A boat seized by Israel’s military as it tried to break the blockade on Gaza was towed into an Israeli port after sunset on Monday, with the crew of activists including Greta Thunberg expected to be held there in advance of deportation hearings.
The Madleen was attempting to bring a symbolic shipment of aid to Gaza, which faces a looming famine after more than 11 weeks of total siege and ongoing severe restrictions on food entering the territory.
In recent days Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinians and injured hundreds more as they tried to reach a handful of sites where a US- and Israeli-backed logistics organisation is handing out limited supplies.
Thunberg and the other 11 members of the Madleen crew, including the French MEP Rima Hassan and the Al Jazeera journalist Omar Faiad, have been out of contact since Israeli forces took control of the boat in the early hours of Monday morning.
The legal adviser to the Israeli navy told the rights group Adalah, which is representing the detainees: “To the best of our knowledge, none of them are injured or currently require medical treatment.”
After reaching Ashdod they were due to be handed into police custody and “undergo a hearing prior to the issuance of deportation orders”, Adalah quoted him saying.
Although there was little expectation that Israeli authorities would let the small yacht get close to Gaza, even attempting to reach the territory by boat is risky.
In May, another boat sailing as part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the group that organised the Madleen’s voyage, caught fire off Malta and issued an SOS after what the group said was an attack by Israeli drones. Israel’s military declined to comment.
In 2010, nine activists were killed when Israeli commandos raided a small fleet of ships trying to take supplies including building materials to Gaza. Israel began blockading Gaza in 2007.
Among the last communications from the Madleen before it lost communications was a photo showing the 12-strong crew gathered in a circle, wearing lifejackets, with their hands in the air. A series of pre-recorded messages from crew members were later released online.
“If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters,” Thunberg said in a brief message, urging family, friends and supporters to put pressure on the Swedish government to secure her release as soon as possible.
The UK-flagged Madleen set sail at a time of mounting international pressure on Israel over the starvation of Palestinians inside Gaza.
In an apparent response to the huge amount of publicity generated by the group, Israel’s foreign ministry attacked the crew as “celebrities” on a “selfie yacht” when it announced the yacht had been seized. Shortly afterwards it followed up by posting an image of Thunberg being offered food and others being passed food and water.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, made personal attacks on Thunberg and the rest of the crew in a post on X, and said they would be required to watch a film about the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023, which launched the war. About 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and 250 taken to Gaza, where 55 are still held hostage.
Israeli bombings and ground assaults in Gaza since then have killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women, children and elderly people, and injured more than 125,000, according to health authorities in the territory, whose figures have proved accurate in past conflicts.
Huwaida Arraf, a human rights attorney and Freedom Flotilla organiser, said Israel had no legal authority to detain the Madleen crew in international waters and confiscate aid onboard, which included food, baby formula and medical supplies.
“This seizure blatantly violates international law and defies the ICJ’s binding orders requiring unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza. These volunteers are not subject to Israeli jurisdiction and cannot be criminalised for delivering aid or challenging an illegal blockade – their detention is arbitrary, unlawful, and must end immediately.”
The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in occupied Palestinian territories called for the UK to secure the release of the Madleen and its crew and urged others to challenge the blockade.
“Every Mediterranean port should send boats with aid, solidarity, and humanity to Gaza,” Francesca Albanese posted on X. “Breaking the siege is a legal duty for states, and a moral imperative for all of us.”
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been forced to flee their homes and displaced multiple times since the war began, and last month food security experts warned the territory was at “critical risk of famine”.
Israel says food is reaching people in Gaza through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a secretive group the current head of which is an evangelical Christian with no track record delivering aid in conflict zones.
The Israeli foreign ministry said in posts about its seizure of the Madleen that “close to” 11m meals had been delivered in the past two weeks. Even if those supplies were distributed equally, they would amount to less than one meal every two days for Gaza’s starving population.
The shortages and desperate hunger have combined to deadly effect, with Palestinians repeatedly killed by Israeli forces trying to reach GHF distribution points.
In the latest incidents on Sunday, at least four people were killed and many others injured, health authorities in Gaza said. The humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said one of the dead and 13 injured were brought to its emergency room in central al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, Gaza.
MSF said in a statement: “Patients, all men aged between 17 and 30 years old, told us they were shot in Shakoush area, on their way to a food distribution site … They were carried in donkey carts, on bicycles, or on foot.”
