Israel's army chief vowed Tuesday to prevent Lebanese and Iranian aid ships from entering the Gaza Strip, saying the coastal enclave would not become an Iranian port, media reported.
"We have the right to inspect and prevent the flow of arms into Gaza," the Ynet news website quoted Israeli chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi as saying.
"We can't let Gaza become an Iranian port," he said speaking at a Jewish seminary in northern Israel.
Earlier Tuesday Iranian Red Crescent officials said an Iranian aid ship is to leave the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas for a 14-day journey to Gaza at the end of this week, the ISNA news agency reported.
Lebanese civilian groups are also planning to send two ships to the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory via Cyprus.
"If a flotilla comes from Lebanon we will deal with it. If they are peaceful we will deal with it peacefully, if not we will deal with it as we need to," Ashkenazi said.
The planned Iranian and Lebanese aid shipments come after a May 31 Israeli commando raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that left nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists dead and sparked international outrage.
Israel has eased the blockade on Gaza in the wake of the incident.
Israel has argued the closures — imposed when one of its soldiers was seized by Gaza militants in a deadly June 2006 raid and tightened a year later when Hamas took over — are needed to contain the Islamist movement.
The Jewish state is highly wary of aid flotillas. Israel is officially at a state of war with Lebanon and Israeli media have said that the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah might be planning to send materials into Gaza. Israel argues that Hamas is seeking weapons from the aid missions.
Israel views Iran as its principal threat after repeated predictions by the Islamic republic's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Jewish state's demise.
Along with the West, it suspects Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of its nuclear programme, a claim Tehran denies.
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