THE Foreign Office has summoned the Israeli charge d’affaires over an “inflammatory” video of flotilla activists being assaulted in Israel posted by the country’s extremist security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Footage released by Ben-Gvir on Wednesday showed him walking among some of the approximately 430 detainees. In one, activists with their hands tied behind their backs are kneeling, their heads touching the floor inside what appears to be a makeshift detention area on the deck of a ship.
The UK Government has now followed both Spain and Poland in summoning the Israeli charge d’affaires, a spokesperson for the department has confirmed.
It comes as Israel begins releasing the hundreds of activists, including two Scots, who attempted to breach the country’s naval blockade of Gaza and is in the process of deporting them, according to a legal organisation working with the flotilla.
Israel-based legal advocacy group the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, or Adalah, said on Thursday that most of the international activists are in transit to a civilian airport near the southern Israeli city of Eilat for deportation.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday he instructed that the activists be deported “as soon as possible”, after rebuking Israel’s national security minister for the provocative video.
Netanyahu – who previously commended soldiers for capture of the activists – said that although Israel has every right to stop “provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters”, the way national security minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the activists was “not in line with Israel’s values and norms”.
The flotilla, made up of more than 50 boats, departed for Gaza last week from Turkey, near Cyprus. Organisers said they want to draw renewed attention to the conditions for nearly two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has called the flotilla “a PR stunt at the service of Hamas” with no real intent to deliver aid to Gaza. Israeli forces began stopping the boats around 167 miles from the Gaza coastline, according to the flotilla’s website.
Israel also stopped 20 boats from the flotilla on April 30 near Crete.
This week, the US treasury imposed sanctions against several European activists aboard the flotilla, which US treasury secretary Scott Bessent called “pro-terror”.
Israel has maintained a sea blockade of Gaza since Hamas took control of the territory in 2007. Israeli authorities have intensified it during the ongoing genocide of Gaza after the Hamas-led militant attacks on southern Israel that killed around 1200 people and saw more than 250 taken hostage on October 7 2023.
The genocide has seen Israel kill more than 72,700 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The ministry, part of Gaza’s Hamas-run government, does not give a breakdown between civilians and combatants. It is staffed by medical professionals who maintain and publish detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.
Critics say the blockade amounts to collective punishment. Israel says it is intended to prevent Hamas from arming itself. Egypt, which has the only border crossing with Gaza not controlled by Israel, has also greatly restricted movement in and out.
