Gaza boats arrive safely in Cyprus

THE TWO ‘Free Gaza’ boats anchored at Larnaca port last night, after successfully breaking the Israeli sea blockade of the Strip last Saturday.

Joining the 39 peace activists was a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, Sa’ad Mesleh, who lost his left leg in an Israeli missile attack on militants.

The teenager, who arrived with his father, was whisked away to Larnaca General Hospital’s Emergency Room in a waiting ambulance.

“The mission was a total success,” said Vangelis Pisias, captain of one of the ships last night. “We broke the isolation of Gaza from the Mediterranean sea and the outside world.”

He added, “Our basic aim was to open the way and we opened it, and created a political situation in the broader area, which creates preconditions for a re-evaluation of the old political isolation of Palestine and especially the Gaza Strip.”

The Israeli authorities decided to let the boats to enter the coastal enclave, the first to do so in years, because they wanted to avoid a public confrontation that could attract worldwide attention.

Thousands of cheering Palestinians had welcomed the boats, carrying 44 peace activists from 17 nations, when they docked in the Gaza Strip last Saturday.

They were the first foreigners to come to the territory by sea since Israel tightened travel restrictions after Hamas’s takeover more than a year ago.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.