Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg and other activists detained aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat have been taken to a Tel Aviv airport for deportation, Israel said Tuesday, June 10, after their vessel was intercepted by naval forces.
"The passengers of the 'Selfie Yacht' arrived at Ben Gurion Airport to depart from Israel and return to their home countries," the Israeli foreign ministry said on X. "Those who refuse to sign deportation documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial authority."
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the activist group operating the vessel, said all 12 campaigners were "being processed and transferred into the custody of Israeli authorities." "They may be permitted to fly out of Tel Aviv as early as tonight," it said on social media.
Video released earlier by the group showed the activists with their hands up as Israeli forces boarded the vessel, with one of them saying nobody was injured. Turkey condemned the interception as a "heinous attack" and Iran denounced it as "a form of piracy" in international waters.
In May, another Freedom Flotilla ship, the Conscience, was damaged in international waters off Malta as it headed to Gaza, with the activists saying they suspected an Israeli drone attack. A 2010 Israeli commando raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was part of a similar attempt to breach the naval blockade, left 10 civilians dead. On Sunday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said the blockade, in place for years before the Israel-Hamas war, was needed to prevent Palestinian militants from importing weapons.
Journalists on board
The Madleen was intercepted about 185 kilometers west of the coast of Gaza, according to coordinates from the coalition.
President Emmanuel Macron requested that the six French nationals aboard the boat "be allowed to return to France as soon as possible," a presidential official said. Two of them are journalists, Omar Fayyad of Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Yanis Mhamdi who works for online publication Blast, according to media rights group Reporters Without Borders, which condemned their detention and called for their "immediate release."
Al Jazeera "categorically denounces the Israeli incursion," the network said in a statement, demanding the reporter's release.
Adalah, an Israeli NGO offering legal support for the country's Arab minority, said the activists on board the Madleen had requested its services, and that the group was likely to be taken to a detention center before being deported.
Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza to alleviate widespread shortages of food and basic supplies. In what organizers called a "symbolic act," hundreds of people launched a land convoy on Monday from Tunisia with the aim of reaching Gaza.
Israel recently allowed some deliveries to resume after barring them for more than two months and began working with the newly formed, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. But humanitarian agencies have criticized the GHF and the United Nations refuses to work with it, citing concerns over its practices and neutrality.