Israel attack on Gaza Strip

Israel may have won the battle to stop an international flotilla of protesters from reaching the Gaza Strip, but the killing of at least nine of those activists, and the international reaction that followed it, has meant Israel may well lose the diplomatic war.
About 15 Israeli commandos dropped from helicopters onto the deck of the Turkish-flagged ship Mavi Marmara about 4:30 a.m. Monday as the ship steamed from Cyprus, bound for Gaza. Activists on the boat alleged that the commandos fired directly on passengers, but Israeli officials say they used force only after being attacked with knives, clubs and even live fire.
Regardless of what happened on the deck of the ship, the longer-term consequences for Israel could be dire. The very blockade against Gaza that Israel sought to uphold could now be undone by its own heavy-handed action. And a national policy of relentlessly confronting Hamas, the Islamic rulers of the Gaza Strip, may lose its credibility. At the very least, Israel has become more isolated than at any time in recent history, an isolation that may undermine global efforts to bring its arch-foe, Iran, to heel over its nuclear ambitions.
The speed and intensity with which governments around the world condemned the Israeli behaviour appear unprecedented. The condemnation came from traditional enemies of the Jewish state, and from its closest friends. No matter that Israeli spokesman after spokesman argued that some of the activists were lying in wait to ambush the commandos, and attempted to lay the blame for the deadly violence at the feet of the flotilla organizers. “No one is buying it,” said Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, a former Egyptian diplomat who spent several years in Israel.
The fallout from the episode “is going to be pretty bad for Israel,” Mr. Fishere predicted. “It couldn’t be much worse.”
Israel got a taste of things to come as the United Nations Security Council went into an emergency session Monday afternoon and speaker after speaker blasted the Israelis over the incident. The raid will feed tensions with Israel’s most critical ally, the United States, and complicate efforts by President Barack Obama to kick-start the languishing peace process with the Palestinians.
More telling still was the visceral reaction from Turkey, a long-time ally and critical bridge to the Muslim world. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called it “an act of barbarism,” bringing to mind the image of pirates on the Barbary Coast 200 years ago. Israel, he said, “has lost its legitimacy” as a member of the United Nations.