JERUSALEM: The Rachel Corrie activist ship kept its course for a Saturday arrival in Gaza, or confrontation, as world anger simmered over Israel's deadly raid on an earlier blockade-busting bid.
“We are not afraid,” Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire told Ireland's RTE state radio by satellite phone from aboard the aid-laden ship.
“We started out to deliver this cargo to the people of Gaza and to break the siege of Gaza, that is what we want to do,” the 66-year-old said as the vessel steamed towards the impoverished Palestinian enclave.
The MV Rachel Corrie was just hours from Gaza but the 15 aboard, Irish and Malaysian activists, four Indonesian crew and a Scottish captain, did not intend to leave international waters and run the Israeli gauntlet until after daybreak Saturday, organisers said.
With Ireland's prime minister warning sternly that the ship must be allowed to reach Gaza, the activists have put Israel in a tight spot at a time when it already faces a serious diplomatic crisis over Monday's botched raid in which its commandos killed nine Turkish activists aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla.
Resentment ran high in Turkey, which sent more than half the almost 700 activists aboard the ill-fated six-ship convoy.
In a statement certain to infuriate Israel, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday he did not view Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, as a terrorist organisation.
Hamas, which is committed to the destruction of Israel, is blacklisted in the West as a terror group.
In Istanbul, a crowd of some 10,000 people held prayers for a journalist among the nine Turks, one of them also a US citizen, killed in Monday's raid.
Chants of “murderer Israel” echoed across the courtyard of the historic Beyazit Mosque, where a huge banner called for the Israeli embassy to be shut down.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul has warned relations with Israel “will never be the same” and Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said economic and defence ties will be slashed.
A Turkish medical plane Friday brought home three of the wounded activists, after dozens more were flown out of Israel over the past days.
The prime minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, encouraged activists “to continue with these convoys in order to break the siege.”He spoke at weekly Friday prayers in Gaza City, flanked by Palestinian and Turkish flags.
Later, thousands of people took to the streets in central Gaza. In Kuala Lumpur, some 5,000 people rallied outside the US embassy, burning Israel flags and brandishing posters proclaiming “Allah will destroy you Israel.”
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah called for a mass rally in Beirut Friday evening where he said he would announce “serious measures.”In Jerusalem, police restricted access to the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound and deployed in force in and around the Old City.
Israel has warned it will stop the blockade-busting bid by Rachel Corrie, a 1,200-tonne cargo ship named after a US activist killed in 2003 as she tried to prevent an Israeli bulldozer from razing a Palestinian home.
On Friday it reiterated its offer, already rejected by the organisers, to deliver the goods to Gaza overland if the ship unloads in the Israeli port of Ashdod.
But Maguire insisted the activists “have no intention of going to Ashdod which is in Israel.”She said the 1.5 million people were living under “a cruel siege.””Our concern is to try to open up the people of Gaza to the world,” she said.
Israel has said the commandos only opened fire after they came under attack with clubs, knives, guns and other weapons.
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