Turkey's naval forces would escort Turkish humanitarian aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister has said, following Israel's refusal to apologise for its deadly raid on an aid flotilla heading to the besieged Palestinian territory in May 2010.
"We have humanitarian aid to be sent there. And our humanitarian aid will not be attacked anymore, as happened to the Mavi Marmara," he told the Al Jazeera on Thursday.
"Turkish warships will be tasked with protecting the Turkish boats bringing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip."
Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara, the ship which aimed to break Israel's naval blockade, and killed nine people - eight Turks and one US citizen of Turkish origin - in international waters, causing a diplomatic row between the two countries.
Erdogan also said that Turkey would closely monitor international waters and had taken steps to prevent what he called Israel’s unilateral exploitation of natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Responding to Erdogan's interview, Dan Meridor, Israel's intelligence minister, told Israel army radio: "These remarks are grave and serious, but we have no wish to add to the polemic.
"It is better to stay quiet and wait - we have no interest in aggravating the situation by replying to such [verbal] attacks."
At this point Turkey is saying "If you go after our aid ships like you did last time, it's on like Donkey Kong." I'm pretty sure an active naval shooting war between two of our most important allies in the region is relatively high on the list of things that America doesn't need right now.
I'm really hoping Team Hillary is on the phone with both Erdogan and Netanyahu to talk both sides down here, because this has about a 90% probability of turning into a live fire exercise where people die and really bad things happen as a result.
This is the time we need cooler heads to prevail.
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