Israel refuses to lift blockade on Gaza

Israel announced on Thursday its rejection of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's request to lift a naval siege off the Gaza Strip in return for normalizing the ties between the two countries. "Easing this naval siege would not be in any case at the dialogue table with Ankara during any future reconciliation discussions," sources from the Israeli government were quoted as saying by Israeli Radio. "Lifting the siege to improve the relations with Turkey is not on Israel's agenda," the radio reported, in response to Erdogan's requests to end the Freedom Flotilla crisis with Tel Aviv in return for lifting the siege off of Gaza. The sources confirmed that both sides had not discussed, during their recent talks, the topic of the blockade. Erdogan announced on Tuesday that the talks on the compensation for the families of the nine Turkish Mavi Marmara ship victims who were killed by the Israeli army "are not over yet." "At the final stages of the talks, there will be a need to add a clause to the protocol, which will be signed with Israel, calling for the lifting of the siege off Gaza," he stressed. In 2010, an attack carried out by the Israeli army killed nine Turkish activists on the Mavi Marmara ship, known as one of the "Freedom Flotilla" ships, which aimed at breaking the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip imposed by Israel. The activists were killed by Israeli troops, and that initiated a major crisis in the relations between Israel and Turkey, which pushed the latter to demand a public apology as well as compensation from Israel.