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Israel preparing to deport Gaza aid boat activists, including Greta Thunberg Israeli troops kill at least 17 in Gaza as authorities deport Greta Thunberg
(about 8 hours later)
The passengers from the Madleen were intercepted by Israeli forces on Monday and towed to the port of Ashdod Palestinians killed while trying to reach food sites, say local officials, after Madleen aid yacht crew taken into custody
Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and other activists whose Gaza-bound aid ship was intercepted by Israeli naval forces have been taken to a Tel Aviv airport for deportation, Israel said on Tuesday. Middle East crisis – latest updates
The activist group departed Italy on 1 June aboard the Madleen carrying a symbolic amount of food and supplies for Gaza, whose entire population the UN has warned is at risk of famine. Israeli forces intercepted the boat in international waters on Monday and towed it to the port of Ashdod. Israeli troops killed at least 17 Palestinians trying to reach food distribution sites on Tuesday morning, local health authorities in Gaza said, as Israeli authorities deported Greta Thunberg and at least three other activists who had attempted to sail to the territory with aid.
“The passengers of the ‘Selfie Yacht’ arrived at Ben Gurion airport to depart from Israel and return to their home countries,” the Israeli foreign ministry said on X. “Those who refuse to sign deportation documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial authority.” The Madleen yacht was seized by Israeli authorities on Monday and towed to the port of Ashdod, where the 12 crew members, who also included the French MEP Rima Hassan, were taken into police custody. Some are still in Israel, where they will face deportation hearings.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the group operating the Madleen, said all 12 campaigners were “being processed and transferred into the custody of Israeli authorities”. The ship 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.
“They may be permitted to fly out of Tel Aviv as early as tonight,” it said on social media. Israel has attempted to shift most food distribution away from humanitarian organisations including UN agencies to a secretive US- and Israel-backed logistics startup that has never worked in a conflict zone at scale.
Video released earlier by the group showed the activists with their hands up as Israeli forces boarded the vessel, with one of them saying nobody was injured. Dozens of people have been killed as they tried to collect food from the handful of sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which are secured by armed guards and under the protection of the Israeli military.
The Madleen was intercepted about 185km west of the coast of Gaza, according to coordinates from the FFC. The latest deaths came early on Tuesday morning when Israeli gunfire killed at least 17 people and injured dozens more as they approached a site in central Gaza, health authorities in the territory said.
French president Emmanuel Macron requested that the six French nationals aboard the boat “be allowed to return to France as soon as possible”, a presidential official said. The GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Israeli military said it was aware of reports of injuries after it fired warning shots towards “suspects” in the Wadi Gaza area whom its troops deemed a threat. “The warning shots were fired hundreds of meters from the aid distribution site, prior to its opening hours,” a spokesperson said. The military said the numbers released by local health authorities did not align with the information they had collected.
Adalah, an Israeli NGO offering legal support for the country’s Arab minority, said the activists on board the Madleen had requested its services, and that the group was likely to be taken to a detention centre before being deported. Israel has been under heavy international pressure over hunger in Gaza, with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announcing that he had lifted the siege after warnings from longstanding friends of Israel that the “starvation crisis” there was damaging Israel’s international standing.
Turkey condemned the interception as a “heinous attack” and Iran denounced it as “a form of piracy” in international waters. In an apparent response to the huge amount of publicity generated by the Madleen even before it set sail, Israel’s foreign ministry on Monday attacked the crew as “celebrities” on a “selfie yacht”.
In May, another Freedom Flotilla ship, the Conscience, was damaged in international waters off Malta as it headed to Gaza, with the activists saying they suspected an Israeli drone attack. After Israeli forces took control of the boat, it posted an image of Thunberg being offered food and claimed she was “in good spirits” while she was held incommunicado.
On Sunday, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said the naval blockade on Gaza, in place for years before the Israel-Hamas war, was needed to prevent Palestinian militants from importing weapons. In a video prepared before the boat was intercepted Thunberg said that if she lost communication supporters should assume she had been kidnapped and advocate for her release.
Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza to alleviate widespread shortages of food and basic supplies. The boat arrived in the port city of Ashdod after dark fell, where its crew were given a choice between consenting to deportation or staying in police custody and facing a tribunal.
In what organisers called a “symbolic act”, hundreds of people launched a land convoy on Monday from Tunisia with the aim of reaching Gaza. All rejected the claim that they had entered Israel illegally, because Israeli forces seized the boat in international waters then brought them to an Israeli port by force. Some chose to sign strategically, so they could leave and advocate for the others when they are brought to court.
Organisers of the nine-bus convoy say they are not bringing aid into Gaza, but rather aiming to carry out a “symbolic act” by breaking the blockade on the territory. The convoy is set to pass through Libya and Egypt, although Cairo has yet to provide passage permits, an activist on the convoy said. Israel’s foreign ministry shared pictures of Thunberg boarding a morning flight to France, and said the other crew members were being held at Ben Gurion airport.
Israel recently allowed some deliveries to resume after barring them for more than two months and began working with the newly formed, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Although they were never expected to reach Gaza, whose shores are guarded by Israel’s navy, the ship intensified international focus on hunger in Gaza.
But humanitarian agencies have criticised the GHF, and the United Nations refuses to work with it, citing concerns over its practices and neutrality. The UN has been able to bring only limited supplies of flour into Gaza since Israel lifted a total siege three weeks ago, and most of that had been taken by starving Palestinians or looted by armed gangs before the UN could distribute it, the deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Monday.
Dozens of people have been killed near GHF distribution points since late May, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency. The UN has been allowed to transport 4,600 metric tonnes of wheat flour into Gaza for the last three weeks. If shared equally that would provide about one week’s supply of bread to the roughly 2.3 million people living in Gaza, under WFP guidelines, but it would need to be eaten with other food to meet minimum daily calorie needs.
Haq said aid groups in Gaza estimated that between 8,000 and 10,000 tonnes of wheat flour were needed to give each family in Gaza a bag and ease desperation.