Activist blockade runners nearing Gaza coast — TV

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Activists sailing towards Gaza to challenge Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian territory are nearing their destination but expect to be intercepted, an Israeli television journalist with them reported late Sunday.

“We have been at sea for three days and we are at a distance of no more than 200 kilometres from the Gaza Strip,” Channel Two’s Ohad Hemo said in a broadcast from the deck of the Swedish-flagged Marianne of Gothenburg.

The vessel is part of the so-called Freedom Flotilla III — a convoy of four ships carrying pro-Palestinian activists including Arab Israeli lawmaker Basel Ghattas, Tunisia’s former president Moncef Marzouki and at least one European lawmaker.

“It’s not clear when we’ll arrive. Will we wait for the other three boats that are behind us or try to break through to the Gaza Strip first?” Hemo reported.

In a similar bid to break the blockade in 2010, a pre-dawn raid by Israeli commandos on the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara killed 10 Turkish activists.

Several attempts since have been thwarted, but without bloodshed.

Hemo said that the 50 passengers on the Marianne get twice daily briefings from the organisers on non-violent resistance to the Israeli commandos they expect to board the boat sooner or later.

“We have seen on the sonar an unidentified vessel following us at a distance of about 20 [nautical] miles and the assumption is that it is an [Israeli] naval ship,” he said.

“It is clear to everyone that commandos will board somewhere before entry to Gaza,” he added.

The Israeli government on Sunday published a letter which will be handed to flotilla participants once they are in Israeli hands.

“If and when they reach Israel they will get a nice letter,” foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon told AFP.

“Welcome to Israel!” said a Hebrew-language text of the message seen by AFP which will be given to the activists in English.

“It looks as if you lost your way,” it continues.

“Perhaps you intended to sail to a place not far from here; Syria where [President Bashar] Assad’s regime is every day massacring his people, supported by Iran’s murderous regime.”

Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza in 2006 after Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, and tightened it a year later when the militant Islamist movement took control of the enclave.

In July-August 2014, a 50-day war between Israel and Gaza rulers Hamas — the coastal territory’s third conflict in six years — killed about 2,200 Palestinians and 73 on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers, and left 100,000 Gazans homeless.