TWO BOATS will set sail from Cyprus this week for the troubled shores of the Gaza Strip. An international group of 40-plus activists and journalists hope to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza and provide a lifeline to the 1.4 million Palestinians living there.
Gaza remains one of the most populated strips of land in the world, with a third of the population living in refugee camps. Since the withdrawal of Jewish settlers and Israeli troops from Gaza in 2005, Israel has maintained control over its airspace, coast and most of its borders, making access in and out of the area extremely difficult. In 2006, Israel and its Western allies responded to the election of Hamas with economic and diplomatic sanctions, further compounding the plight of the Gazan people.
The Free Gaza Movement (FGM) arranging the trip argues Gaza is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. Organiser, Greta Berlin, says people’s livelihoods have been destroyed by the blockade.
Fishermen are scared to fish because they get shot at so restrict themselves to overfishing the coastline. The Israeli bombing of the power plant which effectively disabled the sewage plant, has left the coastline poisoned with sewage, she added.
International organisations bemoan the lack of access to Gaza, arguing that medical aid and basic supplies are left sitting idle at the borders. A sober indication of the daily strife in the Strip is the request by one Gazan organisation for 9,000 hearing aids, mostly for children, mostly for children who have been exposed to the sonic booms of Israeli military aircraft making daily over-flights.
The organisers’ main aim is to sail to Gaza, and open a link between Gaza and the rest of the world. If stopped by the Israeli navy, the group hopes to highlight “the illegality of the continued blockade and de facto occupation of Gaza”.
The participants range in age from 22 to 83, the majority described by Berlin as “veterans of tear gas, sound bombs and rubber-coated bullets”.
The trip is not without danger, as the participants are well aware. A previous protest voyage to Haifa organised by the PLO in 1988 was halted when a mine blew up the ship’s hull at Limassol port. Stopping short of claiming responsibility, then Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin said the government had decided to stop the ship from sailing by “whatever means” necessary. The day before the blast, three senior PLO officials, believed to be organising the voyage, were killed by a car bomb on the Limassol waterfront.
Fast forward to 2008: the Israeli civil rights group, Shurat HaDin, has written to the US Attorney General claiming the Gaza boat organisers are “seeking to illegally smuggle weapons and explosives to Hamas”.
The Israeli Embassy in Nicosia did not wish to comment on the planned sea expedition to Gaza.
With the international media, a Holocaust survivor and Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, Lauren Booth, on board, it remains to be seen whether the two boats will be allowed to reach their destination.
