Israel's Foreign Ministry announced on Saturday that 137 additional activists from the Gaza flotilla have been deported, among them Swedish “environmental activist” Greta Thunberg.
According to Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, the 137 deportees were placed on a Turkish Airlines flight from Israel that landed in Istanbul on Saturday afternoon.
The flight was the first Turkish Airlines plane to land in Israel in two years.
The deported individuals include citizens of the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Malaysia, Bahrain, Morocco, Switzerland, Tunisia, and Turkey.
Israel's Foreign Ministry stressed, "These individuals arrived under the guise of ‘humanitarian aid,’ but their actions — including their refusal to accept Israel’s, Italy’s, and Greece’s offers to transfer the aid through peaceful channels, and the minimal amount of aid they actually carried — prove that their true goal was provocation in the service of Hamas, not humanitarian assistance."