Israeli Navy Seizes Gaza-Bound Ship ‘Estelle’
Israeli Navy Seizes Gaza-Bound Ship ‘Estelle’ - Defense
Navy seizes Finnish-flagged ship carrying 30 pro-Palestinian activists after it refused to change course, tows it to Ashdod. PHOTO: COURTESY IDF
The Israel Navy on Saturday took control of a Swedish-owned, Finnish-flagged ship carrying pro-Palestinian activists toward Gaza, and towed the vessel to Ashdod.
Despite earlier claims by activists that they were bringing humanitarian supplies to Gaza, no such items were immediately found on board the Estelle, the IDF said. But it added that it was still unloading the ship’s cargo.
But Mikael Lofgren, a spokesman for the Swedish group Ship to Gaza that organized the voyage, told The Jerusalem Post that the vessel carried musical instruments, theatrical equipment, wheelchairs, children’s books, 600 soccer balls and 41 tons of cement.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu praised the IDF operation to enforce the blockade on the Gaza Strip, reiterating that it was in keeping with international law.
“Even the people who were on the ship know that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Their entire objective was to create a provocation and blacken Israel’s name. If human rights were really important to these activists, they would sail to Syria,” he said.
“We will continue to take strong and determined action to defend our borders,” Netanyahu said.
The 53-meter ship set sail in mid-June in the north of Sweden with some 20 activists aboard, Lofgren said.
It then spent close to three months traveling around Europe, he said. It stopped in 20 ports, including nine in Sweden, before heading toward Gaza on October 7, he said.
A few days ago, 10 additional activists took a speed boat from Greece and boarded the ship on the open sea, Lofgren and Adam Keller of Gush Shalom said.
The new group included three Israelis - Elik Elhanan, Reut Mor and Yonathan Shapira - according to Keller. Five parliament members from Sweden, Norway, Spain and Greece also boarded the Estelle with them, he said.
Israel on Friday warned the activists, in a message sent via the Finnish Foreign Ministry, that they would be taken into custody and possibly prosecuted if they did not turn the vessel around, Keller said.
The IDF said the ship was invited to head to Ashdod instead, with a pledge that its cargo would be transferred to Gaza via a land crossing.
But the activists refused all Israeli requests to divert their course, and had declared that their intention was to violate Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, the IDF said.