Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cancelled a planned trip to Washington on Tuesday and will return home to Israel from Canada today to deal with the diplomatic fallout in the wake of Israeli commandos killing ten people on ships bringing aid to Gaza.

"Netanyahu decided to cut short his visit to Canada and return to Israel early," a statement from the Israeli government said, reported by Reuters.

The White House said President Barack Obama had a 15-minute phone call with Netanyahu this morning in which he expressed understanding for Netanyahu's decision to return to Israel immediately.

“This morning between 10 and 10:15 a.m. CDT, the president spoke by phone with Prime Minister Netanyahu" the White House said in a statement Monday. "He said he understood the prime minister's decision to return immediately to Israel to deal with today's events."

"They agreed to reschedule their meeting at the first opportunity," the White House said. "The president expressed deep regret at the loss of life in today's incident, and concern for the wounded, many of whom are being treated in Israeli hospitals. The president also expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances around this morning's tragic events as soon as possible.”



Earlier, the Obama administration said it deeply regretted the loss of life.

Israel said the commandos were attacked when they stormed the ships and that activists tried to bring down the Israeli commandos' helicopter.



Countries around the world expressed shock and outrage at the bloodshed. Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Israel and protesters stormed the Israeli consulate in Istanbul. Greece has cancelled planned military exercises with Israel, France and Germany have expressed profound shock at the loss of life, and the Palestinian Authority declared a day of mourning. The European Union called for an inquiry into the incident.

The UN Security Council has called an emergency session at 1pm Monday to discuss the incident, Reuters reports.

The aid ships were being pulled into the Israeli port of Ashdod, and the 750 activists would be permitted to return to their home countries or would be detained, reports said.

Meantime, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington on Tuesday. The previously planned meeting was intended to focus largely on Iran and an Iran nuclear fuel swap proposal that Turkey and Brazil helped negotiate this month. The U.S. hopes to get a new U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran passed as early as this week.

But with the Gaza aid ships and many of the activists aboard coming from Turkey, the meeting is now certain to be consumed as well by the latest crisis to fracture Israeli-Turkish relations, which were once strong but which have steadily deteriorated since Israel's 2008 military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

Washington has in recent weeks been aggressively moving to improve relations with the Israeli government and Jewish groups and to get traction for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. U.S.-mediated Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks got under way earlier this month, and the Obama administration has been expressing hopes that it could transform them into direct negotiations in the coming weeks.

But the Gaza flotilla crisis is certain to set back those efforts and reduce the Palestinian leadership's flexibility to enter direct talks. The Obama administration can only be stunned at the latest turn of events.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had been due to meet Obama at the White House on June 9, but it's not clear whether his trip will also be postponed given the circumstances.

"This is a perfect storm of disaster," said veteran American diplomat Aaron David Miller. "Overnight, the Israelis have boosted Hamas's stock; accelerated the international community's efforts to pressure and islolate Israel; undermined Abbas, prompted a crisis with the Turks. In fact, the least damage in all of this was probably done to the emerging effort to reset the U.S.-Israeli relationship."

Miller suggested that while the Obama administration is seeking to improve relations with the Netanyahu governent, that it "might try to use Gaza [flotilla episode] as leverage to get the Israelis to relax the economic pressure" on Gaza.

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