Israel Deports Greta Thunberg, Bans Gaza Aid Activists for 100 Years

Israel deported campaigner Greta Thunberg on a flight to Sweden via France on Tuesday, after detaining her along with other activists aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat.

Of the 12 activists on board the Madleen, which was carrying food and supplies for Gaza, four including Thunberg agreed to be deported immediately, while all of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years, the rights group that legally represents some of them said in a statement.

The remaining eight were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily, and brought before a detention review tribunal on Tuesday, rights group Adalah said.

"The state asked the tribunal to keep the activists in custody until their deportation", Adalah said, adding that under Israeli law, individuals under deportation orders can be held for 72 hours before forcible removal.

Israeli forces intercepted the boat, operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, in international waters on Monday and towed it to the port of Ashdod.

They then transferred them to Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, the foreign ministry said, from where Thunberg flew to France ahead of a scheduled flight to Sweden.

On arrival at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, 22-year-old Thunberg accused Israel of "kidnapping us in international waters and taking us against our will to Israel".

"This is yet another intentional violation of rights that is added to the list of countless other violations that Israel is committing," she said.

Four French activists who were also aboard the Madleen were set to face an Israeli judge, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said.

He had earlier posted on X that five would face court action and only one would depart voluntarily.

Barrot told reporters that French diplomats had met with the six French nationals in Israel, and that French-Palestinian European MP Rima Hassan was among those who refused to leave voluntarily.

The activists, from France, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands, aimed to deliver humanitarian aid and break the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory.

In what organisers called a "symbolic act", hundreds of participants in a land convoy crossed the border into Libya from Tunisia with the aim of reaching Gaza, whose entire population the UN has warned is at risk of famine.

Dire humanitarian conditions
Israel's interception of the Madleen, about 185 kilometres (115 miles) west of Gaza, was condemned by Turkey as a "heinous attack", while Iran denounced it as "a form of piracy" in international waters.

In May, another Freedom Flotilla ship, the Conscience, was damaged in international waters off Malta as it headed to Gaza, with the activists blaming an Israeli drone attack.

A 2010 Israeli commando raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was part of a similar attempt to breach the naval blockade of Gaza, left 10 civilians dead.

On Sunday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said the blockade, in place since well before the Israel-Hamas war, was needed to prevent Palestinian militants from importing weapons.

Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza to alleviate widespread shortages of food and basic supplies.

Israel recently allowed some deliveries to resume after barring them for more than two months and began working with the newly formed, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

But humanitarian agencies have criticised the GHF and the United Nations refuses to work with it, citing concerns over its practices and neutrality.

Dozens of people have been killed near GHF distribution points since late May, according to Gaza's civil defence agency.

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on Tuesday that in Gaza's north, "Israeli military operations have intensified in recent days, with mass casualties reported".

An independent United Nations commission said on Tuesday that Israeli attacks on schools, religious and cultural sites in Gaza amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of seeking to exterminate Palestinians.

"In killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites, Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination," the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a report.

AFP has contacted Israeli authorities for comment on the report but has yet to receive a response.

The Israeli military said it intercepted a projectile on Tuesday that had entered Israeli airspace from Gaza.

It later called for residents to evacuate several neighbourhoods in the north of the Palestinian territory.

The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 54,981 people, the majority civilians, have been killed in the territory since the start of the war. The UN considers these figures reliable.

Out of 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack, 54 are still held in Gaza including 32 the Israeli military says are dead.