Nazareth,
Israel // An Arab member of the Israeli parliament who was on board the
international flotilla that was attacked on Monday as it tried to take
humanitarian aid to Gaza accused Israel yesterday of intending to kill peace
activists as a way to deter future convoys.
Haneen Zoubi
said Israeli naval vessels had surrounded the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi
Marmara, and fired on it a few minutes before commandos abseiled from a
helicopter directly above them.
Terrified
passengers had been forced off the deck when water was sprayed at them. She said
she was not aware of any provocation or resistance by the passengers, who were
all unarmed.
She added that
within minutes of the raid beginning, three bodies had been brought to the main
room on the upper deck in which she and most other passengers were confined. Two
had gunshot wounds to the head, in what she suggested had been executions.
Two other
passengers slowly bled to death in the room after Israeli soldiers ignored
messages in Hebrew she had held up at the window calling for medical help to
save them. She said she saw seven other passengers seriously wounded.
“Israel had
days to plan this military operation,” she told a press conference in Nazareth.
“They wanted many deaths to terrorise us and to send a message that no future
aid convoys should try to break the siege of Gaza.”
Released early
yesterday by police, apparently because of her parliamentary immunity, she said
she was speaking out while most of the hundreds of other peace activists were
either being held by Israel for deportation or were under arrest.
Three other
leaders of Israel’s large Palestinian Arab minority, including Sheikh Raed Salah,
a spiritual leader, were arrested as their ships docked in the southern port of
Ashdod. Lawyers said that under Israeli law they could be held and questioned
for up to 30 days without being charged.
Contradicting
Israeli claims, Ms Zoubi said a search by the soldiers after they took control
of the Marmara discovered no arms or other weapons.
It was vital,
she added, that the world demand an independent UN inquiry to find out what had
happened on the ship rather than allow Israel to carry out a “whitewash” with
its own military investigation.
Ms Zoubi spoke
as Palestinians inside both Israel and the occupied territories observed a
general strike called by their leaders.
A statement
from the High Follow-Up Committee, the main political body for Israel’s
Palestinian citizens, described the raid on the flotilla as “state-sponsored
terrorism”.
Demonstrations
and marches in most of the main Palestinian towns and villages in Israel passed
off quietly. Local analysts described the mood as angry but subdued, not least
because of the openly hostile climate that has developed towards Palestinian
citizens since crackdowns on their protests during the Israeli attack on Gaza 18
months ago.
However, police
were reported to have been put on high alert, with thousands of extra officers
drafted into the north, where most Palestinian citizens live.
On Monday,
clashes between protesters and police broke out close to the al Aqsa mosque in
Jerusalem’s Old City and in the northern town of Umm al Fahm after false rumours
circulated that Sheikh Salah, the leader of Israel’s main Islamic Movement, had
been killed in the Israeli naval operation.
Police were
reported to have arrested 18 youths, mainly for throwing stones in various
locations in the north.
Scores of
Palestinians demonstrated outside the Turkish consulate in East Jerusalem
yesterday to show their support for Ankara, which has harshly criticised Israeli
actions. Two demonstrators were reported to have been arrested by police.
In the West
Bank, many Palestinians observed the first of three days of mourning decreed by
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, over the killings of international
activists.
Even before the
attack on the flotilla, the country’s Palestinian minority, a fifth of the
population, had been braced for a backlash from the government and Jewish public
for its leaders’ participation in the flotilla. As the ships set sail, Ynet,
Israel’s most popular news website, had asked whether Ms Zoubi was an “MP in the
service of Hamas”.
But faced with
the severe diplomatic fall-out from Israel’s killing of peace activists,
Israel’s Palestinian leaders warned that they were likely to come under even
fiercer criticism in coming days.
Yesterday
right-wing parties launched their first attacks on Ms Zoubi, demanding the
revocation of her immunity and her expulsion from the parliament. Danny Danon, a
member of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, called for her to
be “tried for treason”.
In her
statement on the attack, Ms Zoubi said that at 4am on Monday she had seen at
least 14 Israeli boats surround their ship 130km out at sea, in international
waters.
She said the
passengers had been gripped with fear at the noise and confusion as the
commandos abseiled on to the deck. “I did not believe we were going to survive
more than five minutes,” she said.
Taleb al Sana,
another Arab MP, supported Ms Zoubi’s contention that Israeli claims that the
commandos shot only at the passengers’ legs were false. “I have visited the
wounded in hospital and they all have shot wounds to the head and body,” he
said.
Adalah, a legal
centre for Israel’s Arab minority, said nine lawyers had been given limited
access yesterday afternoon to the hundreds of activists detained in Beersheva
and were trying to take testimonies “in very difficult circumstances”.
Its lawyers and
human rights groups were also trying to track down who had been injured and
where they being treated.
“Our view is
that Israel is intentionally trying to obstruct this work and is enforcing an
information blackout,” said Gaby Rubin, a spokeswoman for Adalah.
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