By Marius Schattner/ AFP
JERUSALEM: Israel battened down the hatches at its main airport on Thursday, awaiting hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters as Greece blocked the last boat in a scuppered campaign to ship aid to the Gaza Strip.
Organizers of the “Welcome to Palestine” campaign, which some have described as the “flytilla,” say the 600 or so activists — more than half of them French nationals — are jetting in to spend a week visiting Palestinian families and have “totally peaceful intentions.”
But the Israeli authorities appear to be gearing up for a confrontation, with hundreds of police on standby around the airport as press reports warned of various disaster scenarios, such as activists setting themselves on fire or attacking Israelis on incoming flights.
“There is a large police presence in and around the airport to prevent any disturbances,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP on Thursday, saying there were several hundred officers already in place should any of the activists arrive early.
Meanwhile, organisers of a 10-ship aid flotilla which activists were hoping to sail to Gaza in defiance of an Israeli blockade said the lone boat to sneak out of a Greek port was caught Thursday by the coast guard in Crete.
“The Dignite/Al Karama was taken to Sitia in Crete by the Greek coast guard after being stopped in a nearby port while it was refuelling,” Claude Leostic told AFP by telephone, saying the authorities were “stopping the boat from setting sail for various administrative reasons.”
The French yacht had set out from a Greek port on Tuesday.
Eight other boats containing hundreds of international activists are currently being blocked from leaving various Greek ports, while an Irish vessel which organizers say was sabotaged, is undergoing repairs in Turkey.
The flotilla had been due to set sail last week but was hit by a wave of administrative obstacles which organizers have blamed on political pressure coming from Israel.
Athens says it imposed the ban for the “safety” of the activists on board in the wake of last year’s bloody showdown when Israeli commandos raided a six-ship flotilla in a confrontation that left nine Turkish activists dead.
With the flotilla effectively grounded, Israel was gearing up to face off with hundreds more international activists expected to arrive en masse in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv on Friday as a show of solidarity with the Palestinians.
More than 60,000 people pass through Ben Gurion every day, Rosenfeld said, noting the police units were deployed throughout the main Terminal 3 building as well as around the older Terminal 1 only used for a limited number of charter flights.
On Wednesday morning, ahead of an official visit to Romania, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was briefed at the airport by the internal security minister and the national police chief on preparations for the protest.
Media reports suggested all flights arriving from Europe would be directed to a separate terminal and their passengers carefully screened.
As preparations to receive the activists went into high gear, some Israeli newspapers wondered about the air of collective hysteria gripping the authorities.
“We have gone off the rails,” read a headline in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
“We have lost our mind: Instead of welcoming these loony visitors, permitting them to sing, whistle and even raise signs, the world is liable to see the ‘Zionist storm troopers’ in action once again,” one commentator wrote.
In an acerbic column on the front page of the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, Gideon Levy poked fun at the establishment which is preparing for the fly-in as if it were “the next existential threat” facing the Jewish state.
“Here’s a safe bet: We’re going to win another sweeping victory,” he wrote. “The public security minister said ‘hooligans,’ the police commissioner promised that ‘We won’t treat them gently.’
“If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny. Israel is becoming grotesque. Non-violent demonstrators, some of them well-wishers, who pose no threat to Israel’s security… are being portrayed as enemies of the state and of the people, not to mention of all humanity,” he wrote.
