Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has ordered the military to stop a charity boat carrying activists, including Sweden’s Greta Thunberg, who are planning to defy an Israeli blockade and reach Gaza.
Operated by the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the British-flagged Madleen yacht set sail from Sicily on 6 June and is currently off the Egyptian coast, heading slowly towards the Gaza Strip.
“I instructed the IDF to act so that the Madleen … does not reach Gaza,” Katz said in a statement.
“To the antisemitic Greta and her Hamas-propaganda-spouting friends, I say clearly: You’d better turn back, because you will not reach Gaza.”
Thunberg said she joined the Madleen crew to “challenge Israel’s illegal siege and escalating war crimes” in Gaza and highlight the urgent need for humanitarian aid. She has rejected previous Israeli accusations of antisemitism.
Katz said the blockade was essential to Israel’s national security as it seeks to eliminate Hamas.
“The State of Israel will not allow anyone to break the naval blockade on Gaza, whose primary purpose is to prevent the transfer of weapons to Hamas,” he said.
The Madleen is carrying a symbolic quantity of aid, including rice and baby formula, the FFC has said.
Israeli media have reported that the military plans to intercept the yacht before it reaches Gaza and escort it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The crew would then be deported.
Four killed near Gaza aid distribution centre
Four people were killed and others injured by Israeli forces on Sunday as Palestinians making their way towards an aid distribution site in the southern Gaza Strip came under fire, according to Palestinian paramedics.
The Israeli military said in a statement that troops had opened fire in southern Gaza but said that it had directed warning shots at a group that was moving towards soldiers and deemed a threat to them.
The GHF, which is providing aid under an Israeli initiative that is bypassing traditional relief agencies who say their deliveries into Israeli-blockaded Gaza have been restricted, said it had handed out 1.15 million meals across three sites in southern and central Gaza without incident on Sunday.
Israel says top Hamas leader’s body found
On Sunday, the Israeli military said it had retrieved the body of Hamas’ military chief Mohammed Sinwar in an underground tunnel beneath a hospital in southern Gaza, following a targeted operation last month.
Another senior Hamas leader, Mohammad Shabana, commander of the Rafah Brigade, was also found dead at the scene, according to IDF spokesperson, Brigadier General Effie Defrin.
Israeli forces gave a small group of foreign reporters a tour of the tunnel that had been uncovered beneath the European Hospital in Khan Younis, which Defrin said was a major command and control compound for Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sinwar’s death last month, but Defrin said they now had his DNA which proved beyond doubt it was him.
Shabana was one of Hamas’s most senior and battle-hardened commanders in southern Gaza. He played a central role in constructing the network of tunnels under the southern city of Rafah, which were used for ambushes and cross-border raids.
Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza following the October 2023 assault in which Hamas-led gunmen killed 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages.
Israel’s campaign has since killed more than 54,880 Palestinians, local health authorities say, and displaced much of the enclave’s population.
The UN has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine.
