A view of Gaza City from the harbour on Sept. 8, 2009. (Flickr / Olly Lambert)

CTV .ca

More than 30 Canadian activists are preparing to sail for the Gaza Strip as part of a controversial international flotilla protesting Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian territory, a year after nine people were killed in a similar undertaking.

A group called The Canada Boat to Gaza says it’s raised more than $300,000 and has purchased a ship — dubbed the Tahrir, after the uprising in Egypt — which is docked at an eastern Mediterranean port they will not disclose.

At least 10 such ships are planning to set sail for Gaza later this month, carrying aid supplies and around 1,500 protesters from dozens of countries, according to organizers.

Ehab Lotayef, a spokesman with the Canadian group, said that several protesters from Australia, Belgium and Denmark will also be onboard the Tahrir, along with between $30,000 and $50,000 worth of medical supplies they hope to deliver to Palestinian doctors.

“Our main objective is that Israel should not have jurisdiction over the waters of Gaza,” Lotayef said from Montreal. “This is the least we can do to try peacefully to break the blockade they’re living under.”

When six ships carrying pro-Palestinian activists, humanitarian aid and construction supplies attempted to travel to Gaza last year they were boarded by Israeli commandos in international waters. Clashes erupted onboard one vessel, the Mavi Marmara, in which eight Turkish nationals and a Turkish-American were killed.

The incident damaged relations between Israel and Turkey and deepened international pressure on Israel to lift its naval blockade.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his government hopes to head off the new flotilla through diplomatic means, but will resort to force again if protesters disobey orders from the Israeli navy and try to reach Gaza’s shore.

Border controls

At issue is an embargo that Israel imposed on Gaza after Hamas seized power in a 2007 gun battle. Hamas had unseated Fatah in elections there a year earlier, but a number of countries including Canada, the United States and members of the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist group.

Last year, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the blockade violated international law due to its impact on Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. Israel says the blockade is necessary because it prevents Hamas from obtaining weapons with which it could attack Israeli troops or civilians.

In the wake of the Mavi Marmara raid last year Israel eased its embargo on Gaza, allowing in things like biscuits and soft drinks. Last month Egypt announced it was reopening its border crossing with Gaza, further loosening the embargo.

Kevin Neish, a retired marine engineer from Victoria who has been fundraising across Canada for the Tahrir, said he doesn’t believe those developments go far enough toward improving living conditions in the Palestinian territory.

The protesters want the blockade lifted so that more aid can flow into Gaza and its dense population can trade freely with other countries, Neish said.

“If the people of Gaza have the blockade lifted then they won’t be firing rockets at Israel,” he said from Vancouver. “They’ll have a normal life.”

Neish, 54, was onboard the Mavi Marmara when Israeli troops boarded it in the last flotilla and he witnessed the deadly clashes that ensued. He was taken into Israeli custody and says he was subjected to “brutality” before being released a few days later.

Israel has banned Neish from visiting the country for a decade, but he intends to return to Gaza onboard the Mavi Marmara again this month.

Controversial strategy

The new flotilla has gained a number of high-profile supporters including three Nobel Peace Prize laureates, author Alice Walker, a former Israeli Air Force captain and a Holocaust survivor.

But the protesters have drawn criticism from officials in Canada and abroad. In a statement last month Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird called the flotilla “provocative” and “unhelpful.”

“I strongly urge those wishing to deliver humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip to do so through established channels,” Baird said, citing “Israel’s legitimate security concerns.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has indicated he would like governments to discourage activists from staging flotillas bound for Gaza because they could “escalate into violent conflict.”

The Canadian group is also reportedly the focus of a million-dollar lawsuit, filed by a dual Canadian-Israeli citizen in an Ontario court, which claims that it is providing material support to Hamas.

Lotayef would not comment on the lawsuit. But he said medical supplies the Tahrir will transport, such as baby aspirin and blood pressure medicine, are intended for hospitals and clinics in Gaza that aren’t associated with Hamas.

Organizers will provide non-violence training to those who will sail on the Tahrir, he said, and are seeking an independent organization to inspect the boat before it leaves port to show that it’s carrying no weapons.

Emanuel Adler, an expert on Israel at the University of Toronto, said the protesters’ strategy is to court international support for Gazans on humanitarian grounds, by prompting Israel to confront the flotilla.

He believes the best way for Israel to respond is by inspecting the ships for weapons and allowing them to proceed to Gaza’s shore.

“If the other side wants a response, the logical thing is not to respond,” Adler said from Tel Aviv.

But he’s afraid that domestic pressures in Israel, including from the country’s formidable military, may lead to a different outcome.

“There’s always an aspect of deterrence, that if we don’t stop the flotilla this time, they’ll send one three times as large.”

www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110611/canadians-sailing-in-gaza-flotilla-110611/

A boy sits on a piece of rubble somewhere in or near Gaza City, February 2009. (Andreas H. Lunde)

CTV.ca

After flying to Cairo and bussing a few hundred kilometers eastward, Montreal engineer Ehab Lotayef will try to enter the Gaza Strip from a border crossing at Rafah, Egypt, on Dec. 28.

For months, the 52-year-old Canadian-Egyptian has been helping to organize a massive trip to the Palestinian territory that will include some 1,300 people from 42 countries.

The trip, which is the brainchild of American peace group Code Pink, has won celebrity endorsements from the likes of Alice Walker, Oliver Stone, Gore Vidal, Naomi Klein and Alexandre Trudeau.

Organizers hope to hold a demonstration in Gaza City on Dec. 31, alongside thousands of local residents, to commemorate the war last year and to demand Israel lift a blockade against the movement of goods in and out of the territory.

“It’s an accumulated problem,” Lotayef said by phone. “No one is really supporting the Palestinians’ rights as they should be, to guarantee peace for both sides.”

Lotayef’s concern has been echoed by a number of rights groups and United Nations agencies over the past year, which have called attention to worsening living conditions inside the 10-by-40-kilometre strip.

In September, the UN Environment Programme issued a report warning that the aquifer that 1.5 million Gazans drink from, and grow crops with, is failing. Overuse is making the water supply saltier, it said, and pollution from sewage and fertilizers is high enough to put young children in jeopardy of nitrate poisoning.

Last year’s fighting — in addition to killing 1,300, injuring 5,300 and creating 600,000 tons of rubble – “exacerbated environmental degradation that has been years in the making,” the report stated. Repairing the water system will require US$1.5 billion over two decades, the agency estimates.

According to Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch for Middle East and North Africa, such difficulties are made worse by the Israeli blockade because it keeps vital goods such as cooking oil and diesel fuel from reaching Gazans.

Stork said the blockade represents a violation of international law because it punishes Palestinian civilians as well as militants.

“There’s been next to no allowance for construction materials to get in,” he added. “So you have people in some cases still living out in the open, in the sense of not being in any kind of permanent shelter.”

The Red Cross has been equally critical of Israel keeping humanitarian and reconstruction supplies out. In a June report, it said neighbourhoods in Gaza that were badly damaged in the war, “will continue to look like the epicenter of a massive earthquake unless vast quantities of cement, steel and other building materials are allowed into the territory.”

Canada’s role

Last January, Ottawa pledged $4 million to help rebuild Gaza, and issued several statements expressing concern about the war’s effect on people living there.

But New Democrat MP Libby Davies, who travelled to Gaza in August as part of a Parliamentary delegation, told CTV.ca that many people she spoke to during the trip were worried Canada would cut aid to the Palestinians this year.

Women and children in a Gaza Strip refugee camp named Karama (Dignity), February, 2009. (ISM)

“When we spoke to various representatives in the West Bank, they were very concerned that Canada is going to in effect default on its spending commitment to UNRWA,” Davies said, referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which assists refugees in the territories.

An official at the Canadian International Development Agency told CTV.ca in an email that, as of Dec. 14, the agency had approved $20 million for UNRWA in 2009. That’s 28 per cent less compared to the 2008 total of $28 million.

Critics charge that, because the blockade is contributing to harsh living conditions, cutting aid to Gaza would leave Ottawa’s record on human rights open to criticism.

Tom Woodley, who heads a national non-profit group that’s been lobbying Ottawa to change its policies on various Middle East countries, said protecting that record in Gaza and elsewhere is key to protecting Canada’s international influence.

“Diplomatically, Canada needs to firmly support international law,” Woodley said. “It’s not just because we’re nice guys. It’s also because it’s in our best interest. On the world stage we’re a little guy. If someone tries to infringe on Canadian rights in the far north some day, we’re not going to be able to oppose them militarily. We’re going to have to call on international law.”

Similarly, Lotayef sees the trip to Gaza this month as an opportunity to press Ottawa to change its position on the conflict.

“Our government should take a more objective, more balanced position,” Lotayef said. “At this point in time we should increase our funding and at least contribute what we committed to contribute, to the Palestinian people.”