JERUSALEM ? Israel's prime minister on Sunday defiantly refused to apologize to Turkey for his military's deadly raid last year on a Turkish-led flotilla bent on breaking the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
But in his first public remarks since Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador over the affair, Benjamin Netanyahu expressed Israel's regret for the loss of lives and said he hoped to mend frayed ties with Turkey ? a country that was once Israel's closest ally in the Muslim world.
Ankara had wanted Israel to apologize for the deaths and lift the blockade on Gaza, a Palestinian territory run by Hamas militants with a long history of deadly violence against Israel.
But Netanyahu said Israel, in trying to keep arms from reaching Gaza, had nothing to apologize for.
"We don't have to apologize for acting to defend our civilians, our children and our communities," Netanyahu told his Cabinet and journalists.
But he tempered those tough words by telling Turkey that Israel "expresses regret" over the deaths.
"I hope we will find a way to overcome the dispute with Turkey," Netanyahu said. "Israel never wanted ties with Turkey to deterioriate, and Israel does not now seek a deterioration of ties."
The expulsion of the Israeli envoy from Turkey followed the leaking of a U.N. report on the bloodshed. The report defended the Israeli blockade of Gaza and acknowledged violent activists on board the blockade-busting Mavi Marmara ship had attacked the raiding naval commandos.
But it also accused Israel of using disproportionate force against the activists and called the deaths of eight Turks and one Turkish-American "unreasonable."
Israel imposed a sweeping land and naval blockade on Gaza in 2007 after the Islamic Hamas violently overran the territory. The aim, it said, was to keep militants from bringing weapons into the enclave by sea, and to put pressure on the 1.6 million Gazans to topple their leaders. But the blockade achieved neither aim.
The bloodshed on the Mavi Marmara sent Israeli-Turkey relations, which have steadily deteriorated since the Islamist-oriented Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister in 2003, sinking to a new low. The sides worked to find a formula that would appease the Turkish demand for an apology, but those attempts failed.
Turkish activists did not join a failed attempt earlier this year to send another flotilla to Gaza, in what appeared to be a sign of warming relations between the two countries. But although there had been indications that Israel might apologize, that did not happen.
Asked if new Turkish conditions, such as the lifting of the Israeli blockade on Gaza, made reaching an accord difficult, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor replied:
"The Turks have upped the ante every time. First it was an apology and compensation. Then they wanted ot shelve the (U.N.) report once they saw the draft. Then they wanted to lift the blockade on Gaza as a condition. There was no end to that."
Palmor said Israel was "trying to contain the crisis and find ways to de-escalate." But he said it was "too early to actually speak about any concrete measures" and added that "we're not going to be pushed and we're not going to be rushed into anything."
He said Israeli officials had ongoing talks with Ankara over the wekeend, but no trips to Turkey or visits to Israel by Turkish officials were planned.
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