Israel deports six from Gaza aid boat Madleen, two more still in custody
Palestinian rights group Adalah has confirmed Israel's deportation of six more activists detained on board the Madleen aid ship as they sought to draw international attention to Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza.
The rights group, which legally represented the 12 passengers who were seized by Israeli forces in the eastern Mediterranean earlier this week, said on Thursday that the six detainees – two French citizens, including Member of the European Parliament Rima Hassan, and nationals of Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkiye – had departed Israel.
Another two French nationals remain in Israeli custody awaiting deportation on Friday, Adalah told the news agency AFP.
'While in custody, volunteers were subjected to mistreatment, punitive measures and aggressive treatment, and two volunteers were held for some period of time in solitary confinement,' said Adalah.
Hassan, a French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, had previously been barred from entering Israel and the Palestinian territory, due to her support for boycotts of the country in light of Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.
Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had dismissed the aid boat as a 'selfie yacht', posted a photo of Hassan on what appeared to be an aeroplane, confirming the deportation of the six passengers.
Four of the ship's passengers, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and Al Jazeera Mubasher reporter Omar Faiad, were deported on Tuesday.
On Thursday, Hassan's X account featured a post, calling on supporters to assemble in Place de la Republique in Paris, where protests calling for the release of the passengers still in Israeli detention and a lifting of the Gaza blockade had been held earlier in the week.
German citizen Yasemin Acar was also among Thursday's deportees. A video circulating online showed her saying that she had arrived in Germany. 'I just arrived in Germany. I am safe. But one thing is very clear: The siege of Gaza is still ongoing. The illegal blockade is still ongoing. People are still starving.'
'The only reason I did this, as a German citizen, is because my country, the very ground that I'm standing on, is not doing what they're supposed to do. They're sending more weapons … We need to stop this. We need to hold our politicians accountable for the genocide, for the starvation, for the killing of children, thousands of men and women. We will not stop.'
All 12 people on board the Madleen have been banned from Israel for 100 years.
The United Nations has warned that Gaza's entire population faces 'catastrophic hunger' following nearly two years of war and over two months in which Israel has been blocking or heavily restricting the entry of food and other essential supplies.
Following an 11-week total blockade from March to May, Israel set up a new aid programme replacing existing networks run by the United Nations and charities, run by the shadowy US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
However, the sporadic distribution of supplies to Palestinians has been marred by repeated shootings, with more than 220 aid seekers killed by Israeli forces in the two weeks since the GHF began operations, according to the health authorities. On Thursday alone, at least 26 aid seekers were killed in Israeli drone attacks.
Israeli forces seized the Madleen and detained its crew early on Monday, about 100 nautical miles (185km) off the coast of Gaza, according to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the group that organised the journey.
The vessel, accompanied by Israel's navy, arrived in the Israeli port of Ashdod on Monday evening, according to the Foreign Ministry.
It was carrying humanitarian aid, including rice and baby formula, to Gaza, in a bid to raise awareness about the humanitarian crisis.
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