Israel Matzav

US, Britain warn citizens to stay away from Gaza

The United States and Britain have issued travel advisories urging their citizens to stay away from Gaza.

The US State Department is cautioning American citizens not to participate in future attempts to infiltrate Gaza by sea as part of a new travel warning released late Sunday night.

“US citizens are advised against traveling to Gaza by any means, including via sea. Previous attempts to enter Gaza by sea have been stopped by Israeli naval vessels and resulted in the injury, death, arrest and deportation of US citizens,” the warning states.

The new travel advisory comes after Israel requested that countries issues such directives to discourage further attempts to break the Gaza blockade, following a May raid in which IDF commandos killed nine passengers, one a Turkish-American, on a ship that refused to be inspected in Israel.

On that ship as well as the five others in the same flotilla, many Americans were arrested and deported, with several sustaining various degrees of injury.

The Foreign Ministry earlier welcomed a similar warning issued by Britain last week, saying that such statements were significant because they made it clear that these governments view the attempt to break the blockade negatively, and hint that those who do take part in the flotillas anyway should not later come to their home governments looking for support.

Well, maybe. I'm hoping that the Foreign Ministry isn't fooling itself that we won't hear any protests if nationals of those countries are killed in future flotillas. Think Rachel Corrie (US) and Tom Hurndall (Britain), both of whom must have been violating some kind of travel advisory when they were killed protecting 'Palestinian' weapons tunnels.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:02 PM