Israel may be willing to give US-style apology for Mavi Marmara incident

Israel may seek to mend its two-year rift in relations with Turkey by offering an American-style apology for the Mavi Marmara incident in which nine Turkish citizens were killed by IDF forces.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman reportedly indicated an unprecedented willingness on Tuesday to convey Israel’s regret to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara incident, provided Israel adopts the diplomatic language of America’s apology to Pakistan for killing 24 of its soldiers in November 2011.

Senior American officials, including CIA chief David Petraeus, and an unnamed European official have been mediating a resolution to the impasse between Jerusalem and Ankara, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

Ankara has insisted that any resolution of the crisis with Jerusalem begin with an apology for the deaths of the 9 Turkish citizens killed aboard the Mavi Marmara — a vessel that sought to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza in May 2010, and was intercepted by Israeli commandos. The Israelis were attacked by extremists on the boat, and opened fire.

“If the Turks will accept the American wording — I will certainly go with it,” Liberman told his Yisrael Beytenu party in a speech whose transcript was obtained by Reuters.

Regarding US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s apology to Islamabad, Liberman said, “it is impossible to call it an apology, rather an expression of regret over the killing of innocents.”

The US military killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border on November 25, 2011. Nearly a month later the Pentagon admitted its wrongdoing. Only in July, 2012, however, did US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton say that Washington was “sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military” and that it was “committed to working closely with Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent this from ever happening again.”

“They tell us that if the US apologized to Pakistan, there’s no reason why Israel shouldn’t apologize to Turkey,” Liberman said.