A Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla aimed at breaking Israel’s naval blockade has been intercepted by the Israeli military, days after the detention of activists on an earlier flotilla led to international outrage and widespread protests.
Nine sailing vessels flying Italian and French flags and a motor ship registered in Timor-Leste were intercepted and boarded starting at 4.34am on Wednesday in international waters roughly 120 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, the group’s organisers the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) and Thousand Madleens to Gaza said in a statement.
It came as 82 parliamentarians from the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly and the European parliament called for the immediate and unconditional release of activists from the earlier Gaza Sumud flotilla (GSF) held last week by Israel. At least seven of the more than 450 people detained remain in custody, according to Israeli media reports.
“We urge all governments, international organisations and the international community to condemn the interception of the Global Sumud flotilla and abduction/detention of humanitarian civilians in international waters,” the parliamentarians said.
The latest flotilla, which set sail from Turkey, was carrying doctors, nurses and journalists on a ferry converted into a floating hospital, plus medicines, respiratory equipment and nutritional supplies intended for Gaza’s health facilities.
The flotilla’s live tracker said that by 10am on Wednesday all the vessels had been intercepted. A statement from the organisers said the Israeli military had no jurisdiction in international waters and the flotilla posed no harm. It said its crews had been “kidnapped”.
The statement said: “This seizure is a blatant violation of international law and defies the binding orders of the international court of justice, which call for unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza. Our volunteers are not subject to Israeli jurisdiction and cannot be criminalised for taking part in a humanitarian mission aimed at delivering aid or for sailing in international waters. Their detention is arbitrary, unlawful and must end immediately.”
The Israeli foreign ministry confirmed it had intercepted the boats and that those onboard would be transferred to an Israeli port to be processed and then deported. “Another futile attempt to breach the legal naval blockade and enter a combat zone ended in nothing,” it said in a social media post.
Turkey’s foreign ministry described the incident as an “act of piracy” and said all initiatives were being taken for Turkish citizens held by Israel to be freed and returned to Turkey, and that it was coordinating with other countries regarding their citizens.
Those detained include Mélissa Camara, a French MEP. “Israel has once again violated international law,” she said in a statement sent by her assistant. “What happened is in fact an act of abduction – targeting individuals whose sole aim was to help end the illegal blockade of Gaza, while sailing in international waters that are clearly not under Israeli jurisdiction.”
Last week Israel intercepted about 40 vessels and detained more than 450 activists including the Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg. Some activists have alleged being subjected to physical and verbal abuse by Israeli forces and being denied medical care during their detention.
Thunberg said after arriving back in Sweden on Tuesday: “Personally I don’t want to share what I was subjected to, I don’t want there to be quotes about that Greta was tortured because that isn’t what the story is here.
“I could talk about all the children who can’t go to school. About all the children amputated. Of all the children who have become parentless. About all the homes that have been bombed down. I could also talk about the extreme physical abuse and the torture that we were subjected to in prison.”
Israel’s foreign ministry has dismissed all claims of mistreatment of members of the flotilla as “brazen lies”, posting on social media: “All the detainees’ legal rights are fully upheld.” It said Thunberg “did not complain to the Israeli authorities about any of these ludicrous and baseless allegations – because they never occurred”.
David Adler, a US activist, described a “five-day nightmare of serial and systematic violation of our most basic rights” in an audio statement after his release from Israeli detention on Tuesday.
“We were intercepted illegally and violently by Israeli naval forces,” Adler said. “We were kidnapped, stripped, zip-tied, blindfolded and sent to an internment camp, on a police van, without any access to food, water or legal support. And for the next five days, on and off, we were psychologically tortured.”
The Oxford PhD student said conditions at Ketziot, a high-security jail in the Negev desert, “were not at all normal prison conditions”. He said: “From the first moment that we stepped on to that tarmac after interception, we were violently forced on to our knees into positions of submission … We were denied the most basic things, like critical access to insulin for diabetic detainees that were part of the flotilla. In short, we were treated as terrorists, just as [the Israeli] national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had promised.”
Meanwhile, South African activists, including Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla Mandela, said on arrival back in South Africa that they had been treated more harshly owing to their government’s case at the international court of justice accusing Israel of genocide.
Fatima Hendricks and Zaheera Soomar said their hijabs were forcibly removed and they were made to strip naked in front of Israeli soldiers, something they said did not happen to female Muslim activists from other countries.
Ben-Gvir has said he was “proud” of the way staff behaved at Ketziot. He said in a statement on the activists: “They should get a good feel for the conditions in Ketziot prison and think twice before they approach Israel again.”
