By Richard Spencer
Pro-Palestinian activists said they would make a second attempt to break the blockade on Gaza despite the loss of life on Monday.The MV Rachel Corrie, belonging to the Free Gaza Movement, was yesterday off the coast of Italy on its way from Malta stocked with building supplies, cement, medical and educational equipment and wheelchairs.
Among its passengers are Mairead Corrigan Maguire, the Nobel Peace laureate and founder of the Northern Ireland Peace People, Denis Halliday, a retired Irish diplomat who was once United Nations assistant secretary-general, and at least a dozen other activists.
Unlike the Mavi Marmara, the scene of the fighting on Monday, it is not being operated by the Turkish Islamist group IHH, but directly by the Free Gaza Movement which bought it for the purpose in Dundalk, Ireland, in March.
“We are an initiative to break Israel’s blockade of 1.5 million people in Gaza,” its spokesman, Greta Berlin, said. “Our mission has not changed and this is not going to be the last flotilla.”
Israeli defence spokesmen said they were expecting the Rachel Corrie, named after a 23-year-old American activist with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement who was crushed to death by a bulldozer during a protest in Gaza in 2003, to be off the coast by Wednesday.
They pledged to maintain the blockade.”We will not let any ships reach Gaza and supply what has become a terrorist base threatening the heart of Israel,” the deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, said.
The Rachel Corrie was one of two ships that were due to take part in the initial six-boat flotilla but became separated, because it was slower according to one activist. Another ship is currently being repaired in Cyprus after developing engine trouble.
Ms Berlin said that the group was intending to hold up the ship’s progress, and was not intending to challenge the blockade until next Monday or Tuesday – ensuring that the publicity engendered by the flotilla will last into a second week.
Ms Maguire, speaking from the boat, insisted its purpose was purely humanitarian and that there were no arms on board. “Their port has been closed for over 40 years,” she told Irish radio. “1.5 million people, it’s like the population of Northern Ireland, totally cut off from the world by this inhumane illegal siege.
Outcry around the world
Gaza flotilla attack in pictures
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