Kuwait Times

Published Date: July 25, 2010

GAZA CITY: Gaza's Hamas rulers yesterday slammed a UN call for aid bound for the Palestinian enclave to be delivered over land rather than by sea. "The UN call to international organisations to use the over-land road to Gaza instead of the sea is unacceptable and illegal," said Sami Abu Zahri, spokesman for the Islamist movement. The United Nations said on Friday that groups delivering aid to Gaza should do so by land, as Israel warned it would intercept ships trying to bust its naval blockade of the impo
verished enclave.

Hamas said the UN position was akin to "collaboration with the Israeli occupier." "Most of the residents of the territory are still banned from leaving the territory and this is why this call is considered a contribution to the blockade," Abu Zahri said, urging aid organisations to ignore the UN call. Groups trying to deliver aid to the coastal enclave should "continue to reach Gaza by sea until the blockade is really broken.

Israel has warned its forces will prevent any attempt to dispatch aid to Gaza by sea despite a raid by its forces on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed nine Turkish activists on May 31. The Jewish state's UN ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, wrote to UN chief Ban Ki-moon to warn that her country "reserves its right under international law to prevent" two Lebanese ships from sailing to the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak renewed the warning on Friday, saying the navy would prevent the aid-carrying Lebanese ships from reaching the Palestinian territory. "If this flotilla does leave Lebanon and refuses to be led by our navy to the (Israeli) port of Ashdod, we will have no other choice than to arrest it at sea," Barak said. Organisers announced plans in June to set sail for Gaza with two ships, the Julia and the Junia, which they respectively renamed as the Nagi el-Ali, after a Palestinian
cartoonist killed by gunmen in London in 1987, and the Mariam.

Yesterday one of the Nagi el-Ali's organisers told AFP that "preparations for the trip have progressed" but added that the departure "will not take place for weeks," citing "technical obstacles." He did not elaborate but a government official said that paperwork for the trip was proving problematic. The Mariam, on the other hand, has been docked at the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli since Tuesday, organisers and port officials said without elaborating.

Israel imposed the blockade on Gaza in June 2006 after its soldier, Gilad Shalit, was captured by Gaza militants and tightened it a year later when Hamas seized power in the coastal strip.-AFP