Tag: Free Gaza Movement

Cynthia McKinney remains imprisoned in Israel after Gaza-bound boat is seized

Fox News

2 July 2009

Former U.S. lawmaker and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and several other human rights activists remained in an Israeli prison Thursday after refusing to sign a deportation form that they claim is self-incriminating.

In a press release from the Green Party, McKinney said the form states that the Spirit of Humanity, a Greek-flagged relief boat carrying 21 activists, medical supplies, cement, olive trees and children’s toys en route to Gaza, was violating the Israeli blockade and trespassing the country’s territorial waters.

“We were in international waters on a boat delivering humanitarian aid to people in Gaza when the Israeli Navy ships surrounded us and illegally threatened us, dismantled our navigation equipment, boarded and confiscated the ship,” she said in a statement, adding that they were immediately taken into custody.

“Immigration officials in Israel said they did not want to keep us, but we remain imprisoned,” she said.

“State Department and White House officials have not effected our release or taken a strong public stance to condemn the illegal actions of the Israeli Navy of enforcing a blockade of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians of Gaza, a blockade that has been condemned by President Obama.”

The Israeli military issued a statement Tuesday saying that the boat had attempted to break a blockade of Gaza and was forced to sail to an Israeli port after ignoring a radio message to stay out of waters around Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor has said Israel was planning to free the crew and passengers.

“Nobody wants to keep them here,” he said earlier this week. “They will be released as soon as they are checked.”

But so far, only two activists have been released — both Israeli citizens. The others are still being held in Givon prison in Ramla, Israel.

Israeli authorities will hold the remaining activists in the prison for three more days before the government decides to release them or continue to detain them, the Green Party release said.

While it was the second time in a year that McKinney’s relief boat was seized by an Israeli naval ship, it’s the first time that longtime supporter of Palestinians has been detained.

Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire speaks from Israeli jail cell after arrest on boat delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza

Democracy Now

2 July 2009

Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire speaks to us from her jail cell in Israel. She was taken into custody along with twenty others, including former US Congress member Cynthia McKinney, when the Israeli military boarded their ship in international waters as it tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We begin today with the latest news of the ship that was seized by the Israeli military Tuesday as it tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. Israeli forces boarded the ship and towed it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The twenty-one activists on board include former Congress member and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and the Irish peace activist and Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire. Huwaida Arraf and Lubna Masarwa were released, while the other nineteen remain in detention.

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida Arraf is the founder of the Free Gaza movement. She joins us now on the phone from Israel.

Huwaida, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain why you took this boat trying to get to Gaza and then what happened to you on board.

HUWAIDA ARRAF: [inaudible] Hello to you all.

The purpose of our mission was to highlight to the international community that what Israel is doing to Gaza is blatantly illegal, and our government isn’t doing anything about it. Israel constantly claims that their policies are based on security, but what they’re doing—imposing collective punishment on an entire civilian population.

We were carrying on our very, very small boat some medical aid, some rebuilding supplies, because after the January—December-January assault on Gaza, thousands of homes have been destroyed, tens of hospitals and schools all demolished. And, you know, the donor community supposedly pledged [inaudible] Gaza, but no one is saying anything. Not one country is saying anything about the fact [inaudible] the entire Gaza Strip, and not one bag of cement [inaudible]—

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida, we’re going to interrupt for a minute, because, Juan, it sounds like we have someone else from a jail cell in Israel.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, it sounds like we have Mairead Maguire, the Nobel Prize winner, on the phone from her jail cell.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Thank you very much, indeed. Thank you.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you tell us what is going on right now with you and the others who are being detained?

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Yes. We have just been locked into our cells now for a couple of hours. We are currently going through their process. We are being charged with entering illegally into Israeli—near Israeli shores. We are going, it looks like, to be deported from Israel. We did not choose to come to Israel. Our little boat was boarded by the navy combat soldiers, and they came in in full riot gear onto our boat when we were just twenty-five miles off the shore of Gaza. We were under gunpoint, forcibly taken to Ashdod, held in the detention center overnight. And then I was removed from Ashdod detention center, handcuffed in a military vehicle, and brought here to the prison, where we’re currently being held. All of us, all nineteen—there were twenty-one, but Huwaida and Lubna are out—but the rest of us are being held here in detention in this prison.

AMY GOODMAN: What is your response, Mairead Maguire, to Mark Regev, the Israeli spokesperson, who said aid is free to pass into Gaza?

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: No, that is wrong. I mean, we know it is not free. I mean, Gaza is like a huge prison, but—because its borders are closed. The sea pass into Gaza, which has been closed for over forty years by the Israeli government—we are only the seventh ship to get in to the port of Gaza that tried to break the siege.

And as we do that, it’s very interesting, we pass the gas fields of Gaza. You know, Gaza has huge gas deposits, which Israel is now beginning to use. So it’s very important that there is the issue of who owns the gas in the Gazan Strip. And also farmers—fishermen, who try to go out without—in about twelve miles to fish for their families, are shot up and have been killed by the Israeli navy in that area.

So, Gaza is a huge occupied territory of one-and-a-half million people who have been subjected to collective punishment by the Israeli government. That breaks the Geneva Convention, every international law in the book. And the tragedy is that the American government, the UN and Europe, they remain silent in the face of the abuse of Palestinian human rights, like the freedom, and it’s really tragic.

And it is also tragic that out of ten million Palestinians of a population, almost seven million are currently refugees out in other countries or displaced within their own country, particularly after the horrific massacre by Israeli jet fighters after just earlier this year. Twenty-two days Israel bombarded Gaza, Gazan people, civilians. And we’re not sure what kind of weapons were dropped. We need the scientists. We need people to go in to see: is it depleted uranium in the very soil of the Gazan fields now? Unfortunately, Israel does not want human rights activists in there to see what they’ve done and what they’re doing. Even the representative of [inaudible]—

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mairead Maguire—

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: —is not allowed in.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Mairead Maguire, I’d like to ask you, to your knowledge, has your government or the government of the United States, in the case of Cynthia McKinney or some of the others, attempted to visit with the detainees or to lodge protest with the Israeli government?

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Yes, we have had [inaudible] our consulates in the different governments come here to see us. And we are concerned about the five people who came from Bahrain, and—because they don’t have—their government doesn’t have the same links with Israel, and we are concerned for their safety. We have asked that all those who were—who were hijacked—we were hijacked on the seas of Gaza—that they be all given freedom and their goods returned, because we have got to look out for each other.

AMY GOODMAN: Mairead Maguire, what will happen now? And we understand that some people were injured.

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Yes, indeed. I mean, when as were the combat troops in masks and fully armed came on board our small boat, some people were injured. And even during—that happened during the day. But our life was put at risk even more, because the previous night, during the night, when we were in international waters, we were—a couple of Israeli naval ships came up around us. Over the radio, they told us if we did not turn back into Cyprus, they would shoot at our boat. They cut off our communications, including our satellite communications. So we were in grave danger of actually being killed at that point.

The second thing was, when actually the navy combat forces came on board our boat, they wouldn’t allow the captain to take the boat to Ashdod; instead, they took over. And, you know, I really thought that we were all going to drown, because when we got near, when we were sailing to Ashdod, there was heavy winds, there was water coming in, and it was—really we were in a very, very dangerous position. So we were literally hijacked, taken at gunpoint by the Israeli military. And now we are here in prison, and they are threatening to deport us. We were brought here against our will. We didn’t come here by choice, and we are not here by choice.

AMY GOODMAN: Mairead Maguire, what jail cell are—what jail are you in now?

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: We’re in Giv’on Prison, and we’re—the women here are on one side, and the men are on the other side.

AMY GOODMAN: Mairead Maguire, I want to thank you for being with us, Irish peace activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, speaking to us from her jail cell, redefining the cell phone. Huwaida Arraf before her, founder of the Free Gaza movement. Mairead is one of nineteen people who remain in jail. Huwaida just got out.

Detained peace activist: we slept with cockroaches

Daniel Edleson | YNet News

2 July 2009

An Israeli citizen who was among 21 peace activists apprehended by the IDF en route to the Gaza Strip says she was held under conditions resembling a “horror movie.”

Houida Araf, who was released on Wednesday, told Ynet that she and a fellow Israeli peace activist were separated from the group and taken to the Ashdod Port.

“They put us in a warehouse, where we slept on a cockroach-infested cement floor, as armed soldiers were monitoring us,” she said. “They didn’t say a word to us. They confiscated all our personal belongings and phones, and they didn’t let us contact anyone. A day later they left us at the Ashdod central bus station without any money or belongings.”

“What they did to us is unforgivable, but we’re not the story here,” Araf said. “The fact they threatened us with violence because we wanted to transfer medical supplies and drawing equipment for children is simply absurd.”

‘We’ll be back’

Meanwhile, 19 foreign peace activists detained on board the Gaza-bound ship are still behind held by the Immigration Authority at Ben Gurion Airport. The activists, whose vessel was seized, will soon be expelled from Israel, but they say they are determined to come back.

One of the initiative’s organizers, Ramzi Kysia, told Ynet: “We’ll be back again and again…the Israeli regime should be careful, because we’re coming. We won’t stop until this blockade is broken forever and Gaza residents have access to the rest of the world.”

Kysia added that the group’s attorney will demand that Israel hand over the vessel it seized.

Free Gaza Movement’s two Palestinian ’48 organisers now released from Israeli prison and detention

2 July 2009

For Immediate Release:

Lubna Masarwa and Huwaida Arraf, both organisers of the Free Gaza Movement, have now been released from Ashdod Detention Facility, where military authorities had held them from 9.00 p.m. on 30th June until 1.00 p.m. on 1st July, 2009, having arrested and detained them while in Gazan territorial waters (approx. 20 nautical miles from Gaza Port) at 3.00 p.m. on 30th June.

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mairead Maguire have given telephone interviews from their prison cells, where they await deportation. To arrange such interviews, contact Free Gaza Movement (either Greta Berlin or Caoimhe Butterly, at +357 99 081 767), who will also supply current news or information as to the whereabouts of those Free Gaza 21 who are awaiting deportation, or the current status of legal negotiations as to those deportations.

Free Gaza Movement will continue its activities to break the siege on Gaza, to highlight the plight of Gazans under total Israeli siege and occupation, and to remind the world of the imprisonment of 11,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails or detention centres, under administrative detention, most of them without trial.

Israel states that it denied entry to the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY and 21 Free Gaza human rights defenders because Gaza is a closed military area and “a blockaded area”. The Israeli Navy threatened to fire at the boat and on several occasions during the voyage from Cyprus attempted to stop the boat (at 3.00 a.m. and at 11.00 am on 30th June), when they surrounded it with up to eight naval gunboats.

Nevertheless, both Ms. Masarwa and Ms. Arraf have been released without charge or court appearance. At 2.30 a.m. on 1st July, Ms. Masarwa was investigated by the General State Security (GSS) – the Shabbak, but not by the police or military.

Israel to deport peace activists sailing to Gaza

Efrat Weiss | YNet News

1 July 2009

Israel is planning to deport within the next few days the 21 peace activists who arrived on a boat from Cyprus with the intention of entering the Gaza Strip. An Israeli Navy unit boarded their boat and escorted it to Ashdod port. Immigration police will transport the detained activists to Ben Gurion Airport, and from there they will be deported out of the country.

Among the peace activists are two Israeli-American citizens, and 19 others, including five from Ireland, three from Britain, five from Bahrain, three Americans, and Danish, Jordan, and Yemenite citizens.

Eight immigration police arrived at Ashdod police and performed a search of the activists’ belongings. The detainees will then be transferred to the Immigration Administration in Holon. The police will take their fingerprints, and then send them to Ben Gurion Airport, where each one will face a hearing before the Interior Ministry before being deported.

Hana Araf, of Meilia village in the Galilee, uncle of Houida Araf, one of the Israeli-American citizens on the Gaza-bound boat said, “We haven’t managed to get a hold of her, and we haven’t received any information. We are worried. They can’t deport her, and we will fight for this to the very end.

“She has an Israeli passport. She is a citizen of the state, and Israel has no right to detain her. What for, exactly? For trying to help people who have no food? In the past there were a few regimes that did this, the apartheid in South Africa, for instance. Is this the regime Israel wants to be associated with?”

According to him, “She didn’t do anything against the law. She wants to lawfully help people in trouble, and they are part of her people – if the people here in Israel want it or not. I don’t know how in 60 years, people haven’t internalized the fact that the Arabs living here are Palestinians. We are the same nation. The fact that there was separation and occupation doesn’t make us any less brothers.”

In Larnaca, Cyprus, where the boat departed from, the Gerta Berlin, founder of Movement for the Freedom of Gaza, is being inundated with phone calls showing their support following the detainment of the peace activists.

“They simply kidnapped the passengers. I call the Israeli occupation forces to release our people immediately. It’s funny – what are they going to do? Deport us? The last place we wanted to reach was Israel,” she said.

Berlin still has not thrown in the towel. “It isn’t over till the fat lady sings. They took our boat, so we’ll get a freighter. Israel has no right to keep 1.5 million residents under siege, to occupy Gaza, and to turn it into one big refugee camp.

“The Israeli government does not understand that time is on our side. In the meantime, the administration is losing public support. It would be much smarter on their part if they would simply turn the other cheek and let us through. The detainment of the boat only works in our favor in the long run,” she explained.