TEL AVIV - High-profile campaigner Greta Thunberg left Israel on a flight to Sweden via France on Tuesday, after she was detained along with other activists aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat.
Of the 12 people on board the Madleen carrying food and supplies for Gaza, five French activists were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily.
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 were then transferred to Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the foreign ministry said.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said earlier that Thunberg and her companions would be forced to watch footage of the Oct 7 Hamas terror attack after being taken from their “selfie yacht”.
“It is appropriate that the anti-Semitic Greta and her fellow Hamas supporters see exactly who the Hamas terrorist organisation they came to support and for whom they work is, what atrocities they committed against women, the elderly, and children, and against whom Israel is fighting to defend itself,” he wrote on X.
Thunberg subsequently departed Israel on a flight to Sweden via France, the Israeli foreign ministry said on its official X account on Tuesday.
Thunberg, one of the world’s most prominent voices in the fight against climate change, has avoided air travel for years, and once sailed for a fortnight on a zero-emissions yacht to reach a UN summit in New York.
Five French activists who were also aboard the Madleen were set to face an Israeli judge, the French foreign minister said.
“Our consul was able to see the six French nationals arrested by the Israeli authorities last night,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on X.
“One of them has agreed to leave voluntarily and should return today. The other five will be subject to forced deportation proceedings.”
The vessel carrying French, German, Brazilian, Turkish, Swedish, Spanish and Dutch activists had the stated aim of delivering humanitarian aid and breaking 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 west of the coast of Gaza, was condemned by Turkey as a “heinous attack” and 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 saying they suspected 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, left 10 civilians dead.
Katz said the blockade, in place for years 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 (GHF).
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.
An independent United Nations commission said on Tuesday Israeli attacks on schools, religious and cultural sites in Gaza amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of seeking to exterminate Palestinians.
The Oct 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.