A group of women activists who tried to break Israel’s decade-long blockade of the Gaza Strip was being held Thursday pending deportation after the Israeli navy intercepted their boat.
Thirteen women, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire, were detained on Wednesday evening after their sailboat was stopped around 35 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza.
The Zaytouna-Oliva set sail from Barcelona in September with women of various nationalities aboard including Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her peace efforts in Northern Ireland.
Dubbed “Women’s Boat to Gaza,” the boat was part of the wider Freedom Flotilla Coalition that consists of pro-Palestinian boats that regularly seek to go to Gaza to try to break the blockade.
Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, condemned the interception of the boat, while the Hamas movement— which runs Gaza — called it “state terrorism.”
“We strongly condemn the Israeli aggression against the international flotilla that tried to break the illegal siege imposed by Israel on 1.8 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip,” Erekat said in a statement calling for their release.
Organizers said among the other women detained were New Zealand lawmaker Marama Davidson, Algerian MP Samira Douaifia, Swedish politician Jeannette Escanilla and Ann Wright, a former US Army colonel and State Department official who resigned over the 2003 Iraq war.
Others came from Australia, Malaysia, Norway, Russia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden and Britain.
“We are very disappointed for Gazans who were waiting for us, but we will continue. As long as there is a blockade, there will be flotillas,” Claude Leostic, spokeswoman for the flotilla movement who herself attempted to sail to Gaza in 2011, told AFP.
She said they had had no contact with the women since the boat was stopped, “but when I myself was arrested in 2011, we were placed in detention centers and interrogated by intelligence services.”
Gaza-based organizer Adham Abu Salmiyeh said in a statement he wanted the women to visit “Gaza to brief them on the deteriorating humanitarian situation after 10 years of blockade and collective punishment.”
But he said they were confident they had sent a message to the world.

Source: Arab News