At least nine aboard the ships were killed including some Turkish aid workers prompting swift condemnation from Turkey. 

Story and analysis at BBC.

Below are related items published in the days following the initial raid: 

UPDATE from the BBC – June 1, 2010

UPDATE from Joshua Mitnick at the Christian Science Monitor: “Why Israelis Are Upset…”, June 1, 2010

UPDATE from Mark Landler. “After Israel Raids Flotilla, U.S. is Torn Between Allies,” New York Times, June 2, 2010: the two allies being Turkey and Israel.  Many of the aid activists killed or captured by the  Israelis aboard the ships were Turks.  The Israelis are saying they had tried to avert the confrontation by asking the ships to dock at Ashdod, outside the Gaza Strip, where, again according to the Israelis, the humanitarian goods were to have been offloaded and transferred to Gaza. 

But, it is clear from what the activists said prior to the event that they sought a confrontation to raise the profile of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.  The New York Times faults Israel for botching its handling of the affair — see the June 2, lead editorial, “Israel and the Blockade.” 

Writing on the Op-Ed page of the June 2, 2010 issue of the New York Times, Israeli novelist Amos Oz (“Israeli Force, Adrift on the Sea”) says:

“But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

Thus, the only way for Israel to edge out Hamas would be to quickly reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the establishment of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as defined by the 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel has to sign a peace agreement with President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government in the West Bank — and by doing so, reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip. That latter conflict, in turn, can be resolved only by negotiating with Hamas or, more reasonably, by the integration of Fatah with Hamas.”

The official Israeli position on the incident came with an Op-Ed piece in the June 3, 2010 issue of the New York Times by Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, “An Assault, Cloaked in Peace.”

Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, a leading commentator in the Arabic press, sees some rays of hope in this crisis: “This is Also an Opportunity For Moderates,” June 3, 2010, Al-Arabiya News Channel.

This affair is the latest in a series of setbacks in Turkish-Israeli relations.  Go to the Turkey archive in this blog for more.  See also especially an article from The Economist dated 31 October, 2009 at this post.

The June 5, 2010 issue of The Economist features a “leader” on page 13 entitled “Israel’s Siege Mentality (go to article via ProQuest and the NMH Virtual Desktop).  The magazine asks the question, what would happen if Israel were to lift its siege of Gaza?  -

“How should Israel handle an authoritarian movement that refuses to recognise it and has in the past readily used terror? One answer is to ask the UN to oversee the flow of goods and people going in and out of Gaza. That is hardly a cure-all, but Hamas would become the world’s problem neighbour, not just Israel’s. The Arab world must do more, pressing Hamas to disavow violence, publicly pledge not to resume the firing of rockets at Israeli civilians and revoke its anti-Semitic charter. The West, led by Mr Obama, should call for Hamas to be drawn into negotiations, both with its rival Palestinians on the West Bank as well as with Israel, even if it does not immediately recognise the Jewish state. It is still the party the Palestinians elected in 2006 to represent all of them. None of this will be easy. But the present stalemate is bloodily leading nowhere.”

On pages 31-33 of the same issue, The Economist describes how Israel is playing right into the hands of HAMAS and HAMAS’ aim of tightening its hold on Gaza (go to article via ProQuest on the NMH Virtual Desktop).

On June 10, 2010 in a New York Times  Op-Ed piece (“Israel Without Clichés”), Tony Judt takes aim at cliches and other kinds of shoddy thinking about the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

In late June, Turkey tightened up on Israeli overflights of its territory — Professor Juan Cole explains.

More on HAMAS

IME Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict