Israel no to calls for international probe

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Israel on Thursday rejected calls from the United Nations and others for an international investigation of its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla but left the door open to foreign involvement. Israel says the commandos used force, killing nine people, only after activists attacked them with knives, crowbars and clubs, as well as two pistols grabbed from raiders.
Activists who had set sail for Gaza with tons of aid, hoping to break Israel’s 3-year-old blockade of Gaza, say Israeli commandos fired first. Officials have insisted Israel’s military already is investigating the raid and the country is capable of conducting a credible review.
“It is our standard practice after military operations, especially operations in which there have been fatalities, to conduct a prompt, professional, transparent and objective investigation in accordance with the highest international standards,” government spokesman Mark Regev said.
Another official in the PM’s office said there would be no separate international investigation. He spoke on condition of anonymity pending an official decision. Foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, however, proposed attaching international observers to an internal Israeli probe. He told the Ynet news website that he has proposed setting up a commission of inquiry, headed by a respected former Israeli Supreme Court judge. “If they’ll ask to include foreign observers, we’ll include them,” Mr Lieberman said.
A junior Cabinet member, Mr Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, went even further, saying, “an international commission of inquiry must be established because we have nothing to hide.” “We must quell world criticism,” Ynet quoted Mr Ben-Eliezer as telling fellow Labour Party ministers. An inner Cabinet of ministers with security responsibilities must convene to discuss the matter.
Israel has refused to cooperate with previous international probes, most recently the UN investigation into Israel’s 2009 war in the Gaza Strip that concluded that both the Israelis and Hamas militants, who control Gaza, committed war crimes. Israel says the commission that ordered the probe has a record of anti-Israel conduct, and has rejected the investigation as fundamentally flawed.
The international outrage over the deaths on board the flotilla’s lead ship, the Mavi Marmara, has sparked a wave of protests across the diplomatic world and condemnations by a sheaf of countries.
The raid has also provoked multiple demands for an international probe, and on Wednesday, UN Chief Ban Ki-moon indicated he was headed in that direction.