Israel defiant as more ships head for Gaza
By Middle East correspondent Anne Barker, staff
Updated 44 minutes ago
More on the way: An Israeli vessel escorts the Mavi Marmara into Ashdod (AFP: Menahem Kahana)
Israel has vowed to block more aid ships heading for Gaza, despite growing condemnation over a military raid that left nine people dead and dozens injured.
Israel has faced a barrage of protest from around the world since soldiers raided a flotilla of aid ships on Monday and began shooting at passengers.
The Israeli government is standing its ground against the United Nations, NATO and other world leaders who have condemned its actions, and insists the soldiers acted in self defence after being attacked by the ship's passengers.
Aid groups say they are determined to push on with plans for at least two more ships as part of a campaign to break the blockade on Gaza.
One ship is now off the coast of Italy and could reach Gaza within a week, but the Israeli government says it will not let any ships through.
"We will not let any ships reach Gaza and supply what has become a terrorist base threatening the heart of Israel," deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai told public radio.
Free Gaza Movement lawyer Audrey Bomse says a cargo ship called the Rachel Corrie is on the way to the Middle East.
"We're planning on continuing to send it into Gaza," Ms Bomse said. "We want to make sure that we try to not get anywhere near Gazan waters or Israeli waters at night so we avoid the chaos."
This morning Israel said it would immediately deport hundreds of foreign activists who were seized during the raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was leading the aid convoy.
A spokesman for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said all 680 activists held would be freed, including two dozen Israel had earlier threatened to prosecute for allegedly assaulting its troops. ...<cont>
Gaza flotilla activists deported to Jordan claim Israeli mistreatment
Gaza flotilla activists Gaza flotilla activists arrive back in Jordan after being deported by Israel following its deadly assault on pro-Palestinian supporters. Photograph: Jamal Nasrallah/EPA
Israel today started deporting all the detained activists seized during its botched raid on an aid shipment to Gaza, as some of the first to be freed spoke of their mistreatment at the hands of the Israelis.
A group of 124 pro-Palestinian activists from 12 Muslim nations crossed the border in five Jordanian buses. Another 200 activists have been transferred from a holding centre to Israel's airport near Tel Aviv, a prison service spokesman said. The remaining activists will be released throughout the day, the spokesman said.
Yesterday Israel had indicated it might prosecute some of the activists.
The decision to free the detainees came as more accounts from those on the ships began to emerge.
One Briton who was on one of the boats heading towards Gaza arrived back in Britain last night.
IT professional Hasan Nowarah, from Glasgow, described the moment the aid flotilla was stormed by Israeli troops.
He told Sky News that the Mavi Marmara ship was surrounded by helicopters and Zodiac assault craft.
"All you could see was screaming and bullets. Out of the blue as I looked around our ship, all I could see were hundreds of Zodiacs. Hundreds of Zodiacs full of soldiers, and big ships, lots of ships, and I believe as well submarines in the sea."
The assault left nine dead and dozens wounded and has led to criticism of Israel and increasing calls for an independent, impartial inquiry.
One of the group deported to Jordan today, Walid al-Tabtabai, a Kuwaiti politician who was on board one of the ships with other activists from Muslim countries, said: "The Israelis roughed up and humiliated all of us, women, men and children.
"They were brutal and arrogant, but our message reached every corner of the world that the blockade on Gaza is unfair and should be lifted immediately."
Like many passengers on the flotilla he insisted there were no weapons on any of the ships.
Algerian Izzeddine Zahrour said Israeli authorities "deprived us of food, water and sleep and we weren't allowed to use the toilet".
"It was an ugly kidnapping and subsequently bad treatment in Israeli jail," he said. "They handcuffed us, pushed us around and humiliated us."
Mauritanian Mohammed Gholam said Israel "wanted us to sign documents saying that we entered Israel illegally".
An Algerian activist, who only gave her first name as Sabrina, accused Israeli commandos of taking a one-year-old child hostage.
"They point a gun to his head in front of his Turkish parents to force the captain of our ship to stop sailing," she said.
A Jordanian government spokesman said there were 30 Jordanians in the group. Jordan is one of two Arab nations with a signed peace treaty with Israel. Kuwaiti ambassador Sheik Faisal Al Sabah said the group included 16 Kuwaitis. He said the other activists came from Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Yemen, Oman and Bahrain.
Turkey has led criticism of the raid, accusing Israel of committing a "massacre", and the UN security council demanded an impartial investigation. There were reports in the Israeli media today that Israel had ordered the families of its diplomats in Turkey to leave that country because of Turkish anger at the raid.
Washington blocked an attempt at the UN security council for an international inquiry yesterday, issuing a mild statement regretting the loss of life. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, later called the situation in Gaza "unsustainable".
"Israel's legitimate security needs must be met, just as the Palestinians' legitimate needs for sustained humanitarian assistance and regular access to reconstruction materials must also be assured," she said.
Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said this morning that Israel's blockade of Gaza was "an absolute humanitarian catastrophe" that was "not in Israel's own long-term self-interest".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning that Israel had "every right" to protect its people from terrorist threat, but said: "What I ask my Israeli friends and Israeli politicians and officials I meet is: what's the strategy, where do you go next, how are you going to secure in the long term, not just day to day, the security which you rightly crave?"
Last night, the foreign secretary, William Hague, said 31 British nationals and a further 11 with dual nationality were known to have been detained after the seizure of the vessels as they attempted to breach the Israeli blockade of the territory.
The Foreign Office confirmed that 29 of the Britons had received a visit " with no complaints about their treatment.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said that the detainees were being treated in line with international practice.
"We are not charging them with anything, we have detained them and we will help them leave our country," he told the BBC.
There was concern among friends and relatives in the UK who complained that they were unable to establish contact with the detainees.
Rachel Bridgeland, whose partner, Peter Venner, 63, from Ryde, Isle of Wight, was on the Mavi Marmara, said that the government should be putting more pressure on Israel.
"It's absolutely terrible not knowing what has happened to him and it's terrible that the British government hasn't done more, but they don't want to fall out with Israel," she said.
New Israeli Tack Needed on Gaza, U.S. Officials Say
Demonstrators waved Palestinian flags in Istanbul on Wednesday during a protest against Israel's raid on a Turkish ship.
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: June 2, 2010
WASHINGTON " The Obama administration considers Israel’s blockade of Gaza to be untenable and plans to press for another approach to ensure Israel’s security while allowing more supplies into the impoverished Palestinian area, senior American officials said Wednesday.
The officials say that Israel’s deadly attack on a flotilla trying to break the siege and the resulting international condemnation create a new opportunity to push for increased engagement with the Palestinian Authority and a less harsh policy toward Gaza.
“There is no question that we need a new approach to Gaza,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy shift is still in the early stages. He was reflecting a broadly held view in the upper reaches of the administration.
Israel would insist that any approach take into account three factors: Israel’s security; the need to prevent any benefit to Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza; and the four-year-old captivity of an Israeli soldier held by Hamas, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit.
Since the botched raid that killed nine activists on Monday, the Israeli government has said that the blockade was necessary to protect Israel against the infiltration into Gaza of weapons and fighters sponsored by Iran.
If there were no blockade in place, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Israeli television on Wednesday evening, it would mean “an Iranian port in Gaza.” He added, “Israel will continue to maintain its right to defend itself.”
But the American officials said they believed that even Mr. Netanyahu understood that a new approach was needed.
Yet Mr. Netanyahu has resisted American pressure in the past. The Obama administration initially demanded a complete freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but had to accept a 10-month partial freeze. Pressure on Israel also carries domestic political risks for Mr. Obama, given the passion of its supporters in the United States.
Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza five years ago and built the makings of an international border. But after Hamas, which rejects Israel’s existence, won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, Israel cut back on the amount of goods permitted into Gaza. When Sergeant Shalit was seized in a raid in June of that year, commerce was further reduced.
A year later, Hamas drove the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority entirely out of Gaza in four days of street battles, leading Israel to cut off all shipments in and out except basic food, humanitarian aid and urgent medical supplies.
Hamas declines to recognize Israel’s right to exist, renounce violence or accept previous accords signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The diplomatic group known as the Quartet, made up of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, has said that until Hamas meets those requirements, the Quartet will not deal with it.
But the world powers have grown increasingly disillusioned with the blockade, saying that it has created far too much suffering in Gaza and serves as a symbol not only of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians but of how the West is seen in relation to the Palestinians.
“Gaza has become the symbol in the Arab world of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, and we have to change that,” the senior American official said. “We need to remove the impulse for the flotillas. The Israelis also realize this is not sustainable.”
At a meeting of the Quartet a year ago in Italy, for example, the group asserted that the current situation was not sustainable and called for the unimpeded provision and distribution of humanitarian aid within Gaza, as well as the reopening of crossing points.
But Obama administration officials made it clear that the deaths had given a new urgency to changing the policy.
Pressure against the blockade continued to grow on Wednesday: Turkey, which withdrew its ambassador to Israel after the raid, said full restoration of diplomatic ties was contingent on an end to the blockade.
The new British prime minister, David Cameron, also called for an end to the blockade, criticizing the raid as “completely unacceptable.”
In Israel, officials say there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza because the Defense Ministry makes sure that enough food and medicine reach the population. But international aid groups assert that real malnutrition is growing to about 10 percent and that problems with medical and sanitation supplies are rising perilously because of the Israeli and Egyptian embargoes.
In recent months, Israel has permitted increased " although still quite limited " movement of goods and people into and out of Gaza. One Israeli official said that under Mr. Netanyahu there had been a 20 percent increase in goods, including some limited building materials under third-party supervision so that Hamas would not get hold of them.
But Israel remains adamant, saying that if cement and steel were allowed to pass in any serious amount, they would end up in Hamas missiles and other weapons that would be aimed at Israel.
Discussion in Israel this week has largely focused on the details of the seizure of the ship where the deaths occurred rather than on the broader question of whether the blockade is good policy.
Amos Gilad, a senior defense official, said in an interview that in Gaza, “we only have bad solutions, worse solutions and worst solutions.” He added: “Hamas is a terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction. We, on the contrary, are facilitating them to bring in all kinds of food, materials; they are even exporting strawberries and flowers.”
Aluf Benn, a senior editor and columnist for the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote on Wednesday that the time had come for a new Gaza policy.
“The attempt to control Gaza from outside, via its residents’ diet and shopping lists, casts a heavy moral stain on Israel and increases its international isolation,” he wrote. “Every Israeli should be ashamed of the list of goods prepared by the Defense Ministry, which allows cinnamon and plastic buckets into Gaza, but not houseplants and coriander. It’s time to find more important things for our officers and bureaucrats to do than update lists.”
He suggested sealing the Israel-Gaza border and informing the international community that Israel was no longer responsible for Gaza in any way, forcing Gaza to turn to Egypt as its corridor to the outside world.
Egypt has consistently rejected such an idea in the past, asserting that Gaza is Israel’s responsibility because it has occupied it since 1967.
One of the primary rationales for the blockade offered by Israeli officials is the need to create a material and political gap between the West Bank, run by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, and Gaza, run by Hamas. And political surveys have shown a preference for Fatah and discontent with Hamas among Palestinians. But the latest events, the American officials say, have given Hamas a dangerous lift.
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
