Israel to stop Gaza aid ships
The Freedom Flotilla, is carrying around 700 pro-Palestinian activists from various countries, as well as 10,000 tonnes of aid.
It is by far the largest fleet of aid to try to reach
In accordance with the directions of the Israeli government, the Israel Defence Forces and the Israeli Navy are preparing to prevent the flotilla from reaching the
The Israeli army also took journalists on a tour of a detention centre being prepared at
Ma’ariv, an Israeli newspaper, said preparations were being made to provide the detainees with food, drink and medical treatment.
'Message to
Hanin Zuabi, a member of the Israeli parliament who is on board the flotilla, told Al Jazeera that the activists intend to reach
"If the Israelis try to stop us, this will be a huge diplomatic and political crises for them," Zuabi said.
"We have 50 states participating in this and are sending a very clear message to
Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, on board the flotilla, said the activists travelling in the convoy included European parliamentarians, former
Organisers of the aid fleet said that they will ignore Israeli threats and head straight for
Three ships are from
'PR disaster'
"
Some Israeli officials see this as a disastrous public-relations situation.
"We can't win on this one in terms of PR," Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman, said.
"If we let them throw egg at us, we appear stupid with egg on our face. If we try to prevent them by force, we appear as brutes." [my emph.]
For the majority of
posted by Gert @ 12:12 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
You're right. Israel is being stupid. The activists should be allowed to reach Gaza after their cargo is inspected.
Inspected, I presume, by customs officials of the sovereign state of Gaza? Or is there someone else you imagine is entitled to carry out such inspections?
Hey, if Hamas wants to conduct a customs inspection and tax its own aid, after the Israeli navy makes sure there are no weapons on board, who am I to say no.
Emm:
I frankly don't understand (logically speaking of course) why a simple rule of inspecting all goods coming into Gaza isn't applied. The stated aim is to keep weapons out, correct? Then what is achieved by imposing a blanket ban on all goods, excepting those originating from Israel? You would think that with modern search technology it wouldn't be too hard to effectively screen incoming goods for suspect items.
By this blanket ban Israel fuels the impression it is trying to achieve something altogether different.
I agree that most of the list of banned items makes no sense and seems quite random.
"By this blanket ban Israel fuels the impression it is trying to achieve something altogether different."
Well, from the get-go Israel said it was an economic blockade and not a purely military one. Even an economic blockade should be much more limited than what is in place right now.
This is precisely what is so sad about the whole enterprise: that no amount of blockade is really going to change the situation; the Gazans aren't en masse going to set upon Hamas' leaders (and if they did we'd actually have been encouraging a coup) and Hamas isn't mysteriously going to melt away. The only option, untried (and perhaps uncertain) but in the medium term simply unavoidable, is to start talking. Try talking about a real, sustainable ceasefire to begin with. This is not an impossible objective.
There appears to be an assumption that Israel is somehow entitled to interdict weapons from Gaza. Given Israel's magnanimous 'complete withdrawal', is there some principle underlying that assumption, apart from the desire to bomb with impunity?
The principle of us not liking to be attacked by missiles that we could have otherwise prevented from reaching their destination in the first place.
Plus, the fact that Gaza is not a sovereign state. No country recognizes it as such.
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