Gaza flotilla: Israel faces second showdown with aid ship

Israel was today headed for a second showdown with an aid ship after activists said they would again try to breach the blockade and deliver their cargo to the Gaza strip.

By Dina Kraft in Tel Aviv
Published: 7:02PM BST 04 Jun 2010


Activist Naimh Moloughney packs bags to be loaded into the cargo ship the MV Rachel Corrie at the weekend Photo: PA

There were fears of further clashes as Israel warned it would not allow the ship land despite international pressure to drop the restriction following the commando raid on the aid flotilla in which nine people were killed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet that the boat, the Irish-owned Rachel Corrie, would not reach the territory. Israel has urged the activists to bring the ship to the southern Israeli port of Ashdod and promised to transfer all aid to Gaza, however, the activists rejected the Israeli offer.

The Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Mairead McGuire, who is on board the ship said activists were determined to press on but would offer no resistance if Israeli forces came aboard.

“We will sit down. They will probably arrest us ... But there will be no resistance.”

By this afternoon the ship, which is named after a young american activist crushed to death by and Israeli army bulldozer during a Gaza demonstration against house demolitions in 2003, was 134 miles (215 kilometers) off the Gaza coast and was expected to reach Israel’s 20-mile exclusion zone by this morning.

Brian Cowen, the Irish Prime Minister, has issued a warning that the ship must be allowed to sail on to Gaza.

British activists who were detained briefly by Israel following the raid on the Turkish ship the Mavi Mara on Monday were returning to the UK and claimed that commandos had operated on a “shoot to kill” policy.

However, Israeli officials say that navy commandos acted in self-defence on the ship after they were attacked by ship passengers who beat them with metal poles, knives and later even shot at them with two pistols they took from the soldiers themselves.

Israel is under pressure, particularly from Washington, to find a way out of the diplomatic crisis that has followed. Mr Netanyahu is now understood to be considering scaling back the scope of the blockade. This would involve reducing the naval blockade to prevention of arms smuggling with assistance of international community.

The blockade was instituted three years ago in a bid to isolate and ultimately weaken Hamas, which had just taken over the Gaza Strip in a bloody showdown with Fatah, its more moderate rivals who remain in control of the West Bank.

The flotilla raid has seriously damaged Israel’s relationship with Turkey, its only Muslim ally. Yesterday the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan further inflamed the situation by claiming that he did not view Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

“Hamas are resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land. They have won an election,” Mr Erdogan said in a public speech in the central city of Konya.

“I have told this to US officials... I do not accept Hamas as a terrorist organisation. I think the same today. They are defending their land,” he said.

Hamas, which is committed to the destruction of Israel, is blacklisted in the United States and the European Union as a terrorist group.

In Istanbul, a crowd of some 10,000 people held prayers for a journalist among the nine Turkish men killed in Monday’s raid.

Chants of “murderer Israel” echoed across the courtyard of the historic Beyazit Mosque, where a huge banner called for the Israeli embassy to be shut down.

Abdullah Gul, the Turkish president, has warned relations with Israel “will never be the same” and Bulent Arinc, the Deputy Prime Minister, said economic and defence ties would be slashed.

Ismail Haniya, the Hamas premier, said yesterday that the aid activists trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza had emerged the victors.

“The strategy of the enemy has failed and the strategy of patience has won in Gaza today,” he said in a sermon at the weekly Muslim prayers in Gaza City.

“Your message has reached its target. Your aid has reached its target, you have broken the political and media siege, and you will be a cause for the lifting of the economic siege of Gaza,” he said.