Jerusalem, June 2 (DPA) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday bluntly rejected international criticism of his country’s forceful interception on high seas of six aid ships headed for the blockaded Gaza Strip.
‘The state of Israel is standing opposite an international assault of hypocrisy. And it’s not the first time,’ charged the Israeli leader in his first public reaction since nine foreign activists were killed in the operation early Monday.
‘We acted against the thousands of rockets that Hamas fired against Israeli civilians. Hamas fired at civilians. Hamas hid behind civilians. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) acted against the Hamas, while making every effort to avoid hurting innocents,’ insisted Netanyahu, referring to the radical Islamist Palestinian movement running the Gaza Strip.
‘Despite that, who did the UN accuse of war crimes? not the Hamas. It accused israel. And to my regret something similar is happening now,’ he told a news conference at his Jerusalem office.
Hamas, he said, was continuing to arm itself with rockets smuggled from Iran, which were earmarked for Israeli towns and cities outside Gaza, including Tel Aviv.
‘Therefore it is our right and our duty according to common sense and according to international law to prevent such weapons from reaching Gaza, via the sea, via land and via the air.
‘That duty was understood by the previous (Israeli) government which imposed a blockade on Gaza. The goal of the flotilla was to breach that naval blockade (…) and if the naval blockade had been breached, dozens more, hundreds more ships would have followed on its heels,’ he said.
‘The scale of the weaponry that can be brought on a ship is entirely different from what we’ve seen’ smuggled into Gaza through the tunnels under the border with Egypt, the prime minister added.
