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| By David Bedein August 10, 2008 |
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The "Free Gaza" movement held a press conference in Nicosia Monday announcing that a group of 40 people would board two small boats to travel by sea to Gaza in a publicity stunt to draw attention to Israel's blockade on Gaza. The boats are expected to leave Friday, a day designated by Hamas as International Palestine Solidarity Day.
The press conference opening with veteran left-wing activist Jeff Halper, an American immigrant to Israel, alleging that the Israeli government was behaving in defiance of international law by closing shipping lanes to Gaza.
But the Israeli legal NGO, Shurat Hadin, says that the law-breakers are the ones aiming to launch the expedition, and have contacted US officials to prevent or prosecute those who are endangering lives by provoking a confrontation off Israel's international waters.
The Israeli government, trying not to hand the leftists free publicity, has been working behind the scenes with the Greek and Cypriot governments in an attempt to foil the launch, as detailed in Israel Insider's previous report.
The left wing activists say that their causes is purely humanitarian, and not political. Mr. Monir Deeb, a native of Gaza who lives in Los Angeles, explained to the media that he was getting aboard these boats to reunite with his siblings in Gaza.
Deeb described Gaza as a "peaceful community under Israeli military siege" and said that this small convoy was meant to deliver a message to Israel to stop the siege of Gaza.
The Bulletin asked Deeb about the thousands of missiles fired over the past eight years at Israeli communities that surround Gaza. Deeb said that he "could not relate to this question," since it was "political."His concern was "only humanitarian" in nature.
The convener of the Free Gaza press conference, however, Greta Berlin, an American woman formerly married to a Palestinian, explained an aspect of their humanitarian mission which was that they were set to supply 9,000 hearing aids for Palestinian children who were allegedly suffering hearing loss at a young age, supposedly "due to Israeli missile attacks on Gaza."
When Berlin was asked if the rockets may have been fired by Palestinians in Gaza against Israeli targets, Berlin would not comment on that possibility.
Meanwhile, although Ms. Berlin said several times to the media that the purposes of the voyage to Gaza was not political, the press statement issued by FreeGaza.org touched every political button possible.
Free Gaza stated that it strongly condemns Israel for not allowing "refugees and their descendants the right to return home" to villages resettled by Israel after the 1948 war.
Berlin claimed that the operation to bring two boats into Gaza was a private initiative, contradicting a July 31 claim by the Palestine Information Center which stated that a member of the Lebanese Parliament had confirmed to Hamas leader Abu Marzook in Cairo that the boats had been provided by Hamas. That would mean, in effect, that the organization received two primary sources of support: American Jewish groups and Palestinian "popular committees" run by Hamas.
After the Islamic Hamas regime, defined by the West as a terror group, took over Gaza and declared total war against Israel, with the stated aim of liberating all of Palestine, the Israeli navy imposed an embargo of goods coming into Gaza in an effort to apply economic pressure on the regime and to cut military supplies from Iran and elsewhere arriving via boats landing on Gaza coastline. Israel allows goods and services for humanitarian needs to reach Gaza and has recently relaxed the embargo in the framework of a ceasefire understanding with Hamas.
David Bedein can be reached at bedein@thebulletin.us. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com. Israel Insider staff contributed to this report. |
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