Campaigner Greta Thunberg arrived home in Sweden late on Tuesday, June 10, after Israel detained her and other activists aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat and deported some.
Of the 12 activists on board the MADLEEN, which was carrying food and supplies for Gaza, four including Thunberg agreed to be deported immediately, while all of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years, the rights group that legally represents some of them said in a statement.
The remaining eight were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily, and brought before a detention review tribunal on Tuesday, rights group Adalah said. "The state asked the tribunal to keep the activists in custody until their deportation," Adalah said, adding that under Israeli law, individuals under deportation orders can be held for 72 hours before forcible removal.
Israeli forces intercepted the boat, operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, in international waters on Monday and towed it to the port of Ashdod. They then transferred them to Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, the foreign ministry said, from where Thunberg flew first to France then Sweden.
Thunberg, 22, accused Israel of "kidnapping us in international waters and taking us against our will to Israel": "This is yet another intentional violation of rights that is added to the list of countless other violations that Israel is committing." Asked upon arrival in Stockholm if she was scared when Israeli security forces boarded the sailboat, Thunberg replied: "What I'm afraid of is that people are silent during an ongoing genocide."
Four French activists who were also aboard the MADLEEN were set to face an Israeli judge, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said. He had earlier posted on X that five would face court action and only one would depart voluntarily. Barrot told reporters that French diplomats had met with the six French nationals in Israel, and that French-Palestinian European MP Rima Hassan was among those who refused to leave voluntarily.
The activists − from France, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands − aimed to deliver humanitarian aid and break the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory. In what organizers called a "symbolic act," hundreds of participants in a land convoy crossed the border into Libya from Tunisia with the aim of reaching Gaza, whose entire population the UN has warned is at risk of famine.