Israel holding two Gaza boat activists in solitary confinement, NGO claims
Brazilian Thiago Avila and French-Palestinian EU lawmaker Rima Hassan said sent to separate prisons; activists seeking attention on the back of Gazan suffering, says French PM
The legal organization representing most of the activists detained aboard an intercepted Gaza-bound aid boat said Wednesday that Israeli authorities had placed two of the campaigners in solitary confinement.
“Israeli authorities transferred two of the volunteers — the Brazilian volunteer Thiago Avila and the French-Palestinian European Parliament member Rima Hassan — to separate prison facilities, away from the others, and placed them in solitary confinement,” Israeli rights group Adalah said in a statement.
When asked for comment, the Israel Prison Authority referred AFP to the Foreign Ministry, which said it was checking the reports.
Hassan and Avila are among 12 activists who tried to sail to Gaza in an attempt to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Strip earlier this week.
The Israeli Navy intercepted the Madleen sailboat on Monday, detaining the activists off the coast of Gaza. The interception followed repeated warnings against attempting to sail to the enclave.
Eight of the activists remain in Israeli custody after they refused to sign paperwork agreeing to leave the country. They are expected to be deported later this week.
The other four, including two French citizens and Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg, left the country after agreeing to be deported immediately and being banned from Israel for 100 years.
Hassan and three other French activists were slated for deportation by the end of the week, on Thursday and Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in an X post Wednesday.
It is unclear when exactly the other four, including Avila, will be expelled from Israel.
In Paris on Wednesday, French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou accused Hassan and the other French activists of capitalizing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for political attention.
“These activists obtained the effect they wanted, but it’s a form of instrumentalization to which we should not lend ourselves,” Bayrou said in the National Assembly, in response to LFI leader Mathilde Panot’s accusation that the prime minister failed to condemn Israel’s actions.
It’s “through diplomatic action, and efforts to bring together several states to pressure the Israeli government, that we can obtain the only possible solution” to the conflict, he added. “In no way whatsoever do the gesticulations of Ms. Rima Hassan, her instrumentalization of the suffering of Gazans, help to achieve these goals.”
He said the French consul has visited all four French activists in Israeli detention.
The Times of Israel Community.