Activists set sail for Gaza from Cyprus

Associated Press

FAMAGUSTA, Cyprus

A boat carrying Jewish activists from Israel, Germany, the U.S. and Britain set sail Sunday for Gaza, hoping to breach Israel’s naval blockade there.

Richard Kuper, an organizer with the British group Jews for Justice for Palestinians, said one goal is to show that not all Jews support Israeli policies toward Palestinians. Kuper said the boat, which set sail from northern Cyprus flying a British flag, won’t resist if Israeli authorities try to stop it.

The voyage by the 33-foot catamaran Irene came nearly four months after Israeli commandos boarded a flotilla of Gaza-bound ships, including the Mavi Marmara, killing eight pro-Palestinian Turkish activists and a Turkish American.

Irene passenger Rami Elhanan, an Israeli whose daughter Smadar was killed in a suicide bombing at a shopping mall in Jerusalem in 1997, said it was his “moral duty” to act in support of Palestinians in Gaza because reconciliation was the surest path to peace.

Alison Prager, another Jews for Justice for Palestinians organizer, said many Jews have been on previous “blockade-busting trips” to Gaza, but this was the first time Jewish groups have banded together to send a boat of their own.

Yousef Rizka, an official with Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, said: “The government has received Jewish activists arriving to Gaza before. The government positively views all attempts to break the siege on Gaza.”

The voyage came as Israelis, Palestinians and U.S. mediators sought a compromise to allow Mideast talks to continue after an Israeli settlement slowdown expires at midnight.

Israel maintains a strict naval blockade on Gaza Strip that bars ships from entering the coastal territory. It is a part of the Jewish state’s wider blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed when the militant group seized power.