Israeli Grapples with Free Gaza Flotilla

The Israeli Navy is preparing to quietly intercept an international flotilla attempting a highly visible run on the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Israelis have staged their own counter-flotilla in response to the nine ships headed toward Gaza, bearing over 10,000 tons of supplies and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists, including hundreds of Turks and European legislators.

Over the weekend, some four dozens yachts and small boats sailed out of Israeli harbors and paraded up and down the coast waving anti-Hamas and anti-Turkish banners.

“These people don’t care about the Palestinians. They only want to make Israel look bad and embarrass the Israeli people,” Emmanuel Shai, one of the organizers of the counter flotilla told The Media Line.

“They do this from hate. They don’t want to help the Palestinian people, because if they did, they could have brought all this stuff to Israel and it could have been relayed to them.”

Three Turkish ships, including the Mavi Marmara passenger liner with over 550 people aboard, set sail from Turkish waters over the weekend to join the flotilla made up of ships from Ireland, Britain, Greece, Algeria and Kuwait. Some 5,000 bystanders took part in the send-off of the Mavi Marmara as it left Istanbul.

Organizers of the counter Israeli flotilla were particularly irked with the Turkish involvement, which they said was using anti-Israel activities to deflect internal criticism of the treatment of Kurds and other minorities, or discussion of the Armenian genocide.

Some of the Israeli yachts unfurled banners proclaiming the Armenian genocide as well as calls to free Israeli POW Gilad Shalit, who has been held by Hamas for nearly four years.

“We are telling Turkey, don’t mix Israel into your internal politics,” Shai said.

Shai said organizers had initially wanted to meet the incoming flotilla at sea, but the Israeli navy banned that potentially violent encounter. After the local armada staged its eight-hour sail up and down the Israeli coast, the navy then shut access to the sea till further notice to prevent any boats from attempting to rendezvous with the Gaza-bound international flotilla.

The nine international ships are expected to rendezvous at sea in international waters off of the Cyprus coast, probably at the coming weekend, and then make a run toward Gaza. 

“I never thought of it as making a run for it,” Greta Berlin, a spokesperson for the Free Gaza Movement, one of the organizations behind what is dubbed the Freedom Flotilla told The Media Line. “We have every right to go. The Gaza Strip is the only territory in the world that is blockaded. What we are trying to say is that what Israel is doing is illegal.”

Berlin told The Media Line that the supplies included cement, iron, water filtration systems, pre-fabricated homes and building supplies as well as paper and crayons.
The flotilla includes four cargo ships, passenger liners and smaller vessels.

The government of Israel says the fleet was welcomed to deliver its supplies to an Israeli port where it would be relayed to Gaza, which has been blockaded since 2006. But organizers scoffed at this, saying Israel prevents construction supplies to help the Palestinians build, following a three-week offensive last year.

“The only thing the Israeli government allows in is humanitarian supplies. We don’t need to bring in humanitarian supplies. We are bringing in construction materials. This is not about bringing in humanitarian supplies. This is about breaking the siege,” Berlin said.

The Israel Defense Forces said that it was “monitoring the situation and preparing accordingly.” Officials in the Israeli defense establishment said that naval vessels were expected to confront the flotilla at sea but would not provide any further details.

In an attempt to curtail a public relations disaster of armed troops confronting the civilian ships, the Israel Navy is expected to jam the satellite transmission and otherwise use electronic warfare to quash all coverage and photos of the event.

There have been eight previous attempts to run the Israeli naval blockade and five of them succeeded while the navy stopped three others and towed the ships to port, said Berlin, who added that organizing the current flotilla began over a year ago.

“They have turned off our satellite phones. They have blocked our transmissions,” Berlin said. “We have live stream videos and we will continue to broadcast as long as we can. As long as it is on live and the signal suddenly goes out, then I think the world clearly knows what is happening and whatIsrael is doing.”

“We realized when we were hijacked, as we were last year, we couldn’t do it again until we found partners,” Berlin said.  “Israel threatens a lot of people a lot of times. I hope there are people in Israel who have more common sense and are saying it is probably better to let the Turkish and Greek and Irish and Malaysian boats in because this will be a (public relations) disaster for them.”

Asked about the local Israeli counter flotilla, Berlin said: “We as a civilian organization would be the last to say that the Israelis don’t have a right to take their little boats and sail up and down the coast if they want to.”