Some 50 strikes on Sunday night and early Monday morning came in response to a rocket attack from Gaza earlier in the day on the southern Israeli city of Sderot.
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Military spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner said it remained “committed to the stability of the region and operated in order to bring quiet to the people of southern Israel”.
Israel’s response was a taunting mirror image of Turkey’s critique.
Just days after Turkish parliament ratifies Israel-Turkey reconciliation deal, Ankara strongly condemns Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza after rockets fired into Sderot; ‘Normalization with Israel doesn’t mean we won’t defend Palestinians’.
“Turkey should think twice before criticizing the military actions of others”, the ministry added.
Speaking Monday evening, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said normalization of relations with Israel would never prevent Turkey from expressing its position on the Palestinian issue.
Israel ended its permanent military and civilian presence in the Gaza Strip in 2005 in what it called the “Gaza disengagement”, in which all the Israeli Jewish-only settlements in the strip were dismantled and the Israeli citizens living there evicted.
“Normalising ties with Israel does not mean that we will keep silent in the face of attacks against the Palestinian people”, the Turkish foreign ministry said. According to Haaretz Israeli newspaper. “On the contrary, we will continue to defend the Palestinian issue in the face of Israeli actions which violate global law and are contrary to basic human morality”.
Earlier, police detained five people who tried to break into the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul to protest the Gaza airstrikes.
Israel, which had already offered its apologies for the raid, agreed under the deal to pay out $20 million to the bereaved and wounded in return for Turkey dropping outstanding legal claims. Individual Israeli nationals will not be held criminally or financially liable for the incident.
With the agreement, Israel also eased slightly the blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, transferring humanitarian aid from Ankara through Israel’s border crossings with the Strip.
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Small armed cells – some of which have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group – have defied the ceasefire agreement and occasionally launch rockets at Israel, incurring the wrath of the Israeli armed forces.
