader wants to avoid further strains between Washington and the Jewish state.
The Palestinian leader will urge Obama, who has been more measured in his response to the flotilla raid than the broader international community, to take a tougher line with Israel.
“President Abbas will ask for President Obama’s intervention to unconditionally lift the siege on the Gaza Strip because this would be the only way to defuse tension,” said Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Abbas.
The Obama administration has deemed the three-year-old blockade “unsustainable.”
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