An agreement to normalize ties with Turkey after six years will have a positive impact on Israel’s economy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.
Speaking after meeting US Secretary of State John Kerry in Rome, Netanyahu said the agreement, announced by Israeli and Turkish officials on Sunday, was “an important step”.
“It has also immense implications for the Israeli economy, and I use that word advisedly,” he told reporters together with Kerry. Israeli officials have raised the prospect of lucrative Mediterranean gas deals once ties with Turkey were mended.
Kerry welcomed the agreement, saying, “We are obviously pleased in the administration. This is a step we wanted to see happen.”
Israel and Turkey on Sunday reached agreement to end a rift over the Israeli navy’s killing of 10 Turkish pro-Palestinian activists who tried to breach the blockaded Gaza Strip in 2010. A formal announcement of the deal is expected later on Monday.
Meanwhile in Israel, Energy and Water Minister Yuval Steinitz defended the expected detente between Jerusalem and Ankara.
Steinitz told Army Radio that from a moral standpoint Israel should pay compensation to the families of the 10 activists who were killed in an Israeli raid of the Turkish Mavi Marmara flotilla that breached Gaza’s naval blockade in 2010.
He asserted that the monetary compensation of $21 million to the victims’ families is worth the price when considering keeping the IDF soldiers involved in the incident from international criminal prosecution.
“It is feared that warrants for their [the IDF soldiers] arrest will be issued, in order to end the saga and protect the soldiers sent to thwart the flotilla, we must pay the amount to remove the threat,” he told Army Radio, adding that such a move “is not pleasant but it is a moral obligation.”
According to Steinitz, the compensation amount was set three years ago, however what hindered a deal from materializing was Turkey’s refusal to drop its demand that Israel lift its blockade on Gaza.
On Sunday, MK Haneen Zoabi (Joint List) said that the expected signing of the reconciliation deal implies that Israel admits to “murdering” the activists on the Mavi Marmara flotilla.
Zoabi, who herself was on the flotilla, also said that the decision to pay $20 million to the families of the killed showed that the Tirkil commission, which investigated the incident was a “sham. She added that “the blockade on Gaza must end.”
“The blockade kills. It is murder and must be stopped and those responsible for the blockade must be prosecuted in the [ICC] Hague,” she said.
She decried the deal as not addressing the blockade and therefore urged for more flotillas to Gaza in the near future.
I have a lot of trouble believing this nonsense. If Israel is incapable of or unwilling to adequately protect its soldiers and their commanders from international prosecution for alleged murder in this case, I cannot imagine that there will be any soldiers left to take up the task of keeping our citizens safe.
Zoabi is seemingly proving Steinitz’s point. Poor Zoabi. It is not easy to be a terrorist on the one hand and an official member of The Israeli Knesset, on the other. Since she represent’s Israeli Arabs, it is difficult to believe they do not not continue to represent a mortal threat and ever present danger to Jews living in Israel. Yet we give her an Israeli Gov’t salary, pension, fringe benefits, most Jews will never have the opportunity to earn, in the most demanding of professions. And they know that as long as they do not go over their quota, their quota if murdered Jews, they will continue to receive their welfare checks and so on, benefits, even if they do become overzealous and go a tad bit over the quota.
Jewish leadership in general and Israeli Jewish Leadership, in particular or lack therof is, IMO, luke warm, willfully obtuse, incompetent, twisted and otherwise repugnant, not to mention sickening. A bunch of Frankensteins.
How much more of this SH_T do we have to take, Ted?