Deportation of passengers from seized Gaza-bound aid boat imminent, Israel says
The
Israeli
Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it had taken the passengers who were detained aboard a
Gaza Strip
-bound aid ship, including activist
Greta Thunberg
, to an airport in Tel Aviv for deportation.
The Madleen, operated by a pro-Palestinian activist group called the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters on Monday, some 200km from Gaza.
The ship was brought to the port of Ashdod in Israel where the crew was to be held ahead of deportation and its symbolic cargo of humanitarian aid seized.
The passengers were expected to leave Ben Gurion Airport for their home countries within hours, the ministry said in a statement early on Tuesday.
READ MORE
Any passengers from the UK-flagged ship who refused to leave Israel could be brought before a judicial authority to carry out their deportation, the ministry said in the statement.
It was unclear whether any of those who had been on board had refused to leave. Representatives of the coalition did not immediately respond to requests for comment early Tuesday.
Ms Thunberg and the other 11 members of the Madleen crew, including the French MEP Rima Hassan and the Al Jazeera journalist Omar Faiad, were out of contact following the seizure of the boat in the early hours of Monday
The coalition leads an international grassroots campaign that opposes Israel's long-standing naval blockade of Gaza by sending ships filled with humanitarian aid to the enclave. The Madleen had set sail from Sicily earlier this month.
'The ship was unlawfully boarded, its unarmed civilian crew abducted, and its life-saving cargo – including baby formula, food and medical supplies – confiscated,' it said.
Israel had vowed to prevent the ship from reaching Gaza, saying that its military would use any means to stop it from breaching the blockade.
The foreign ministry said Monday that the Madleen had been diverted toward Israeli shores. The coalition said its activists had been 'kidnapped' by the Israeli military.
United Nations
special rapporteur Francesca Albanese called for the crew to be released 'immediately'.
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said he had instructed that upon the boat's arrival at Ashdod, the activists would be shown videos of atrocities committed during the October 7th, 2023
Hamas
-led attack on southern Israel.
About 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and 250 taken to Gaza, where 55 are still held hostage, in the attacks, which triggered the
ongoing conflict
in Gaza, in which some 54,000 people have been killed.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times
.
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