Israel Navy troops opened fire on pro-Palestinian activists aboard a six-ship aid flotilla sailing for the Gaza Strip, killing two of them and wounding several others, after the activists ignored Israeli orders to turn back, Turkey’s NTV reported early Monday.
The Israeli naval vessels reportedly made contact earlier with the six-ship flotilla, which is carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and supplies to Gaza.
The Israeli navy was operating under the assumption that the activists manning the boats would not heed their calls to turn around, and Israeli troops were prepared to board the ships and steer them away from the Gaza shores and toward the Israeli port city of Ashdod.
Huwaida Arraf, one of the flotilla organizers, said the six-ship flotilla began the journey from international waters off the coast of Cyprus Sunday afternoon after two days of delays. According to organizers, the flotilla was expected to reach Gaza, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) away, on Monday afternoon, and two more ships would follow in a second wave.
The flotilla was fully prepared for the different scenarios that might arise, and organizers were hopeful that Israeli authorities would do what’s right and not stop the convoy, one of the organizers said.
“We fully intend to go to Gaza regardless of any intimidation or threats of violence against us,” Arraf said. “They are going to have to forcefully stop us.”
After nightfall, three Israeli navy missile boats left their base in Haifa, steaming out to sea to confront the activists’ ships.
Two hours later, Israel Radio broadcast a recording of one of the missile boats warning the flotilla not to approach Gaza.
“If you ignore this order and enter the blockaded area, the Israeli navy will be forced to take all the necessary measures in order to enforce this blockade,” the radio message continued.
The flotilla, which includes three cargo ships and three passenger ships, is trying to draw attention to Israel’s three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip. The boats are carrying items that Israel bars from reaching Gaza, like cement and other building materials.
The activists said they also were carrying hundreds of electric-powered wheelchairs, prefabricated homes and water purifiers.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said that after a security check, permitted humanitarian aid confiscated from the boats will be transferred to Gaza through authorized channels. However, Israel would not transfer items it has banned from Gaza under its blockade rules. Palmor said that for example, cement would be allowed only if it is tied to a specific project.
This is the ninth time that the Free Gaza movement has tried to ship in humanitarian aid to Gaza since August 2008.
Israel has let ships through five times, but has blocked them from entering Gaza waters since a three-week military offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers in January 2009. The flotilla bound for Gaza is the largest to date.
Some 700 pro-Palestinian activists are on the boats, including 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, European legislators and an elderly Holocaust survivor.
The mission has experienced repeated delays, both due to mechanical problems and a decision by Cyprus to bar any boat from sailing from its shore to Gaza. The ban forced a group of European lawmakers to depart from the breakaway Turkish Cypriot northern part of the island late Saturday.
Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade on Gaza after Hamas militants violently seized control of the seaside territory in June 2007.
Israel says the measures are needed to prevent Hamas, which has fired thousands of rockets at Israel, from building up its arsenal. But United Nations officials and international aid groups say the blockade has been counterproductive, failing to weaken the Islamic militant group while devastating the local economy.
Israel rejects claims of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying it allows more than enough food and medicine into the territory. The Israelis also point to the bustling smuggling industry along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, which has managed to bring consumer goods, gasoline and livestock into the seaside strip.
Israel has condemned the flotilla as a provocation and vowed to block it from reaching Gaza.
Israeli military officials said they hope to resolve the situation peacefully but are prepared for all scenarios. Naval commandos have been training for days in anticipation of the standoff. Military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under official guidelines, said the forces would likely take over the boats under the cover of darkness.
Palmor said foreigners on the ships would be sent back to their countries. Activists who did not willingly agree to be deported would be detained. A special detention facility has been set up in Ashdod.
Al Jazeera, reporting live from the Freedom Flotilla at 6.30PM Eastern (1.30AM local Monday) said that after having been approached by Israeli navy ships several hours earlier, the flotilla has changed course in order to avoid a confrontation during the hours of darkness. The flotilla’s movements are being monitored by warships and aircraft — observers from the flotilla were not able to tell whether the distant aircraft was a helicopter of a drone.
Activists on Freedom Flotilla ships have put on life jackets as Israeli navy approaches at around 4PM Eastern. The flotilla remains in international waters outside an exclusion zone which Israel has already extended from 20 to 68 miles. The flotilla is still 120 miles from Gaza.
The Israeli commentator, Nahum Barnea, notes: “Netanyahu must certainly be disturbed by the unpleasant photos of the clash between IDF forces and the protestors. Yet what should concern him to a much greater degree is the ongoing deterioration in our ties with Turkey. This is not a public relations problem: It’s a strategic problem.”
The largest contingent of activists on board the Freedom Flotilla comes from Turkey.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the convoy of ships, including Turkish ships, carrying aid to Gaza was just a move of non-governmental organizations and had nothing to do with Turkish government.
“It is also an international move of the civil society. It is completely a step taken with humanitarian purposes,” Erdogan told reporters in Brazil.
When Israeli officials are pressed to justify the fact that Israel has prevented the reconstruction of thousands of homes it destroyed during the war on Gaza, they say that if construction materials were allowed into Gaza, these would be commandeered by Hamas and used to fortify its bunkers.
Meshaal’s message to the Obama administration and to the American people was this:
It’s time to end this embargo on Gaza, because it’s immoral, unethical and it failed in achieving its political objectives. And it is the right of the Palestinian people in Gaza to live like all other people without any embargo, because Gaza today is the biggest prison in the world and in history.
You know that Israel in the last war destroyed tens of thousands of houses, hospitals and universities, and it is the responsibility of the international community and especially of the United States of America to reconstruct what [has] been destroyed by Israel in Gaza. And we do not have it as a condition that this construction operation to be done through Hamas. No. As I told [Russia’s] President Medvedev, the international community can develop an international mechanism that is independent to introduce the construction materials into Gaza and to supervise the rebuilding, reconstruction of the houses and schools destroyed by Israel. Because our mission is to service our people. We want the Palestinian people in Gaza to live simply in houses in winter and in summer. And this is the responsibility of the international community. Unfortunately, some Palestinian leaderships lie to the Americans and to the Europeans when saying that Hamas has it as a condition to supervise the reconstruction. We do not have this as a condition. We tell the whole world, come to Gaza. Reconstruct the destroyed houses.
The Navy and the Israel Air Force’s observation jets are following the various vessels en route to Gaza and are prepared to first deploy the Navy’s missile ships which are docked in Haifa, and then, the rest of the forces.
Navy to sail boats to Ashdod The Navy hopes it will not have to use its extensive force and that the flotilla will retreat once its ships’ captains are warned. If this does not happen, Shayetet 13 officers are ready to take over the ships by force. Naval officers will board the ships and sail them according to the Navy commander’s orders.
A similar force of Dvorah patrol boats and Shayetet 13 vessels will be awaiting the ships at the Ashdod Port where they will assist in the final interception and in unloading the passengers and the cargo at the port. An Israel Police force will also be waiting on the shore, in order to prevent provocations and riots by the flotilla’s passengers.
The Navy’s decision to deploy such a large force for a relatively simple mission follows a decision by the prime minister, defense minister, and forum of seven top cabinet ministers not to allow the ships to arrive in Gaza under any circumstances, even if Israel is forced to pay a hefty price in the PR arena and in the international community’s eyes.
The Israeli propaganda machine has reached new highs its hopeless frenzy. It has distributed menus from Gaza restaurants, along with false information. It embarrassed itself by entering a futile public relations battle, which it might have been better off never starting. They want to maintain the ineffective, illegal and unethical siege on Gaza and not let the “peace flotilla” dock off the Gaza coast? There is nothing to explain, certainly not to a world that will never buy the web of explanations, lies and tactics.
Only in Israel do people still accept these tainted goods. Reminiscent of a pre-battle ritual from ancient times, the chorus cheered without asking questions. White uniformed soldiers got ready in our name. Spokesmen delivered their deceptive explanations in our name. The grotesque scene is at our expense. And virtually none of us have disturbed the performance.
The chorus has been singing songs of falsehood and lies. We are all in the chorus saying there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We are all part of the chorus claiming the occupation of Gaza has ended, and that the flotilla is a violent attack on Israeli sovereignty – the cement is for building bunkers and the convoy is being funded by the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood. The Israeli siege of Gaza will topple Hamas and free Gilad Shalit. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy, one of the most ridiculous of the propagandists, outdid himself when he unblinkingly proclaimed that the aid convoy headed toward Gaza was a violation of international law. Right. Exactly.
It’s not the siege that is illegal, but rather the flotilla. It wasn’t enough to distribute menus from Gaza restaurants through the Prime Minister’s Office, (including the highly recommended beef Stroganoff and cream of spinach soup ) and flaunt the quantities of fuel that the Israeli army spokesman says Israel is shipping in. The propaganda operation has tried to sell us and the world the idea that the occupation of Gaza is over, but in any case, Israel has legal authority to bar humanitarian aid. All one pack of lies.
Only one voice spoiled the illusory celebration a little: an Amnesty International report on the situation in Gaza [PDF]. Four out of five Gaza residents need humanitarian assistance. Hundreds are waiting to the point of embarrassment to be allowed out for medical treatment, and 28 already have died. This is despite all the Israeli army spokesman’s briefings on the absence of a siege and the presence of assistance, but who cares?
And the preparations for the operation are also reminiscent of a particularly amusing farce: the feverish debate among the septet of ministers; the deployment of the Masada unit, the prison service’s commando unit that specializes in penetrating prison cells; naval commando fighters with backup from the special police anti-terror unit and the army’s Oketz canine unit; a special detention facility set up at the Ashdod port; and the electronic shield that was supposed to block broadcast of the ship’s capture and the detention of those on board.
And all of this in the face of what? A few hundred international activists, mostly people of conscience whose reputation Israeli propaganda has sought to besmirch. They are really mostly people who care, which is their right and obligation, even if the siege doesn’t concern us at all. Yes, this flotilla is indeed a political provocation, and what is protest action if not political provocation?
And facing them on the seas has been the Israeli ship of fools, floating but not knowing where or why. Why detain people? That’s how it is. Why a siege? That’s how it is. It’s like the Noam Chomsky affair all over again, but big time this time. Of course the peace flotilla will not bring peace, and it won’t even manage to reach the Gaza shore. The action plan has included dragging the ships to Ashdod port, but it has again dragged us to the shores of stupidity and wrongdoing. Again we will be portrayed not only as the ones that have blocked assistance, but also as fools who do everything to even further undermine our own standing. If that was one of the goals of the peace flotilla’s organizers, they won big yesterday.
Five years ago, the noted Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who is a Jerusalem Prize laureate, after concluding his visit to Israel, said the Israeli occupation was approaching its grotesque phase. Over the weekend Vargas Llosa, who considers himself a friend of Israel, was present to see that that phase has since reached new heights of absurdity.
“The continued policy of closure is unacceptable and politically counterproductive,” she said in a statement.
“We would like to reiterate the EU’s call for an immediate, sustained and unconditional opening of crossings for the flow of humanitarian aid, commercial goods and persons to and from Gaza.”
In spite of this appeal, the government of Cyprus has taken the extraordinary step of preventing members of the European parliament from joining the Freedom Flotilla.
Cypriot authorities prevented pro-Palestinian activists, including 30 MPs from nine European countries, from leaving the island yesterday to join a flotilla in international waters, which is on its way to blockaded Gaza.
In addition to issuing an edict banning ships headed for Gaza to set sail from the island’s ports, or dock on the island on their way back, the authorities yesterday forbade any small vessels from leaving Cyprus in case they were on their way to the flotilla of eight ships carrying around 700 peace activists, and 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid.
The government denied it bowed to pressure from Israel to put the ban in place.
The Hamas leader in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh said Saturday that if Israel behaved like pirates and attacked the international Freedom Flotilla carrying 10,000 tons of aid meant for Gaza, then the Palestinians will have won.
“The flotilla’s message is clear and it will reach the entire world,” Haniyeh said Saturday morning during a press conference held at the Gaza port where the ships were expected to dock.
“The meaning of the flotilla is that the entire world opposes the siege on the Gaza Strip, and if Israel behaves like pirates and sea-terrorists – we will win,” he added.
This video begins with a speech made by Rachel Corrie — who was killed by the IDF in 2003 when protesting non-violently in Gaza — speaking as a youngster in defense of human rights. One of the cargo ships heading to Gaza as part of the Freedom Flotilla is the MV Rachel Corrie. This speech is followed by Michael Heart‘s “We will not go down.”
This is the camera being used by international news television broadcasters on board the Mavi Marmara Turkish passenger ship sailing to Gaza. Accompanying ships can also be seen during periods while news reports are not being broadcast. Most of the reporters appear to be Turkish, though there is also an Al Jazeera crew reporting in English.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesmen Yigal Palmor told the Wall Street Journal that in dealing with the Freedom Flotilla, Israel faces the choice of either looking stupid or like brutes — or like pirates!
Masked Israeli commandos — with daggers clenched between their teeth? — will soon likely take control of the ships.
Israel on Thursday unveiled a massive makeshift detention center in the country’s main southern port and announced the end of days of intense naval maneuvers, vowing to stop a flotilla of hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists trying to break a 3-year blockade of the Gaza Strip this weekend.
Military authorities said that masked naval commandos would greet the eight ships deep out at sea, escort the vessels to port and give each of the activists a stark choice: leave the country or go to jail.
But the tough response threatened to backfire by breathing new life into the activists’ mission and drawing new attention to the oft-criticized blockade of Gaza.
“We know that we are sailing for a good cause,” said Dror Feiler, 68, an Israeli-born Swedish activist who was on board a cargo ship headed from Greece to Gaza. “If the Israelis want us to pay a price, we will pay a price, but we will come again and again.”
Some 750 activists, including a Nobel peace laureate and former U.S. congresswoman, have set sail for the Gaza coast in recent days, carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian supplies. They are expected to reach the Israeli coast on Saturday.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak named a team of public-relations experts and military officers to come up with ideas for how to blunt the public-relations blow from the aid fleet, according to members of the Labour Party that Mr. Barak leads. The Israeli military has launched an aggressive public-outreach effort. At an unusual, last-minute news conference on Gaza’s border Wednesday morning, officers emphasized that Israel was already allowing generous quantities of aid into Gaza and dismissed claims by organizers of the aid flotilla that Gaza is facing a humanitarian crisis.
“This is nothing more than media provocation and has nothing to do with actually providing aid to residents of the Gaza Strip,” said military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovitch. “They have everything they need.”
As Larry Derfner writes, mocking such claims: “I only wish somebody would treat us Israelis like we treat people in Gaza.”
The IDF, which seems to have adopted a scattershot approach in its messaging, tells the Christian Science Monitor that it fears the flotilla may attempt to smuggle militants and weapons into Gaza — two of the few resources in which the Strip is, by most accounts, already amply supplied.
As if to demonstrate that Israel’s officials have a talent for making the Jewish state look brutish and stupid, the one thing that seems to have escaped their attention is this: Western news organizations have a meager amount of interest in activist endeavors such as the Freedom Flotilla. The only thing that really grabs the mainstream media’s attention is Israel’s heavy-handed way of responding to such activism.
Yigal Palmor says: “If we let them throw egg at us, we appear stupid with egg on our face.” But here’s a thought: Israel doesn’t have to look stupid or brutish. It could lift the siege — a siege which by Israel’s own account clearly isn’t working — and show the world that there still are a few signs of intelligent life inside Israel.
Al Jazeera reports on Israel’s propaganda campaign whose aim is to promote the message that the residents of Gaza, even while living under a severe economic blockade, “have everything they need.” As part of that effort, Israel distributed video footage of a guests enjoying fine cuisine in a gourmet restaurant in Gaza — guests including Mahmoud Abbas who hasn’t set foot in Gaza since the siege began!
At a time when Israel’s security officials should probably be focused on this week’s extensive home front security drill, it seems that that most of their attention is being paid to the flotilla of ships on its way to the Gaza Strip, laden with humanitarian supplies. Frantic consultations between officials and the prime minister’s top military chiefs of staff have taken place, an urgent meeting of a forum of senior government ministers was held, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has engaged in extensive activities, and an urgent press conference was held at the Erez border crossing. In particular, the Israeli government’s public relations machine has been mobilized with the intent of persuading the public that there is no need for the flotilla, due to the fact that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is fine, the Strip’s markets are abundant, and its gourmet restaurants are thriving.
Sheikh Raed Salah, from the Islamic Movement in Israel, tells Al Jazeera:
The official Arab role in this campaign is missing but that of the Arab people is not. We have campaigners coming from Kuwait, Jordan and Mauritania, Yemen and Algeria and that is a message we sent to the leaders. How beautiful it would be if you would reconcile with the stance of your people in their support of the cause of the Palestinians.
As the Freedom Flotilla sails towards Gaza, the Israeli propaganda machine is working at full bore. In its frenzied effort, message discipline seems to have gone out of the window.
10,000 tons of supplies being carried in the nine-ship flotilla are, the Israelis suggest, superfluous to Gaza’s needs when Israel itself is delivering 15,000 tons a week. Still, if the human rights activists insist on completing their mission, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it would be more “efficient” if the flotilla, instead of docking at Gaza City, docks at an Israeli port where everything can be transferred to Israeli trucks. Then everyone can say a prayer as they wait to see how much gets confiscated at the land crossing into Gaza. Why take a direct route when you can take a longer less certain indirect route?
Not surprisingly, The Freedom Flotilla organizers have declined Israel’s “offer.” Israel’s police and prisons service are now on standby, ready to deal with the potential arrest of hundreds of activists in the event that the Netanyahu government decides to block the flotilla’s passage. I imagine some kind of internment camp may need to be set up for holding and interrogating the peaceful activists prior to their deportation.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials are citing a Financial Times report that the 200 to 300 smuggling tunnels from Egypt into Gaza “have become so efficient that shops all over Gaza are bursting with goods.”
In effect, the Israelis seem to be saying that the combination of supplies that it delivers, along with those coming through tunnels, means that for all practical purposes Gaza is no longer under siege.
The siege isn’t working — don’t break the siege!
Strange message.
While Israeli officials selectively cite reporting by the Financial Times, here is part of the same report which makes it clear that under siege, Gaza’s economy has effectively been crippled — in spite of the availability of goods coming through the tunnels.
“Everything I demand, I can get,” says Abu Amar al-Kahlout, who sells household goods out of a warehouse big enough to accommodate a passenger jet.
However, Mr al-Kahlout regards his suppliers in Rafah with distaste. “The tunnel business is not real business. They [the tunnel operators] are not respectable: if they were able to cut off your skin and sell it, they would do so,” he says.
His criticism is echoed by other business leaders in Gaza, who insist that the smugglers are creating a false sense of economic improvement while damaging the territory’s battered private sector.
They concede that the tunnels are providing essential goods, yet the smugglers are also bringing in precisely the simple consumer items that could be manufactured in Gaza, especially if sanctions were eased.
“We are just replacing legitimate businessmen with illegitimate businessmen” says Amr Hammad, a Gaza-based entrepreneur and deputy head of the Palestinian Federation of Industries. Flush with cash, the tunnel operators will soon “govern the whole economy of the Gaza Strip”, Mr Hammad predicts.
For most Gazans, the period since the end of Israel’s three-week offensive in January last year has brought little improvement. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the number of “abject poor”, who depend on food aid, trebled to 300,000 – or one in five of all Gazans – in 2009.
One western official says the tunnels act like a “humanitarian safety valve”, but cautions that they offer no solution to economic decline. As Mr Hammad says: “An economy cannot just depend on tunnels.”
Over 60 percent of Gaza households are food insecure as a result of the ongoing blockade Israel imposed on the coastal enclave, leading to a collapse of its formal economy, the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) said Tuesday.
AIDA, which represents over 80 NGOs, called on Israel for “full and unfettered access into and out of the Gaza Strip for materials and exports necessary for the revival of the agriculture and fishing sectors.”
As Gaza’s population becomes increasingly dependent on aid, the organizations urged Israel to implement immediate measures which include the entry of agricultural input materials such as plastic irrigation piping, quality seeds/seedlings and veterinary drugs into Gaza “needed to jumpstart the agricultural sector and allow the export of produce” and the lifting of access restrictions on farming and fishing areas.
In the name of “security” — the catchall phrase used so often to justify brutality — through its siege on Gaza, Israel has engaged in a systematic campaign not merely to deprive a society of its physical needs but in order corrode, undermine and ultimately destroy the society itself.
Israel has vandalized Gaza in every possible way in a calculated effort to try and drive this society rip itself apart — to disarm Hamas by making Gaza implode. Gestures of solidarity and support for the people of Gaza from the Freedom Flotilla and elsewhere around the world are a way of saying that we can speak out even while our governments remain silent.
“We recommend the world send ships to the shores of Gaza, and we believe that Israel would not stop these vessels because the sea is open, and many human rights organizations have been successful in previous similar steps, and proved that breaking the siege on Gaza is possible.” John Ging, Head of United Nation’s Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip.
A global coalition of Palestinian support groups is taking protest to a dangerous new point of brinkmanship this week, with an attempt to crash through Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip in a flotilla of cargo and passenger boats now assembling in the eastern Mediterranean.
Converging at an undisclosed rendezvous in international waters, the four small cargo boats and four passenger vessels – ranging from cruisers carrying 20 to a Turkish passenger ferry for 600 – are a multimillion-dollar bid to shame the international community to use ships to circumvent Israel’s tight control on humanitarian supplies reaching war-ravaged Gaza.
As the first boat in the flotilla sailed from Dundalk, Ireland, to link up with others being readied at ports in Turkey and in Greece, Israel announced that it would bar the boats from landing.
A senior foreign ministry official described the flotilla as a ”provocation and a breach of Israeli law”.
Israeli media reports say that the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, has formally ordered that waters off Gaza become a closed zone to a distance of 20 nautical miles.
Israel already has a ”large naval force” on manoeuvre in the area; and as a confrontation at sea looms, suspicion was taking hold in both camps.
Mechanical difficulties in the boat bound from Ireland – the 1200-tonne MV Rachel Corrie, named after an American who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 – prompted claims that the boat had been sabotaged. Unnamed Israeli officials have claimed elements in the flotilla would attempt to garner media attention by seeking to provoke Israeli violence.
Further complicating a tense scenario were reports of a welcome fleet of small boats attempting to put to sea from Gaza, and of an Israeli ”counter flotilla” that had assembled near Tel Aviv as a “civil initiative … not connected to any political group”.
Israel has rejected pleas by several ambassadors, most vocally by Dublin’s envoy to Tel Aviv, that their nationals on the flotilla be given safe passage to Gaza.
In the port of Agios Nikolaos, here on the Greek island of Crete, one of the lead organisers of the flotilla is the Free Gaza Movement’s Renee Jaouadi – a 34-year-old schoolteacher, formerly from Newcastle, NSW. Under the banner of the Freedom Flotilla, the protest is a $US3 million-plus ($3.6 million) operation. Apart from 10,000 tonnes of building, medical, educational and other supplies, on board are dozens of parliamentarians from around the world and professionals planning to offer their services in Gaza.
Celebrity names include the Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell and Denis Halliday, a former United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator who in 1998 resigned, protesting that economic sanctions on Iraq amounted to genocide.
On Saturday evening, attempts were under way to find a berth on the over-subscribed manifest for the activist American philosopher Noam Chomsky, who Israeli authorities last week barred from entering the West Bank where he had been invited to speak at a Palestinian university.
Five of eight previous protest boats have managed to land in Gaza. But most recently one was rammed at sea by an Israeli navy ship, and another was captured, with all on board being held in Israeli jails for up to a week before they were deported.
This is deliberately their biggest operation. Ms Jaouadi said the number of vessels and passengers in this week’s flotilla was intended to overstretch the capacity of Israel’s navy and, in the event of mass arrests, the capacity of its prisons.
“It is perfectly logical to go in by sea when entry by land and air is closed,” she said. “We are ordinary civilians doing what governments and big NGOs are refusing to do. The UN is always complaining that it can’t get supplies through: why is it not sending ships?”
A delegation from the California-based Free Palestine Movement includes Joe Meadors, a decorated Navy veteran and one of the survivors of the 1967 attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, in which Israeli fighter planes and ships killed 34 Americans and wounded 173, and Ambassador Edward L. Peck, who spent 32 years in the Foreign Service, including stints as Chief of Mission in Iraq and Mauritania, and was Deputy Director of the Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan administration.
“It’ll be like old home week,” said Meadors, recalling the Israeli attack he survived 43 years ago. “I’m determined to land with this internationally coordinated effort on the shores of Gaza to deliver relief to the 1.5 million inhabitants suffering under the Israeli-led illegal blockade.”
John Ging, the Director of Operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, recently called upon the international community to break the siege on the Gaza Strip by sending ships loaded with desperately needed supplies .”We believe that Israel will not intercept these vessels because the sea is open, and human rights organizations have been successful in similar previous operations proving that breaking the siege of Gaza is possible.”
Explaining his decision to participate in the convoy, Ambassador Peck said many Americans oppose Israeli’s oppressive policies in Palestine and especially Gaza, and believe that they are not in anyone’s interests, especially Israel’s. “All the peoples of the Middle East will live in peace and security”, he said, “only when, and if, all of them live in peace and security.”
Explaining his decision to participate in the convoy, Ambassador Peck said he wants to show that many Americans oppose Israeli policy and believe that it is in U.S. interests to hold Israel to accountable to international law and human rights standards. “All the peoples of the Middle East will live in peace and security only when and if all of them live in peace and security,” he said.
Ismael Patel, from Friends of Al Aqsa in Britain, describes the flotilla’s mission:
The State of Israel has no interest in flooding television screens all over the world with footage of its navy violently assaulting against peace activists at sea. It is time to remove the suffocating siege and allow residents of Gaza to have free contact with the outside world, freely operate sea and air ports of their own like any country in the world.
The Gush Shalom movement calls upon the government to allow the eight-boat aid flotilla from all over the world to reach the shores of Gaza, where they are scheduled to arrive next week, and unload the humanitarian cargo which is urgently needed by the residents of Gaza. In a letter to Defense Minister Barak, Gush Shalom calls upon him to cancel immediately the instructions given to Israeli Navy ships off the Gaza shore to intercept the aid flotilla.
“The whole world is looking. The State of Israel has no interest in flooding the international television screens with images of Israeli sailors and naval commandos violently assaulting hundreds of peace activists and humanitarian aid workers, many of them well-known in their countries. Whose interest will it serve when hours long dramatic live reports arrive from the Mediteranean, with the world’s sympathy given to hundreds of non-violent activists, on board eight boats, assaulted by the strongest military power in the Middle East?” were the words of a letter to the Defense Minister.
No harm whatsoever will be caused to Israel from the aid flotilla reaching Gaza Port and unloading a cargo of medical supplies and medicines, school supplies and construction materials to rebuild the houses destroyed by the Israeli Air Force a year and half ago and not yet been restored. On the contrary, it would be in Israel’s best interest to declare without delay that as a humanitarian gesture, the boats’ way will not be blocked. And in general, it is time to end once and for all the suffocating siege imposed on the Gaza Strip and causing terrible suffering to its million and a half inhabitants.
The siege on Gaza utterly failed in all the goals set for it by the government of Israel. The siege was supposed to result in toppling the Hamas government – and on the contrary strengthened this government, which relied on the support of a significant part of the Palestinian People. The siege was supposed to help in gaining the release of captured soldier Gilad Shalit – but on the contrary, the siege just delays that release, which could have been achieved long ago had the government of Israel agreed to the prisoner exchange deal, on which most of the details have been decided long ago. It’s time to end this cruel and pointless siege.
The residents of the Gaza Strip, like the citizens of Israel and of any other country in the world, have the right to maintain direct contacts with the outside world – to leave their country and return to it, to develop their economy, to import the products they need and export their own produce to anyone who wants to buy it, without asking or needing for permission from Israel, Egypt or any other country. Just as Israel needs no permit from any other country to operate daily the sea ports of Ashdod and Haifa and Eilat and the Ben Gurion International Airport, so are the Palestinians and their state to be entitled to run their own sea port and airport in the Gaza Strip. Let the flotilla of humanitarian aid from all over the world be given the honour of inaugurating the sovereign Palestinian Port of Gaza!
We’ve all caught the fever, every one of us who works to send boats to Gaza. From August 2006, when a handful of us started the Free Gaza Movement, every one who has joined us has been stricken with a bad case of the disease. It is chronic. It sometimes causes afflicted patients to insist that if just one more voyage can be planned to this small slice of the Mediterranean, we’ll all be in remission. There is no real cure in sight… yet.
Gaza Fever has now attacked thousands of us who have a passionate sense of justice.
The disease began shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, as a group of us were in despair that the Palestinians, once again, were the forgotten symptom of Israel’s grand designs. As the world watched the defeat of Israel by a small band of guerrilla fighters in Lebanon, Israel decided it would take its wrath out on the Palestinians, specifically the Palestinians of Gaza. We watched as Israel, in January 2009, deliberately bombed 1.5 million Palestinians into abject poverty, a man-made catastrophe bordering on genocide.
One man in Australia suggested we sail a boat from New York to Gaza in protest of the closures there. That small idea has grown into a flotilla that leaves at the end of May with 700 people on board nine ships.
We, who have traveled by boat to Gaza, come back changed, blisters of outrage forever marking us. Those who have supported us through donations, letters, outraged picketing in front of Israeli Embassies demanding Israel stop its war crimes against a civilian population are also changed, as they watched our small boats sail into Gaza five times, cheering us on our way. Then, when our last three missions were violently stopped by Israel, thousands stepped up and donated to help us buy new boats.
In July 2009, Tun Dr.Mahathir bin Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, and his wife, Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah bin Mohamad visited the Free Gaza Movement in Cyprus. They had heard about the voyages to Gaza and what Israel had done to the last three, ramming the Dignity, turning one back under threat of fire and hijacking the Spirit of Humanity, kidnapping the 21 human rights observers and throwing them into detention for a week.
He wanted to come and see for himself the small fishing boat that had been, in August 2008, Free Gaza’s first vessel to enter the port of Gaza in 41 years. When he and his wife stepped on this small vessel, he was shocked. “You went all the way to Gaza on this small boat? You braved the sea in a boat that was barely seaworthy?”
When we replied that, indeed, we had crossed the sea in not only this small boat, but one even smaller, 44 of us challenging Israel’s blockade on the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza, he caught Gaza Fever.
“You need a proper boat,” he said. “I’m going back to my people in Malaysia and see how we can help you raise money to send more boats back to Gaza.”
And that’s exactly what he and his wife did.
Follow the progress of the Freedom Flotilla on Twitter and at WitnessGAZA.
Later this month, ships from all over the world will converge in the Mediterranean and set sail for the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. This international coalition is called the Freedom Flotilla.
The Free Gaza Movement has sailed eight missions to Gaza in the past three years, five of them successful. The last three were violently stopped by the Israeli Navy; the boat Dignity was rammed three times and the Spirit of Humanity turned back in January 2009, then seized and all aboard arrested.
This time the Freedom Flotilla is upping the ante and instead of one- and two-vessel challenges, will be breaking Israel’s siege with an eight-boat front.
In the past, the Israel Navy could pick us off as individual boats. Now, including Free Gaza’s four ships, 700 passengers and some 5,000 tons of reconstruction materials and medical equipment. This includes Free Gaza’s MV Rachel Corrie, which was purchased through generous donations from Malaysia’s Perdana Global Peace Foundation.
The Israeli government has responded to the “sea intifada” coming its way with saber rattling and accusations of serving Hamas. Israel has proscribed the Turkish human rights and relief group Insani Vardim Vakafi (IHH). IHH is responsible for sending a cargo ship and passenger ship in the Freedom Flotilla. Israel has accused it and Free Gaza of “supporting terrorism.” Half the Israeli navy is set to challenge the mission, with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the helm commanding the operation in person. The air force is on standby and “diplomatic pressure” is being applied behind the scenes. The message is clear from Israel: “We will stop you and we will use force to stop you.”
At no point does the Freedom Flotilla enter Israeli territorial waters. The journey starts in local European or Turkish waters, courses through international waters and ends in Gaza’s territorial waters. No checkpoints interrupt us. No walls daunt our sight. We’ve proven that it’s possible to sail a clear line with no borders, as we want the world to be, until we get to Gaza.
The Israeli human rights group, Gisha, has taken the Israeli government to court in an effort to force Israel to reveal information on the import controls through which Gaza is being held under siege.
Rules that allow the importation of cinnamon but not coriander might seem arbitrary and it’s unlikely that further documentation from the Israelis will show otherwise. But there does appear to be a sadistic logic at work here. Nothing more effectively reinforces a sense of powerlessness in a population than for the minutiae of everyday life to be under the constant, arbitrary and callous control of an invisible and inaccessible power. This is the logic and practice of subjugation. It is an exercise in the crushing of human will.
Gisha’s director, Sari Bashi, says she is no security expert, “but preventing children from receiving toys, preventing manufacturers from getting raw materials – I don’t see how that’s responsive to Israeli security needs.”
And she says that some of the prohibitions appear to be absurdly arbitrary: “I certainly don’t understand why cinnamon is permitted, but coriander is forbidden. Is there something more dangerous about coriander? Is coriander more critical to Gaza’s economy than cinnamon? This is a policy that appears to make no sense.”
She argues that if there is a logic behind such decisions, the military should reveal what it is.
Now, after several months’ waiting, the state has given its response to the court, in a written submission, seen by the BBC.
It throws a small pool of light on the process behind the blockade.
The overall rationale is set out, in bold type: “The limitation on the transfer of goods is a central pillar in the means at the disposal of the State of Israel in the armed conflict between it and Hamas.”
The Israeli authorities also confirm the existence of four documents related to how the blockade works: how they process requests for imports into Gaza, how they monitor the shortages within Gaza, their approved list of what is allowed in, and a document entitled “Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Lines” which sets out the minimum calorie intake needed by Gaza’s million and a half inhabitants, according to their age and sex.
This paper was however, the state insists, just a draft power-point presentation, used for “internal planning work”, which “never served as a basis for the policy of the authority”.
But while the first three documents promise a great deal of detail, that detail is not delivered.
In each case, the state argues that disclosure of what is allowed in and why would, in their words, “damage national security and harm foreign relations”.
In a bloggingheads.tv interview, Robert Wright speaks to Bassam Nasser, who works for the Catholic Relief Services in Gaza. Though Wright’s questions tend to be somewhat uninformed and predictable, Nasser’s responses provide a much richer and more nuanced view of life under siege and Israeli occupation than can be gleaned for standard news reports.
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Activists on Freedom Flotilla ships have put on life jackets as Israeli navy approaches at around 4PM Eastern. The flotilla remains in international waters outside an exclusion zone which Israel has already extended from 20 to 68 miles. The flotilla is still 120 miles from Gaza.
