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Alex Harrison: ‘It was surreal, the force they used when we were passive’ |
Seized Gaza activist planning return trip
Palestinian supporter’s six-day ordeal in cockroach-infested cell after navy boards boat
AN ACTIVIST “kidnapped” at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers while trying to deliver aid to Palestinians has said the experience will not deter her from planning future trips to Gaza.
Alex Harrison, 31, from the Marquess estate, off Essex Road, Islington, was travelling to the Gaza Strip by sea with 19 other activists from the Free Gaza movement when their boat was seized by the Israeli navy in June.
She was imprisoned in Israel for six days before being deported this week. Others on the boat, including Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire and former US-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, were also imprisoned and deported.
Ms Harrison, who formerly worked for the Home Office at the immigration courts in Rosebery Avenue, Finsbury, said the boat, an island-hopper ferry named Spirit of Humanity, had not entered Israeli waters.
“They harried us for 12-14 hours,” she said. “When they first made contact we were still 12-15 hours outside Gaza and well into international waters. They said: ‘Turn back or we’ll shoot’ and ‘You are on course for Israeli territory. If you do not turn back within five minutes we’ll fire.’
“Six Israeli military boats surrounded us. Soldiers came onto our boat in full military gear. I remember thinking that if one of them slipped we wouldn’t be able to get a line to them before they hit the sea floor, they were so weighed down with ammunition.”
She said the activists were pushed to the ground by soldiers and some were tied up. “It was completely surreal, the way they came on and the force they used when we were being completely passive,” she added.
In prison, she was held in a cockroach-infested cell with six others.
The Free Gaza movement has in the past successfully breached the blockade of Gaza by sailing boats to the war-torn territory from Cyprus.
Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth and Hedy Epstein, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor, have joined the boats taking medicines, toys, educational equipment and tool kits to Palestinians recovering from Israel’s military attacks in January.
Ms Harrison, who has visited the Palestinian Territories before and is married to a Palestinian, became involved in the movement after the death of Tom Hurndall, a student from Tufnell Park shot by an Israeli soldier while acting as a human shield in the Palestinian town of Rafah.
Spirit of Humanity is now impounded in the Israeli port of Ashdod. Ms Harrison said the Free Gaza movement, which receives funding from anonymous US donors, would sue for the boat’s return and raise the legality of its seizure in an Israeli court.
She called Israel’s blockade and the denial of visas to those wishing to visit Gaza “a form of collective punishment”. She aims to be on one of the Free Gaza boats due to sail from Cyprus in August.
An Israeli military spokesperson maintained the boat had illegally attempted to enter the Gaza Strip. |
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YOUR COMMENTS:
Thank you
Alex Harrison
What you tried was so heart-warming and human. The Israeli government is the one which is full of a bunch of criminals.God bless you, and Free Gaza.
Atthar Butt |
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