Two boatloads of pro-Palestinian activists aiming to break an Israeli embargo on the Gaza Strip are hours away from the territorial waters of the Hamas-ruled enclave, organizers said yesterday.
“They are out there. They are two hours away from the point they were aiming for before they enter Gaza territorial waters,” said Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, a Jerusalem-based spokeswoman for the so-called Free Gaza Movement.
“They made very good progress for the night and everyone is fine,” she said, though she added that land-based coordinators were having problems communicating with the boats via on-board satellite phones.
The two converted fishing boats set sail from Cyprus on Friday morning carrying 44 activists determined to break an Israeli embargo that was tightened when the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in Gaza in June last year.
Since then Israel has sealed the territory off from all but vital humanitarian aid in a bid to put pressure on Palestinian militants, who have launched hundreds of rockets on southern Israel in the last year.
The boats left from Larnaca port on the island’s south coast to cheers from a small crowd of supporters on a 370km journey that was expected to take up to 30 hours.
The activists expect to be stopped by Israel, which maintains a tight naval blockade around Gaza and has warned the boats not to enter its waters, saying the demonstration would support “the regime of a terror organization.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said yesterday that Israel was “following developments” regarding the two boats.
“If they want to make provocations, then we will know how to deal with them,” he said, without elaborating.
Meanwhile several dozen people, mostly reporters, gathered at Gaza City’s main port to await the arrival of the boats, Liberty and Free Gaza, which are sailing under Greek flags and are carrying 200 hearing aids for Gaza children and 5,000 balloons.
Those on board hail from 14 countries including Israel and are aged between 22 and 81, organizers said. Among them are students, lawyers, doctors, journalists and an online poker player.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS