In May of 2010, six ships carrying humanitarian aid left port in Turkey and sailed across the Mediterranean Sea to the Gaza Strip. Organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights, Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” was determined to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Israel imposed the blockade in 2007, after the militant group Hamas took control of the Palestinian territory. While the blockade was intended to put pressure on Hamas, it left residents trapped in the area, and severely restricted locals’ ability to fish in the sea.
As the ships approached Gaza, they were boarded in international waters by Israeli naval commandos who wanted to inspect their cargo, apparently searching for weapons. On one of the ships, the MV Mavi Marmara, violence erupted, ending in the deaths of nine flotilla activists, including an 18-year-old American citizen who’d grown up in Turkey.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the Israeli raid, saying the commandos were enforcing a legal blockade and had acted in self-defense against flotilla passengers; a subsequent internal investigation by the Israel Defense Force exonerated the commandos. A separate investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Council, however, criticized the Israeli raid for its “unacceptable level of brutality,” and Israel faced international condemnation for the event, including a diplomatic rupture with Turkey, a former ally.
Late last month, on the one-year anniversary of the clash, a group of American activists announced that they’ll be taking part in another, larger flotilla to challenge the blockade of Gaza. The U.S. boat—named The Audacity of Hope—will be part of an international flotilla that will set sail later this month. It’s expected to include about 15 ships, most from Europe, and 1,000 activists.
The Audacity of Hope’s passenger list includes several retired U.S. military personnel (among them, Ann Wright, a retired Army colonel and the organizer of the U.S. boat), the author Alice Walker, and a collection of activists with backgrounds in healthcare, social work, the arts, academia and journalism. It also includes one very familiar name from the Valley’s activist scene: Northampton’s Paki Wieland, a retired social worker and far-from-retired peace activist.
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This won’t be Wieland’s first trip to Gaza. In 2008, she joined a mental health delegation that visited in the area, and in 2009 she took part in a project monitoring the border at Rafah, the crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. When word got out about the U.S. boat joining the international flotilla, she says, friends urged her to apply for a spot.
Next week, Wieland will fly to Greece, where she and about 50 other passengers will board The Audacity of Hope. What does she expect will happen when they reach the waters near Gaza?
The ideal scenario, Wieland said: The ships will be allowed to sail freely into the harbor in a “show of good will” by local Israeli forces. During his recent visit to the U.S., she noted, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress that his government is prepared to make “painful sacrifices” to make progress in Middle East peace negotiations. “This could be a sacrifice they could make to show good will to the Gazan people, to confirm that [they] believe in an open society,” she said.
Under that best-case scenario, Wieland continued, she would then be able to travel through Gaza to visit people she’d met on earlier visits and “let them know that we have not lost faith in them, in justice for them.” Then she’d head to Egypt, to “cheer on” the people who fought for freedom there, she added.
A more likely scenario: “What I think will happen is the Israeli forces, the navy, will come and try to blockade us, to stop us,” Wieland said. “And that’s where I think we’ll really have to assess what we’ll do.”
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Israeli officials have called the flotilla a show of support for terrorists. Earlier this month, an Israeli diplomat based in Washington, D.C., told the New York Times, “We see this flotilla as a political statement in order to support Hamas in Gaza. Hamas is a terror organization that took control of Gaza and its people and is committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. We have a blockade, and we are going to enforce this blockade.”
Wieland dismissed Israeli claims that the group backs Hamas; rather, she said, they support the Palestinian people: “We are going not in support of Hamas. We are going on invitation from, and in support of, civil society.”
The flotilla participants have firmly stated that their mission is a peaceful one; “We Are Unarmed and We Are Sailing,” read the headline of a May press release announcing plans for the U.S. ship. Lawful representatives of other governments will be allowed to board the ship and to see its manifest, to make it clear that it contains no weapons “or anything that would promote violence,” Wieland said.
Wieland and other participants recently traveled to Washington to meet with representatives from Sen. John Kerry’s office and from the State Department to discuss their effort. “It’s not so much that we’re asking for protection,” she said. “We’re asking for the rules of law of the sea to be adhered to, which of course they weren’t last year when the Mavi Marmara was attacked.”
She continued: “Do I think we could be harmed? Yes. But you know, people in Gaza are being harmed all the time.
“None of us wants to be a martyr,” Wieland added. “That’s not what healthy people do, and I think we’re all pretty healthy. But we also need to speak to justice.”
Recently, Wieland said, someone asked her why she couldn’t show her support for the Palestinians in a less “provocative” way. In answer, she refers to the lyrics of “It Isn’t Nice,” a song from the civil-rights era: “It isn’t nice to block the doorway/It isn’t nice to go to jail/There are nicer ways to do it/But the nice ways always fail.”
