Israeli forces Monday shot dead four Palestinian commandos off Gaza as the Jewish state scrambled to cope with mounting fallout over an earlier deadly sea battle. A week after Israeli naval forces stormed a Gaza-bound aid boat, killing nine people, most of them Turkish, US Vice President Joe Biden said Washington was eyeing “new ways” to deal with Israel's blockade of the Hamas-ruled enclave. “We are consulting closely with Egypt, as well as our other partners, on new ways to address the humanitarian, economic, security and political aspects of the situation in Gaza,” he said after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. And Ankara, still furious over the death of eight Turkish nationals in the raid, vowed that normalization of ties with Israel would be out of the question if the Jewish state refused to accept an international inquiry into the attack. “If Israel... gives the green light for the establishment of an international (inquiry) commission and is ready to answer to the commission, then naturally Turkish-Israeli ties will follow a different path,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. “But if it continues to evade that, normalization in relations would be out of the question,” he said. Palestinian witnesses said they saw Israeli forces firing on a vessel off the coast of central Gaza at 4:00 A.M. (0100 GMT). Two hours later, four bodies in diving suits were pulled from the water, medical sources and witnesses said, describing the dead as “commandos.” The violence off Gaza came exactly a week after Israel's navy mounted a bungled operation to stop an aid flotilla reaching the beleaguered coastal Strip. Reverberations over the deadly raid were also being felt inside Israel, with a parliamentary committee Monday voting to sanction Arab Israeli MP who was on board the Gaza aid flotilla when it was stormed by navy seals. The decision to strip Hanin Zuabi of her parliamentary privileges was passed by a majority of seven to one, and will now have to be approved by the Knesset plenum. In Cairo a top aide of Arab League chief said that Amr Moussa will make a groundbreaking “solidarity” visit to the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip next week. The head of the 22-member pan-Arab organization “will visit the Gaza Strip next week -- the first trip of its kind by an Arab League secretary general,” said Hisham Yussef. The trip is aimed at “showing solidarity with the Palestinian people in the face of the blockade and (express) the need to step up inter-Palestinian reconciliation,” he added. Meanwhile, the United States has asked Israel to investigate an incident in which an American woman lost an eye after being shot by Israeli forces with a tear gas canister during a pro-Palestinian protest in occupied Jerusalem, a US diplomat said Monday. Emily Henochowicz, a 21-year-old visual arts student from Maryland and a dual Israeli-American citizen, was struck in the face by a canister fired by an Israeli policeman during a violent demonstration against Israel's deadly naval raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla. – AgenciesThe case highlights charges by rights groups that Israeli forces are improperly using tear gas canisters by firing them directly at crowds in a way that has severely injured protesters.
