GAZA CITY: Israel is prepared to intercept a flotilla seeking to breach Israels naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, the countrys UN ambassador warned Thursday.
Israel is determined to stop the flotilla, UN envoy Ron Prosor said, as preparations were underway for about 10 ships to embark later this month to Gaza to protest the longstanding Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory, according to Agence France Presse.
Meanwhile, the Hamas movement on Thursday urged organizers of the Freedom Flotilla II to push ahead with plans to sail to the Gaza Strip and break the continued Israeli blockade despite threats.
Sami Abu Zohri, a spokesman for the group which controls the Gaza Strip said in a statement sent to the press on Thursday that, the flotilla which plans to sail during the last week of June with a cargo of aid and activists was essential, since Israel had demonstrated that it never keeps its promises regarding the lifting or relaxing of the siege on Gaza.
Hamas gave its endorsement to the convoy of 10 international ships, saying it considered them as acting within the law in their attempts to break a siege that international rights organizations and United Nations missions have called illegal.
Following an international outcry over the slaying of nine activists by Israeli Navy commandos who commandeered the ships from the Freedom Flotilla I in international waters at the end of May 2010, pressure from Quartet envoy Tony Blair and other actors prompted Israel to relax the strict blockade imposed on the coastal enclave, and lifting of the ban on the passage of people and goods in and out of Gaza. Constructions materials still banned, some were allowed to enter into the Strip via the United Nations office there to build houses that were completely destroyed during the repeated Israeli offensives on Gaza.
Source: http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article460458.ece
Israel is determined to stop the flotilla, UN envoy Ron Prosor said, as preparations were underway for about 10 ships to embark later this month to Gaza to protest the longstanding Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory, according to Agence France Presse.
Meanwhile, the Hamas movement on Thursday urged organizers of the Freedom Flotilla II to push ahead with plans to sail to the Gaza Strip and break the continued Israeli blockade despite threats.
Sami Abu Zohri, a spokesman for the group which controls the Gaza Strip said in a statement sent to the press on Thursday that, the flotilla which plans to sail during the last week of June with a cargo of aid and activists was essential, since Israel had demonstrated that it never keeps its promises regarding the lifting or relaxing of the siege on Gaza.
Hamas gave its endorsement to the convoy of 10 international ships, saying it considered them as acting within the law in their attempts to break a siege that international rights organizations and United Nations missions have called illegal.
Following an international outcry over the slaying of nine activists by Israeli Navy commandos who commandeered the ships from the Freedom Flotilla I in international waters at the end of May 2010, pressure from Quartet envoy Tony Blair and other actors prompted Israel to relax the strict blockade imposed on the coastal enclave, and lifting of the ban on the passage of people and goods in and out of Gaza. Constructions materials still banned, some were allowed to enter into the Strip via the United Nations office there to build houses that were completely destroyed during the repeated Israeli offensives on Gaza.
Source: http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article460458.ece
