JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s navy boarded another aid ship on Saturday to enforce a blockade of Gaza five days after its troops killed nine people on a Turkish aid boat, despite Washington saying the policy was “unsustainable.” The Israeli navy, whose action on Monday triggered an international outcry, took control of the Rachel Corrie without incident, the Israeli military said.

The boat had ignored Israeli orders to divert to Israel’s Ashdod port where Israel had offered to unload the cargo and deliver it to Gaza after inspecting it.

“According to initial reports, there was no violence or injuries amongst the soldiers or the crew, as the use of force was unnecessary and no shots were fired,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying: “Forces used the same procedures for Monday’s flotilla and Saturday’s sailing but was met by a different response.

“On today’s ship and in five of the six vessels in the previous flotilla, (their boarding) procedure ended without casualties. The only difference was with one ship where extremist Islamic activists, supporters of terrorism, waited for our troops on the deck with axes and knives.”

Carrying Irish and other activists, the ship was the latest to attempt to break the four-year old blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza with the stated aim of stopping its Hamas rulers from strengthening their arsenal to fight the Jewish state.

“Israel will continue to exercise its right to self defense. We will not allow the establishment of an Iranian port in Gaza,” Netanyahu’s statement added.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Israeli navy boarded another Gaza-bound aid ship on Saturday after Washington condemned as “unsustainable” a blockade which Israel enforced earlier this week by killing nine people on a Turkish vessel.

The Israeli navy, whose action on Monday triggered an international outcry, took control of the Rachel Corrie without incident, the Israeli military said.

The boat had ignored Israeli orders to divert to Israel’s Ashdod port where Israel had offered to unload the cargo and deliver it to Gaza after inspecting it.

“According to initial reports, there was no violence or injuries amongst the soldiers or the crew, as the use of force was unnecessary and no shots were fired,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

Carrying Irish and other activists, the ship was the latest to attempt to break the four-year old blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza with the stated aim of stopping its Hamas rulers from strengthening their arsenal to fight the Jewish state.

“This has been another brazen act of Israeli piracy on the High Seas,” said Kevin Squires, national coordinator of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Dublin, one of whose members was aboard the boat named after a pro-Palestinian activist killed in Gaza in 2003.

Autopsy results found 30 bullets in the bodies of the activists killed this week, a British newspaper reported.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Israeli navy boarded another aid ship bound for Gaza on Saturday, as Washington condemned as “unsustainable” a blockade which Israel enforced earlier in the week by killing 9 people aboard a Turkish vessel.

Irish and other activists aboard the Rachel Corrie had ignored Israeli orders to divert to Israel’s Ashdod port.

“The ship has been boarded and there was full compliance from the crew and passengers on board,” an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

The stand-off in the Mediterranean came as Washington, Israel’s key ally, said its blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip was “unsustainable and must be changed” — the clearest sign yet of a shake-up in the embargo that has blighted the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians for the past four years.

Turkey, once Israel’s main Muslim ally, has kept up its fury over the deaths of nine Turkish nationals in the raid on Monday. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan harangued Israel on Friday about ignoring the Biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.

Autopsy results, as reported by a British newspaper, found 30 bullets in the activists who died. Among the victims was a Turk with U.S. citizenship.

Speaking ahead of the boarding, a spokeswoman for the Free Gaza campaign group, whose contact with the crew was patchy, said warships had been sighted by the freighter around dawn, before 6 a.m. (0300 GMT).

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Israeli navy prepared to board another aid ship bound for Gaza on Saturday, as Washington condemned as “unsustainable” a blockade which Israel enforced earlier in the week by killing 9 people aboard a Turkish vessel.

Irish and other activists on the Rachel Corrie ignored orders to divert to Israel’s Ashdod port. Should it continue to approach the Palestinian enclave, the navy would board the vessel, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

The stand-off in the Mediterranean came as Washington, Israel’s key ally, said its blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip was “unsustainable and must be changed” — the clearest sign yet of a shake-up in the embargo that has blighted the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians for the past four years.

Turkey, once Israel’s main Muslim ally, has kept up its fury over the deaths of 9 Turkish nationals in the raid on Monday. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan harangued Israel on Friday about ignoring the Biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.

Autopsy results, as reported by a British newspaper, found 30 bullets in the activists who died. Among the victims was a Turk with U.S. citizenship.

A spokeswoman for the Free Gaza campaign group, whose contact with the crew was patchy, said warships had been sighted by the freighter around dawn, before 6 a.m. (0300 GMT).

Israeli spokeswoman Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Liebovich said the ship, named after an American activist killed in the Gaza Strip, had ignored radio calls to divert. “If they won’t leave us any choice, we’ll have to board the ship,” she said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Israeli navy intercepted and was shadowing another ship bound for blockaded Gaza carrying aid and activists on Saturday, five days after the bloody seizure of a Turkish ship triggered an international outcry.

A spokeswoman for the Free Gaza group backing the Rachel Corrie, and a journalist aboard the vessel quoted by Al Jazeera, said warships were following the Irish-owned freighter.

“We can see some Israeli ships a little away from us. They are following us, there has been no contact,” the journalist quoted by the station said an hour or so after dawn.

Activists’ contact with the ship was patchy, spokeswoman Greta Berlin said, adding that it had been some 55 km (35 miles) west of Gaza.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said she had no information.

Israel has said it would not let the ship through to its intended destination in Gaza. Berlin said those on the Rachel Corrie would not accept earlier Israeli offers to dock at Israel’s Ashdod port and have the supplies sent on over land.

Israel says its blockade of the Gaza Strip, tightened after Islamist Hamas seized the enclave from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction in 2007, aims to keep out arms.

JERUSALEM, June 5 (Reuters) – Israel was prepared to intercept another ship bound for Gaza carrying aid and activists on Saturday, increasing fears of more international tension over its blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Israel faces an international outcry after its naval operation on Monday in which nine Turkish activists were killed on a ship bound for Gaza.

Israel says its blockade of the Gaza Strip, imposed after Hamas seized the territory from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, is meant to prevent arms and military supplies from reaching the territory’s Hamas rulers.

The Irish-owned Rachel Corrie — a converted merchant vessel bought by pro-Palestinian activists and named after an American woman killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003 – pressed on despite the earlier ship’s violent interception.

One of the activists on board, Irishman Denis Halliday, a former U.N. assistant secretary-general, told Irish radio on Friday they expected to reach the Israeli-imposed exclusion zone overnight and aimed to continue towards Gaza in daylight.

On Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said: “We will stop the ship, and also any other ship that will try to harm Israeli sovereignty. There is no chance the Rachel Corrie will reach the coast of Gaza.”

The Israeli military declined to give prior details of what it planned to do in the event the navy had to intervene.

MISHOR ADUMIM, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli entrepreneurs at an industrial park in the occupied West Bank are rethinking their business strategies to deal with a Palestinian boycott of goods made in Jewish settlements.

Concurrently, businesses are furious at the Israeli government, saying a stricter enforcement of labor law that forces them to pay Palestinians the minimum Israeli wage is more damaging than Palestinian trade and labor sanctions.

The Mishor Adumim industrial complex and other factories built in or near settlements in the West Bank, is one of the targets of a new Palestinian ban on goods produced in occupied territory and on commercial ties with their manufacturers.

“The damage from a Palestinian boycott is not such that it could force a factory to close, but the industrial zones beyond the Green Line (Israel’s pre-occupation frontier) have sustained several blows lately,” Avi Elkayam, a restaurateur who chairs the Mishor Adumim manufacturers’ committee, told Reuters.

Although some factories lay derelict in Mishor Adumim, on the road from Jerusalem to the Jordan valley and Dead Sea, Elkayam said it was not due to the Palestinians.

The local settlement authority, he said, was not providing tax breaks to counter the anticipated loss in revenue from any boycott and Israel’s minimum wage law, which was applied to Palestinian laborers had raised overheads.

“Factories moved here because the labor was cheap, as it used to be Jordanian-administered land and they could pay workers 150 shekels (about $40) per day. But now the law forces them to pay a minimum wage, even retroactively,” he said.

JERUSALEM, May 26 (Reuters) – An Israeli military source said on Wednesday that Israel’s navy was ready to prevent a Turkish-led convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid from entering the blockaded Gaza Strip. Israel and Egypt closed Gaza’s borders after Islamist Hamas took control of the territory in 2007 and refused to forswear violence against the Jewish state. Gaza’s 1.5 million people say they face shortages of water and medicine. "In accordance with the directions of the Israeli government, the Israel Defence Forces and the Israeli Navy are preparing to prevent the flotilla from reaching the Gaza shore," the military source said. The source said naval forces had held a number of exercises to prepare to enforce the sea blockade. In recent weeks Israel has allowed some goods it used to ban, such as clothes, shoes, wood and aluminum, to enter the strip through land border crossings. It continues to allow a steady flow of humanitarian aid into the coastal territory. The military source said if the ships did not turn back after being given fair warning, they would be boarded by Israeli naval forces and taken to an Israeli port where the passengers and crew would be sent home and the goods transferred to Gaza. If forces did board the ships, they would ensure that no "terror operatives or explosives" were on board, the source said. Israel is under international pressure to relax its blockade, which the United Nations says punishes people in Gaza for the policies of Hamas, whose founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel. The international flotilla carrying some 10,000 tonnes of medical equipment, housing materials and other supplies is expected to reach Israeli waters in the coming few days. (Additional reporting by Ayala Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Editing by Noah Barkin)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, already on trial for corruption, was questioned by police on Tuesday on suspicion of accepting bribes in a Jerusalem luxury housing project, a police spokesman said.

Olmert has denied wrongdoing. He is suspected of having taken bribes and laundering money while mayor of Israel’s Jerusalem municipality between 1993-2003. He served as prime minister between 2006-2009.

The questioning at the national fraud investigations unit at the town of Lod in central Israel lasted eight hours and will continue again on Sunday, the police spokesman said.

Last month Olmert said in a pre-recorded statement aired on prime-time television that he was innocent and ready to answer police questions over the “Holyland affair,” the construction of a high rise apartment complex in Jerusalem.

Uri Lupolianski, who succeeded Olmert as mayor and held the post until 2008, was arrested last month over suspicions building permits for the Holyland project were issued in exchange for bribes amounting to millions of dollars.

No charges have been filed against Lupolianski, who was a deputy mayor under Olmert. He was later released from custody.

For years, many Israelis have questioned how the Holyland compound’s fortress-like circle of towers — still under construction and widely viewed as an eyesore — received planning permission in a city that is mostly low-rise.

JERUSALEM, May 17 (Reuters) – Thousands of Hapoel Tel Aviv fans were on Monday recovering from two days of frenzied partying after their club completed an unlikely league and cup double at the weekend.

Unfancied Hapoel snatched the Premier League title after scoring an injury-time goal in a 2-1 win against Beitar Jerusalem, denying Maccabi Haifa a second straight triumph in one of the most dramatic season endings on Saturday.

It was the Tel Aviv outfit’s first league title for a decade, while devastated Haifa, who led the table going into the final round of matches and needed to win against hosts Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv to secure the crown, managed only a 1-1 draw.

“I don’t believe it, I did not imagine that Maccabi Haifa would not win, all credit to Bnei Yehuda, they are true sportsmen,” jubilant midfielder Gil Vermouth said after Hapoel won their 14th title on goal difference.

While Hapoel players, who secured the State Cup last Tuesday, broke down in tears as they celebrated at Beitar’s Teddy Stadium, the mood was sombre in Haifa.

Stage technicians were frantically dismantling the amplification equipment that had been prematurely set up for the anticipated celebration of Maccabi’s success.

Striker Shlomi Arbeitman summed up his team’s disappointment.