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Just days after the Turkish parliament approved a reconciliation agreement with Israel, Turkey and Israel exchanged sharp public criticisms over Israel’s response to rocket fire from Gaza on Sunday.

A Kassam rocket was fired from Gaza at the southern Israeli town of Sderot. Although it landed between two houses, no injuries were reported. Israel initially responded with a strike on two strategic positions in Gaza. Overnight Sunday though, dozens of Israeli air sorties targeted sites linked to Hamas, an apparent increased response to the usual initial retaliatory strike to the infrequent rocket fire from Gaza since Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

Yesterday, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning Israel’s “unacceptable” air strikes, terming them “disproportionate attacks”.

It added: “Normalising ties with Israel does not mean that we will keep silent in the face of attacks against the Palestinian people.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry responded in kind, saying “the normalisation of our relations with Turkey does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of its baseless condemnations”. The statement pledged that “Israel will continue to defend its civilians” and suggested that “Turkey should think twice before criticising the military actions of others”.

The dispute comes two days after Turkey’s parliament approved a reconciliation deal with Israel, bringing an end to a six-year freeze in diplomatic relations. Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek even suggested over the weekend that he may soon visit Israel. The two countries are expected to name ambassadors in the coming days.

However, there is also keen debate in Israel over the nature of Sunday’s IDF activity in Gaza. Writing in Maariv, Yossi Melman suggests that the increased response constitutes “a change in Israel’s retaliatory policy”. His Maariv colleague Ben Caspit says that such a change is down to new Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman. However, Yediot Ahronot’s military affairs correspondent Alex Fishman disagrees and argues that intelligence assessments on this occasion suggested Hamas would not exacerbate the situation and Israel merely took advantage to strengthen its deterrence.