Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz. (Credit: AFP)
Israel announced on Sunday that it had ordered the army to prevent a humanitarian ship carrying activists, including Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, from reaching Gaza, with the aim of "breaking the Israeli blockade" in the war-torn Palestinian territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he had "instructed the [Israeli military] to prevent the Madleen ship from reaching Gaza" and from "breaking the maritime blockade of Gaza," where the Israeli army is at war with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas following its bloody attack on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel. "To Greta the anti-Semite and her companions, mouthpieces of Hamas propaganda, I say clearly: turn back because you will not reach Gaza," Katz added in a statement from his office.
The organizers of the expedition aboard the Madleen said on Saturday that they had reached the Egyptian coast and were approaching Gaza with the aim of providing humanitarian aid and "breaking the Israeli blockade" imposed on the Palestinian territory, which the U.N. says is threatened with famine. The Coalition of the Freedom Flotilla's sailboat departed from Sicily on June 1, headed for Gaza. Among those onboard are German, French, Brazilian, Turkish, Swedish, Spanish and Dutch nationals.
Thiago Ávila, an activist also onboard the humanitarian ship, claimed on his Instagram account that Israel was disrupting the ship's navigation system. "The radars and location data of the Madleen ship, which is headed to Gaza with the Coalition of the Freedom Flotilla's sailboat to protest the siege imposed by Israel, have been disrupted," Ávila said, as reported by Haaretz.
"We just received very strange information: According to our tracker, we are no longer 162 nautical miles [around 300 kilometers] from the Palestinian enclave, where we are actually located, but it indicates that we would be at Jordan's airport."
"We know what that means: When they [the Israelis] start jamming our communications, manipulating our devices, it means they are preparing for interception or an attack. So they are preparing to commit a war crime, and we have to stop them." In his post, the activist called upon his followers to pressure the Israeli government to end the attack on the ship and to allow it to dock on the Gaza coast to "bring food to starving people."
'War crimes'
French Member of European Parliament Rima Hassan, onboard, said that more than 200 European parliamentarians had signed an open letter addressed to Israel, asking that the Madleen be allowed to reach Gaza. "The State of Israel will not allow anyone to break the maritime blockade of Gaza, which mainly aims to prevent the transfer of weapons to Hamas, a murderous terrorist organization holding our hostages and committing war crimes," Katz added.
On the ground, Gaza's Civil Defense announced Sunday the deaths of at least 10 people in Israeli military operations since dawn, five of whom were seeking humanitarian aid. Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for this relief organization, reported "five martyrs and dozens injured transported to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis after the occupation opened fire on civilians."
"Around 4:30 a.m., people began to gather in the al-Alam area in Rafah, and after about an hour and a half, hundreds of people moved forward [towards the distribution site], but the army opened fire," Abdallah Nour al-Din, an on-site resident, told AFP.
When questioned by AFP, the army asserted it had fired on people who, despite warnings, "continued advancing in a manner that endangered soldiers." It added that the vicinity of the distribution site had been publicly declared a "night-time active combat zone." The Israeli army also accused Bassal of spreading false information to "serve Hamas's war objectives," which has been in power in Gaza since 2007 and is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union. He denied this to AFP.
Scenes of emotion
In the courtyard of Nasser hospital, an AFP video showed dozens of people weeping around bloodstained white plastic shrouds. "I can't see you like this," Line al-Daghma cried in front of her father's body, while a man lay down on his brother's corpse, embracing the body bag.
Following a series of other chaotic and deadly events in recent days near sites of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supported by the United States and Israel, the GHF said on Saturday it was forced to suspend aid distribution for the day due to Hamas threats against its staff.
Meanwhile, Palestinian resistance factions condemned U.S.-led aid distribution centers in Gaza, deeming them death traps responsible for the deaths of dozens of starving civilians. In a statement released June 8, the factions accused these centers of aiming to dismantle UNRWA and erase the Palestinian cause while facilitating forced population displacement.
They called for a return to U.N.-managed humanitarian aid and warned that anyone cooperating with Israeli or foreign agendas would be considered a legitimate target by resistance forces, Palestinian resistance factions in Lebanon stated Sunday.
The Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, resulted in the deaths of 1,218 Israelis, the majority of whom were civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Out of the 251 people abducted, 55 remain held in the Gaza Strip, with at least 31 confirmed dead, according to Israeli authorities. More than 54,772 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli military's retaliatory campaign, according to data from Gaza's health ministry, which the U.N. considers reliable.