Activists plan women-only boat to Gaza Strip next year
Freedom Flotilla Campaign says it will also send more ships in coming years, vows to continue until Israel lifts blockade
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A coalition of pro-Palestinian activists plans to launch an all-female boat to Gaza aimed at breaking the Israeli naval blockade on the Palestinians next year, the Freedom Flotilla Campaign announced Sunday.
The flotilla, the latest in a series of failed boat trips that Israeli officials have termed provocations, is part of a three-year strategic plan the group of activists released Sunday.
The Freedom Flotilla Campaign said it also planned to send two more boats over the two subsequent years, one in 2017 to show “solidarity with the fishermen of Gaza” and a second the next year “carrying hundreds of supporters from around the world.”
“We will continue our work until the blockade of Gaza is lifted, occupation comes to an end and all just rights of the Palestinian people are restored,” the coalition said in a statement on its site.
Israel maintains its security blockade on Gaza to prevent Hamas, an Islamist terror group that seized control of the Strip in 2007, from importing weaponry. Hamas, which avowedly seeks Israel’s destruction, has fought three conflicts against Israel since it took over Gaza, firing thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israel, and digging tunnels under the border. It continues to test and improve its rockets in anticipation of further conflict, and is widely reported to have resumed digging tunnels in the wake of a 50-day conflict with Israel in the summer of 2014.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is a loose coalition of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel groups from the EU, Canada, Turkey, the US and South Africa.
In June, the group sent a ship from Sweden to Gaza carrying several activists, including Israeli-Arab MK Basel Ghattas and former Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki.
The boat, which organizers said was carrying humanitarian aid, was stopped by Israeli forces before reaching Gazan waters and those aboard were detained, but it managed to shine an international spotlight on the Palestinian enclave.
The aid on the ship eventually turned out be a single solar panel and one nebulizer.
The first flotilla to Gaza, led by the Mavi Marmara ship, was raided by IDF naval commandos leading to a melee during which 10 Turkish activists were killed and 10 IDF soldiers were wounded, two of them seriously.
The incident gave Israel a diplomatic black eye and contributed to a deterioration of ties with Ankara.
The Times of Israel Community.