Alex Harrison who sailed with Gaza aid flotilla reunited with family

Published: 11 June, 2010
by JOSH LOEB

AN Islington woman who was part of the flotilla of Palestinian aid boats stormed by the Israeli Army was reunited with her family at Heathrow airport on Friday after spending three days in an Israeli prison.

Alex Harrison, 32, from the Marquess Estate, off Essex Road, was on one of the boats boarded by Israeli soldiers as they attempted to deliver goods to the war-torn Gaza Strip. 

At least nine people were killed during the incident.

Ms Harrison was deported from Israel on Thursday and on Monday spoke at a meeting in Highbury arranged by Islington Friends of  Yibna – an organisation that is campaigning for an end to Israel’s siege of Gaza.

It is the second time Ms Harrison has seen the inside of a jail after trying to deliver aid to Gaza. Last year she was seized and held in a cockroach-infested cell in Israel for six days after joining a flotilla backed by American organisation the Free Gaza Movement. 

But the activist, who formerly worked as a civil servant at the Home Office, based in the immigration courts in Rosebery Avenue, said the media’s reaction had been dramatically different this time around.

“In prison we were held incommunicado so we had no idea what the reaction was like outside,” she said. 

“It’s been brilliant coming out to this. The media coverage means it was worth every penny spent on the boats.”

Gaza suffered heavy bombing from Israel in 2008 and has been under an Israeli blockade since the militant Islamist group Hamas took control there in 2007. 

Ms Harrison said the Free Gaza Movement would continue trying to send flotillas to the territory until the blockade is lifted and that she would be joining them – but she said they needed to raise the money to buy more boats first.

“It’s an expensive trip as long as Israel keeps stealing everything from us,” she said. 

“They confiscated everything. All they let us take back with us were the clothes we stood up in. We were not even allowed to take our jackets.”