Flotilla aims to break Israel's grip on Gaza

[Cees Binkhorst]

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Groet / Cees

PS. Leuke haven AN. Ben er zelf wel eens vertrokken (en ook weer
aangekomen ;)


Flotilla aims to break Israel's grip on Gaza
PAUL MCGEOUGH
May 24, 2010

AGIOS NIKOLAOS, Greece: 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?"

Ms Jaouadi, who was deported from Israel in 2008, rejected a suggestion
that the flotilla would be construed as support for terrorism because
Gaza remains under the control of Hamas. Instead, she argued that MPs
and others on board "had to see how hard it is to get a bag of cement to
build a school, so that kids can be educated; and to fix a hospital, so
that mothers don't have to have their babies in tents".

If the flotilla can reach Gaza, shipboard clinics will be operating from
some of the vessels, using an on-board dental chair, blood-collecting
machines and hospital beds. The building materials manifest includes 500
tonnes of cement, prefabricated homes, water filtration equipment and
generators.

"We are supplying basic needs of a population of 1.5 million, half of
whom are under voting age," Ms Jaouadi said. "Why are they being
collectively punished for a political situation over which they have no
power and had no say?"

But as an Israeli commentator dismissed the flotilla as a "ragtag armada
of rust buckets loaded with international 'peace' activists", the
Israeli government sought to play down the effectiveness of the
10,000-tonne cargo it might deliver, claiming that in the past week it
had allowed more than 14,000 tonnes of supplies into the Gaza Strip.

"I suspect this time the Israelis are very determined to stop us," Ms
Jaouadi said. "With the first boats they figured there would be less
media attention if they let us in. But now they see us revealing that
ships are the answer."

http://maps.google.com.au/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&msa=0&msid=104462212968933858200.00048752daadc5c5c8f38&ll=35.746512,27.37793&spn=12.471296,18.457031&z=5&source=embed

Challenger 1 - Departing from Agios Nikolaos, Crete, on May 25\
MV Rachel Corrie - Departed from Dundalk, Ireland on May 15, 2010.
Mavi Marmara - Departed Istanbul, Turkey, on May 22, 2010.
Three cargo and passenger boats to leave from Piraeus, the port of Athens.
Challenger II - A second vessel to depart from Agios Nikolaos,

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