Tag Archives: blockade

Via AP ISTANBUL (AP) — An aid ship trying to break the blockade of Gaza could reach Israel's 20-mile (32-kilometer) exclusion zone by Friday afternoon, an activist said, but Israel's prime minister has vowed the ship will not reach land. The dueling comments suggest a potential new clash over Israel's three-year-old blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip — and come only four days after an Israeli commando raid on a larger aid flotilla left nine activists dead. Greta Berlin, a spokesman for the Free Gaza group, says the 1,200-ton Rachel Corrie is heading directly to Gaza and will not stop in any port on the way. It is trying to deliver hundreds of tons of aid, including wheelchairs, medical supplies and concrete. Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead McGuire and the former head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, Denis Halliday, are among the 11 passengers on board, she said. The Irish vessel is named after an American college student crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting house demolitions in Gaza. added by: joshuaheller