A dozen ships continue sailing towards the Gaza Strip after Israel intercepted about 40 on Monday, the bulk of the humanitarian flotilla, according to the organizers and shown by the vessels’ trackers. Israeli military forces boarded the 40 ships in international waters west of Cyprus and captured 332 crew members, of whom 33 are Spanish. On one of the captured ships is journalist Ignacio Ladrón de Guevara, a contributor to EL PAÍS, with whom all communications have been cut off. There is, for the moment, no news of the whereabouts of the detainees. Among them is also the sister of the President of Ireland, Margaret Connolly.
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“Ten of our humanitarian ships have escaped 22 hours of Israeli attacks in international waters and are heading towards Gaza. They are currently 121 nautical miles (about 225 kilometers) from the coasts of Gaza,” stated the Global Sumud Flotilla, one of the coalitions organizing this flotilla. This is the largest to date attempting to break the naval blockade imposed by Israeli authorities against the Palestinian enclave.
One of the ships not captured by the Israelis, the Family, had to request assistance from the Turkish coast guard due to a technical problem and was being towed to a Turkish port this morning. Another vessel, which also suffered incidents, headed to waters off Cyprus, a source from the organization reported.
The vessels departed last month from Barcelona and, after stopping at several ports, were attacked by the Israelis off the coast of Crete (Greece), more than a thousand kilometers from the waters of the Jewish state. Except for two members who were detained and taken to Israel, one of them Spanish, the rest were released at a Greek port.
This allowed the group to reorganize and add new vessels at the Turkish port of Marmaris. From there, this new attempt set off, which again has been blocked by Israel in international waters, something the Turkish government has called an “act of piracy.”
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of several countries whose citizens have been captured by Israel – including Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Turkey, and Jordan – have demanded their “immediate release” and expressed “concern for their safety,” since members of previous flotillas have been subjected to mistreatment and torture in the Israeli prisons where they were held. “These assaults, including attacks on vessels and the arbitrary detention of activists, constitute a blatant violation of international law,” they denounce.
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On Monday, Spanish diplomacy urgently summoned the chargé d’affaires of the Israeli Embassy in Madrid, Dana Erlich, the highest diplomatic representative of the country in Spain, to convey the Spanish Government’s “formal and strong protest” over the illegal detention of the flotilla.
Among the detainees, the majority are Turkish (75), followed by Spanish (33) and French (29), although there are about forty nationalities, including Chileans, Argentinians, Mexicans, and Brazilians.
Given the communication blockade and lack of information from Israel, the whereabouts of the activists captured at sea are unknown. In a statement, the Freedom Flotilla — another of the organizing coalitions — indicated that Israeli military informed them that the activists would be transferred to a “prison ship,” then taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned the remaining ships to “turn back immediately” as it will not allow “any violation of the legal naval blockade of Gaza.” The authorities of the Jewish state defend the naval siege citing the Palmer Report, issued by a group of experts appointed by then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after the Israeli assault on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in 2009, during which Israeli commandos boarded the vessel and killed 10 crew members – for which Israel later apologized and paid compensation to the victims’ families.
The Palmer Commission concluded that Israel had used excessive force but that its interception of the ship in international waters was legal and that the naval blockade complied with the laws of war on the matter. However, numerous legal experts and UN bodies have questioned the Palmer report for not considering the humanitarian aspect and that the blockade is part of the total siege to which Israel has subjected Gaza for nearly two decades, concluding that it is illegal.
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