LONDON, May 30, 2011 (WAFA) - The Free Gaza movement Monday welcomed United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s request that all nations, including Israel, avoid violence when Freedom Flotilla II sails to Gaza at the end of June, according to a statement by the flotilla organizers.
The group also welcomed Ban’s comments that Israel takes “meaningful and far-reaching steps to end its closure of Gaza.”
The statement came following news reports over the past two days that Ban has expressed concern over the flotilla and that he told governments to stop it.
“We are not engaged in illegal activity in the Mediterranean;” said the statement. “It is Israel’s blockade of 1.5 million Palestinians that is illegal.”
It added, “As head of the United Nations, he knows that the UN High Commission for Human Rights produced a report that identified the blockade of Gaza as collective punishment and a war crime.”
Audrey Bomse, attorney for Free Gaza said the report concluded that Israel was clearly unlawful when it intercepted Freedom Flotilla I in May 2010. “Israel had no right to use force against us or detain flotilla passengers,” she said.
“We would remind the Secretary-General that the flotilla violates no international laws or laws of the sea and so an outright ban on our sailing to Gaza is essentially a statement against the rights of the Palestinian people to control their own ports, and lives,” said Bomse.
Huwaida Arraf, chair of Free Gaza added, “Suggesting that aid to Gaza should be delivered via ‘legitimate crossings and established channels’ implies that we accept Israel’s brutal and unlawful regime. Would the Secretary-General have said the same to the Egyptian and Tunisian people, telling them to address their grievances to Mubarak and Ben Ali?”
“We do not sail just to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Palestinians don’t want humanitarian aid; they want the right to trade and have open borders and come in and out of their territory without walls and gunboats and snipers shooting at them. Palestinians in Gaza have a right to their own sea, something Israel has denied to them in some form since 1967, and almost completely since 2006,” she said.
“Our mission is to end Israel’s deliberate policies that have left Gaza in need of humanitarian aid. Since governments seem to have their hands tied behind their backs, it is up to civil society to hold Israel’s feet to the fire. It seems as though, in diplomatic language, Ban is more concerned about how Israel’s violent response to our flotilla looks and does not want another international incident like last year where Israel murdered nine of our volunteers.”
M.A.
