Turkey warns of more sanctions against Israel

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey's prime minister said Tuesday his nation's navy will step up its surveillance of the eastern Mediterranean Sea — a move that could potentially lead to confrontation with Israel — and warned of more sanctions against Israel as relations between the former allies deteriorated further.

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Turkey has already suspended its vast military ties with Israel, said it is expelling top Israeli diplomats and pledged to lobby other nations in support of the Palestinians' statehood bid after Israel refused to apologize for last year's raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla that killed nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists.

The sudden measures mark a stunning reversal for the two nations, who were once each other's top military trading partners and used to regularly train together on each other's soil.

Israel has expressed regret for the loss of lives aboard the flotilla and said Tuesday it was time for the two countries to restore their former close ties.

"Israel and Turkey are the two strongest nations in the Middle East and in many respects, the most important," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said before Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's latest threats.

"We have disputes, and even in the case of disputes, it's very important that the two sides use their brains and not act from the gut. It would be best for all involved and in the interest of regional stability to patch things up," Barak said.

A United Nations report released last week said Israel's naval blockade of Gaza was a "legitimate security measure," but also called the raid on the flotilla that tried to break the blockade "excessive and unreasonable." It also said Turkey and the flotilla organizers contributed to the bloodshed.

Israel has accepted the U.N. report, albeit with reservations. Turkey has rejected it.

Erdogan has said the "report does not mean anything for us," and announced the suspension of some trade and military relations. Turkey has not imposed a trade embargo on Israel but suspended ongoing defense projects and purchases from Israeli defense firms.

The breakdown in relations has hurt a key alliance for Israel, which has considered Turkey its strongest ally in the Muslim world.

It is unclear what impact the Turkish decision to scale back economic ties will be. Israeli defense officials said there have not been any new agreements since 2008, just before relations began to deteriorate.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a sensitive diplomatic matter, said Israel was committed to the existing deals and would continue to provide military gear to Turkey despite the latest crisis.

At its height in the late 1990s, Israel exported to Turkey billions of dollars worth of tanks, unmanned aircraft and military technology. Turkey is also a top business partner and tourist destination for Israelis.

Israeli officials noted paradoxically that despite the tension in recent years, 2011 has been a record year thus far in overall trade.

Relations began deteriorating as a result of Israel's campaign against Gaza rocket launchers in early 2009, in which about 1,400 Palestinians were killed, and worsened dramatically after the May 2010 raid on the Mavi Marmara vessel.

Turkey's latest moves were prompted after it was disappointed by the U.N. report's failure to criticize Israel more strongly and force it to apologize.

Erdogan did not detail what the next round of sanctions against Israel would include. But he vowed to ensure "freedom of navigation" in the eastern Mediterranean by using Turkey's naval bases in the ports of Iskenderun and Aksaz to "keep the area under constant surveillance."

"Of course, our ships will show themselves quite often from now on. We will see it very often," Erdogan said.

Israel's navy closely protects its coastline and enforces the Gaza blockade, but does not have a major naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey's main opposition party warned last week that military moves could lead to confrontation between Turkish and Israeli forces.

"The probability that (Turkey's ruling) party has carried Turkey to the brink of a hot conflict is saddening and unacceptable," said Faruk Logoglu, a deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People's Party.

Alon Liel, a former Israeli ambassador to Turkey, said a conflict on the seas was a possibility.

"I don't think they would dare to penetrate Israeli waters," he told reporters in Jerusalem. But he said Turkey may try to disrupt future Israeli gas exports to Cyprus and he warned of a new Turkish-Egyptian alliance that could isolate Israel in the Mediterranean.

Israel's opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, on Tuesday urged the countries to "put aside all the emotions and to enter the room and to discuss what are the next best steps in order to stop this crisis."

Israeli military officials said they doubted the crisis would devolve into violence. One senior official said the Israeli assessment is that Turkey is not looking for a conflict, but is trying to flex its muscles with Israel to gain influence in the Arab world.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to discuss the matter publicly.

___

Aron Heller reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Israel to OK 4,300 new homes in east Jerusalem

JERUSALEM — Israel's interior minister gave final authorization to build 1,600 apartments in disputed east Jerusalem and will approve 2,700 more in days, officials said Thursday, detailing a plan that could complicate diplomatic efforts to dissuade Palestinians from declaring statehood at the United Nations.

The announcement drew immediate criticism from the Palestinians, and from Israel's leading anti-settlement group, which accused the government of seizing on mass protests over housing costs to give economic justification to the always explosive issue of building in the holy city.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office knew the construction plans were moving ahead, Interior Ministry spokesman Roi Lachmanovich said. An earlier approval for the 1,600-apartment project embarrassed Netanyahu and caused a diplomatic rift with the U.S. because it coincided with a visit to Israel by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Palestinians oppose all Israeli construction in east Jerusalem because it chips away at their hopes to establish the capital of a future state in the holy city. The approval for the new apartments also could create new problems for Washington, which is trying to persuade the Palestinians to abandon their statehood bid and enter into negotiations with Israel instead.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat accused Israel of favoring settlements over peace.

"We call upon the U.S. administration to support our endeavor at the U.N. because the only way to preserve the two-state solution now is the admittance of the state of Palestine," he said.

Lachmanovich, the ministry spokesman, said the new apartments were necessary to address a housing shortage in the city.

"There's always something pending," he said, when asked about the timing of the approvals.

Actual construction likely will not begin for years because building plans will have to go through multiple approval processes.

The Peace Now anti-settlement group accused the government of "cynically" exploiting a sweeping grassroots uprising sparked by high housing prices to cement its plans to build new apartments in Jerusalem's contested eastern sector.

It was also unlikely to win much favor with Israel's closest ally, the United States, which opposes the Palestinians' statehood bid and, like Israel, says negotiations on Jerusalem and other core issues are the only way forward.

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Jerusalem's fate "needs to be negotiated between the two parties," said U.S. Embassy spokesman Kurt Hoyer. "Unilateral actions on either side that appear to prejudice the outcome of those negotiations we find counterproductive."

On Tuesday, Washington rebuked Israel for advancing separate plans to build 930 apartments in another neighborhood of east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians refuse to negotiate with the Netanyahu government as long as it continues to build in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — territories that would form the core of their future independent state.

Israel rejects that demand, arguing that previous rounds of talks moved ahead in tandem with settlement construction.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem in 1967 after capturing it from Jordan. It does not consider the Jewish neighborhoods it has built there to be settlements even though the international community makes no such distinction and does not recognize Jerusalem's annexation.

About 500,000 Jews have made their homes in east Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967.

Adding to the potential for political tension is the Palestinians' plan for even a symbolic endorsement of statehood by the United Nations.

At home, they are trying to whip up enthusiasm through a series of mass rallies. But after two bloody uprisings against Israel, the Palestinians have little appetite for a third, and officials drafted a plan to keep the rallies peaceful, they said Wednesday.

Under the plan shown to The Associated Press, marches and rallies inside West Bank cities are permitted, but the gatherings will be confined to city limits. Demonstrators will be kept away from flashpoints like Israeli settlements and military checkpoints. Palestinian police would ring West Bank cities to keep protesters far from Israelis.

A wild card in the deck is Gaza, which is run by the Islamic militant Hamas group. The group is disdainful of the statehood plan to be implemented at the U.N. and will likely not organize protests to support it. But if violence erupts in the West Bank, Gaza could be expected to follow.

Israeli officials disagree over what might happen in September.

One government-commissioned study said the rallies will likely be peaceful, but Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has predicted "unprecedented violence."

___

Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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TV: Israel agrees to negotiate over pre-'67 lines

JERUSALEM — In a dramatic policy shift, Israel's prime minister has agreed to negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state based on the cease-fire line that marks off the West Bank, a TV station reported Monday.

Up to now, Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to spell out his plan for negotiating the border. A senior Israeli official would not confirm outright that the prime minister was now willing to adopt the cease-fire line as a starting point, but said Israel was willing to try new formulas to restart peace talks based on a proposal made by President Barack Obama.

In a speech about the Middle East in May, Obama proposed negotiations based on the pre-1967 line with agreed swaps of territory between Israel and a Palestinian state. Netanyahu reacted angrily, insisting that Israel would not withdraw from all of the West Bank, though that was not what Obama proposed.

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Now Netanyahu is basically accepting that framework, according to Channel 2 TV, offering to trade Israeli territory on its side of the line for West Bank land where its main settlements are located.

The official, who has been briefed on the talks, spoke on condition of anonymity because the contacts are still in progress. He said he would not deny the TV report, while refusing to confirm the specifics.

"We are willing in a framework of restarting the peace talks to accept a proposal that would contain elements that would be difficult for Israel and we would find very difficult to endorse," he said, answering a question about the Obama proposal.

Part of the reason, he said, was that Israel is seeking to persuade the Palestinians to drop their initiative to win U.N. recognition of their state next month, something the Palestinians are doing out of frustration with stalled peace efforts.

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Palestinian officials said they had not received such a proposal from Israel.

Palestinians have demanded that Israel stop construction in its West Bank settlements and east Jerusalem before peace talks resume. Netanyahu wants talks with no preconditions where issues like settlements and borders would be discussed, along with his insistence that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

The cease-fire line that marks the West Bank dates to the 1949 end of the two-year war that followed the creation of Israel. It held until June 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians.

Border or temporary line?
Palestinians and most of the world consider the 1967 lines a border, while Israel has always held that it was just a temporary truce line that does not dictate the location of the border.

Previous Israeli governments have accepted the cease-fire line as the basis for talks, and the two sides came close to agreement twice in the past decade before talks broke down over other matters.

Thorny issues like sharing Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees would remain after the border issue is resolved, but U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that setting a border would defuse the explosive settlement issue by determining which of the enclaves would become part of Israel and which would not.

In the absence of an agreement to return to negotiations, the Palestinians are moving ahead with their U.N. recognition initiative. While a vote in the General Assembly would be symbolic and not legally binding, the Palestinians believe any international endorsement will isolate Israel and improve their position if negotiations resume.

Palestinian officials said Monday they plan to begin mass marches against Israel's occupation of the West Bank on Sept. 20, the eve of the U.N. vote.

Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said leaders hope to attract millions, and the protest will be the first of a prolonged effort. He said the campaign would be called "Palestine 194," since the Palestinians hope to become the 194th member of the United Nations.

"The appeal to the U.N. is a battle for all Palestinians, and in order to succeed, it needs millions to pour into streets," he said.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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