Palestinian militants this month fired rockets into Israel from Gaza, drawing Israeli return fire.
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“In the past, the French used to discuss these things with us in advance”, complained an Israeli diplomat.
“The IDF won’t allow any vessel to reach Gaza and to cross the maritime border of the State of Israel,” an IDF spokesman told Jerusalem Post earlier this week.
As part of an attempt to remedy this situation, and to end the church’s complicity in it, three resolutions will be debated at this week’s General Convention that call for action on divestment from certain companies that profit from and enable Israel’s occupation.
Another activist on the Marianne, Israeli-born Swede Dror Feiler, told an Arab Israeli radio station that one of the flotilla’s ships had been sabotaged by “professionals”, and that a propeller had to be fixed before setting off.
In addition to discriminating against women, homosexuals and disabled people, the report concluded that “Hamas restricted the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association, religion, and movement of Gaza Strip residents”.
Israel has vowed to prevent the flotilla from reaching the shores of Gaza, threatening Ghattas and other participants.
“By formally submitting allegations against Israeli forces to the ICC chief prosecutor, President (Mahmoud) Abbas has triggered a provision in US law that suspends all economic assistance to the PA”, said US Representative Nita Lowey, a senior member of the subcommittee that oversees foreign aid.
Israel, a past member of the UNICEF board, said after the release of the initial 2013 report that it “values and respects” the organization and would work to implement the report’s recommendations.
It was the third such violent incident in eight days.
One concerns alleged Israeli crimes committed in Gaza during the 50-day war in July and August previous year that killed 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 73 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Aside from asserting that Israel has violated the United Nations definition of “Apartheid”, Jabarin said the report also names specific crimes such as the “targeting of civilians” in Gaza, and violations of rights to due process for Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons who are then prosecuted under Israeli military code.
Col. Richard Kemp, ex- commander of the British Forces in Afghanistan, has lambasted the U.N. Human Rights Council report on last summer’s Gaza war as distorted and mistaken in a New York Times opinion piece.
It does not give proper weight to the fact that in 1993 Israel opened its heart to peace, put its confidence in Yasser Arafat and enabled him to set up a semi-independent entity in the Gaza Strip.
“We are trying to break the blockade”, Ghattas said.
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This story has been edited from the source material.
