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Arab-Israeli lawmaker boards Gaza-bound flotilla opposing blockade

Xinhua, June 26, 2015 Adjust font size:

An Arab-Israeli lawmaker on Thursday showed support to end the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip by boarding one of five ships setting sail from Greece to Gaza.

"This is my moral duty," Basel Ghattas, a lawmaker from Arab Joint List, told Israeli the Walla! news website before boarding the ship in Greece.

"It is my obligation to let the world know of the blockade and the two million people living there on the verge of explosion. We need to end this problem and find ways to put an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza," Ghattas said.

In 2010, nine Turkish nationals on a flotilla known as Mavi Marmara were killed as the Israeli navy raided one of the ships. Another Arab-Israeli lawmaker, Hanin Zoabi, also from Arab Joint List, was then on the Mavi Marmara.

The current flotilla, which is called "the third freedom flotilla," sets to reach the Gaza Strip and transgress Israel's naval blockade on the strip, which was imposed following Hamas' takeover of the enclave in 2007.

The organizers of the flotilla are international peace activists who charge that their aim is to bring attention to the blockade on the strip and to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.

Also aboard the flotilla are a Spanish parliament member Ana Maria Miranda and the former president of Tunisia, Munsuf Marzuki.

Tensions have mounted in Israel between right-wing Jewish parliament members and Arab and left-wing members due to Ghattas' decision to board the ship.

Though Ghattas' party supported him, right wing Jewish politicians slammed it as being anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, while lawmaker Zoabi accused Israel of committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Arab citizens in Israel, who account 20 percent of the total population, are non-Jewish Israeli citizens whose cultural, linguist heritage and ethnic identity is Arab or Palestinian. They refer to themselves mostly as Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Besides facing discrimination and mounting racism on various platforms, the Arab citizens are also in a complex identity, as they are citizens of Israel as well as part of the Palestinian people.

About 4.5 million of them live in the West Bank and the Palestinian territories in the Gaza Strip without citizenship and under the Israeli occupation. Endit