Israel Launches Inquiry Into Deadly Flotilla Raid

JERUSALEM (June 14) -- Israel's Cabinet today approved a commission to investigate the raid on a Turkish-flagged ship two weeks ago that left nine activists dead. Turkey immediately dismissed the inquiry as "one-sided."

The panel will be headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel and will also include two other Israelis, along with two international observers: Nobel Peace Prize winner Lord William David Trimble from Northern Ireland and Canadian jurist Ken Watkin.

In a statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the commission will "submit conclusions on the question of whether the actions that the state of Israel took to prevent the arrival of ships to Gaza ... were in accordance with the rule of international law."

The commission will examine the legality of Israel's three-year Gaza blockade, which has come under growing international criticism as harming the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza more than the Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza. It will also look at whether Israel's boarding of the ship in international waters was legal. It will not hear testimony from individual soldiers involved in boarding the ship and will not be able to draw personal conclusions calling for any Israeli officials to resign.

Turkey rejected the Israeli commission as biased, and tensions between the two nations remain high. Turkey has recalled its ambassador and put joint military exercises on hold. Today an Israeli supermarket chain announced it will no longer sell any products made in Turkey.

"Israel's one-sided inquiry is not valuable to us. We want a commission to be set up under the direct control of the United Nations," Turkey's foreign minister Ahmed Davutoglu said at a news conference in Ankara today.

President Barack Obama welcomed the formation of the commission. Israeli media said the addition of the two foreign observers was made in concert with the U.S. as a way of placating the international community. But some in Israel said the commission will not be seen as impartial.

"Adding international observers does give the commission a degree of credibility, but the mandate and the authority are so narrow I don't think it's going to shed a great deal of light," Yossi Alpher, a former senior Israeli intelligence official, told AOL News. "They will not be able to point the finger at any official and say, 'This person made mistakes and should resign.' They are also not being asked to pass judgment on how the decisions were taken."

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz today reported that Trimble, the Irish Nobel-prize winner, joined a "Friends of Israel" initiative launched in Paris two weeks ago. Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, who is close to Netanyahu, is also involved in the group. Israel chose Trimble because an Irish-flagged ship, the Rachel Corrie, also tried to break the Gaza blockade a few days after the deadly Turkish incident.

There was also some question about the age of the Israeli participants in the panel. International law professor Shabtai Rosen is 93 and Maj. Gen. Amos Horev is 86.

The commission will discuss Israel's blockade of Gaza, which the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled is legal. The blockade, which Israel imposed in 2006 and tightened in 2007, has failed to achieve the government's stated aims of overthrowing Hamas or causing the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

In the past two weeks there has been growing international criticism of the blockade, which severely limits what goods can enter Gaza. Israel's largest circulation daily Yediot Aharonot said it is time to lift the siege of Gaza, which primarily affects the 1.5 million Palestinians who live there.

"We all know what will happen: Turkey will pressure, Europe will request, the U.S. will acquiesce to the pressure, and ultimately we will be obliged to lift the blockade and give in, at least partially," the newspaper said. "Netanyahu has even hinted as much more than once; he knows that the blockade narrative is ending. And if indeed this is the direction, the time has come that, at least once, we will take the diplomatic initiative, instead of being dragged, kicking and screaming, toward an imposed solution."