Foreign pro-Arab activists plan to sail again on Wednesday or Thursday morning in another attempt to prove that Israel cannot control movement off the GazaCoast. They succeeded last month in landing two boats at a Gaza beach after Israel called off its threat to turn them back or arrest them. The Foreign Ministry explained it did not want to give the activists the opportunity to capitalize on the publicity stunt and gain more media attention.

However, it has not announced what measures, if any, it will take to stop this week's attempt to cross international waters and land at a Gaza beach.

 

The activists have called their effort the Free Gaza Movement and are bringing doctors, politicians and human rights activists on the boat set to sail from Cyprus and land at Gaza about 30 hours later. Arab Knesset Member Jamal Zahalka also plans to be aboard, along with former Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan-Maguire and Palestinian Authority (PA) legislator Mustafa Barghouti. Maguire won the prize in 1976 for her work in Belfast.

Arab Knesset Member Jamal Zahalka also plans to be aboard.

 

Israel told the PA three years ago it was expelling Jews from the Gaza region and withdrawing IDF forces on condition that it retain control of Gaza air space and the coastal waters in order to prevent the smuggling of terrorists and weapons into Gaza.  

 

Intelligence officials have said that the de facto Hamas government has used the Mediterranean Sea as a route to bring more arms and ammunition into Gaza, even after the agreement on June 19 for a cessation of terrorist activities and Israeli counterterrorist operations.

 

Activists spokesman Huwaida Arraf, a law lecturer at Al-Quds University in eastern Jerusalem, said, "Last month, on August 23rd, our two, small, wooden boats, the SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty, sailed to Gaza and did what our governments would not do;  we defied Israel's illegal collective punishment of 1.5 million men, women and children living in the Gaza Strip. On September 24th, we're sailing back to Gaza to challenge it again."