Flotilla was Preceded by Convoy

The notorious Gaza Freedom Flotilla in which terrorists lured Israeli commandos into a violent trap on the Mavi Marmara was preceded by a less famous land convoy to Gaza, Lifeline 3, that bore many similarities to the flotilla, and was also largely made up of Turks. Analysts in the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center have now published a report that shows the terrorists learned from the mistakes they made in the convoy and applied the lessons in the flotilla.

Intelligence gatherers in Israel, it seems, were not able to connect the dots between the two initiatives in time to warn the IDF of the potentially violent nature of the flotilla.

Multiple similarities

In December 2009, international "aid convoy" Lifeline 3 was organized by the Viva Palestina group, headed by former British MP George Galloway. Two hundred and fifty Turks – approximately half of the total participants – participated in the convoy. Prominent among them were IHH activists led by one Bülent Yildirim.

As in the case of the flotilla, the participants included Islamist extremists (especially Turks), as well as activists affiliated with the European radical left and authentic human rights volunteers who wanted to help Gazans. In both instances the Turkish government played an important role. Ankara was involved in arranging for the Lifeline 3 convoy, and its organizers were guest of the Turkish Parliament, ITIC explained.

“In both instances the participants refused to obey the instructions of the Egyptian and Israeli authorities. The directors of Lifeline 3 defied the Egyptians, and their approach was confrontational and challenging (as during the Mavi Marmara incident).”

“The Lifeline 3 participants, especially the IHH operatives and their leader, Bülent Yildirim, behaved violently toward the Egyptian authorities, similar to their violent resistance to the IDF soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara. Fifty operatives were wounded during the confrontation with the Egyptian security forces, five of them seriously. In an interview posted on the IHH website, Bülent Yildirim said that during the confrontation 'we took seven Egyptian soldiers prisoner; we released three who were wounded…'”

This pattern is reminiscent of the actions of the terrorists on board the Mavi Marmara.

“In the opinion of its organizers, the Lifeline 3 affair was a failure, it ruined relations with Egypt and drew attention away from Israel. The convoy raised little interest in both the Israeli and international media. The lessons of Lifeline 3 were studied and the conclusions were applied, five months later, in the Mavi Marmara flotilla.”

Lessons learned

IHH and Hamas learned the lessons of the Lifeline 3 convoy and the harsh Egyptian reaction. The main lesson was the need to avoid confrontations with Egypt in the future and to shift the focus of attention to Israel.

Muhammad Sawalha, a senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, which participates in organization of convoys to Gaza, said in an interview on a Hizbullah website in January that Lifeline 3 found itself involved in an “unwanted confrontation” with the Egyptian authorities and “the next time the confrontation will be directly with the Zionist enemy itself on the high seas.”

If Israeli intelligence gatherers had been aware of the lesson-learning process in the IHH and Hamas – perhaps the Mavi Marmara could have been handled differently. As it happened, the IDF was not expecting the degree of violence it encountered on the ship, and its soldiers had no choice but to shoot to kill in order to save their own lives. The death toll, most analysts said, played into the hands of Israel's enemies.