CAIRO: The United Nations five-day fact-finding mission investigating the flotilla incident in the Mediterranean Sea on May 31 has left Jordan, reports indicated. The UN team was interviewing some 30 Arab activists who had been aboard the vessel when Israeli troops boarded the ships, which left at least 9 people dead. Some 33 Jordanian activists had participated in the flotilla convoy aiming to break the economic siege on the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian aid to the 1.5 million Palestinians there, but Israel used military force in order to stop the boats from proceeding to the Palestinian territory. The German press agency (DPA) reported that the UN team had interviewed 24 Jordanians, two Bahrainis, a Lebanese and three Arab-Israelis, including member of Parliament Hanin Zoabi. Zoabi told the UN panel that she believes the Israeli troops were given “permission to kill” in the raid. The UN team had previously visited London, Geneva and Turkey as part of their investigations and spoke with around 100 people. The panel, chaired by former International Court of Justice judge Karl Hudson-Phillips, is due to report back to the UN Human Rights Council during its session between September 13 and October 11. According to reports, the attack came some 45 miles off the Gaza coast in international waters. Footage from the flotilla's lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showed armed Israeli soldiers boarding the ship and helicopters flying overhead. Al Jazeera reporter Jamal Elshayyal, who was on board the Mavi Marmara vessel, said Israeli soldiers used live ammunition during the operation. According to Israeli Army Radio, soldiers opened fire “after confronting those on board carrying sharp objects.” “This did not need to happen. There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” an Israeli foreign ministry official said on Al Jazeera English. Mehmet, a 28-year-old Turkish national on board one of the flotilla vessels in May, told Bikya Masr via telephone from Istanbul that he believes there is little that will come of the investigation. “We have seen too many investigations into Israel's illegal activities to hope that anything different will come of this,” he said. “Why we even bother to be interviewed by the UN is something that should be thought about in the future because the things they say have little affect on what Israel does.” Cynthia McKinley, a leading international activist who has participated in a number of siege breaking journeys to Gaza in recent years, wrote at the time that she was “outraged at Israel's latest criminal act. I mourn with my fellow Free Gaza travelers, the lives that have been lost by Israel's needless, senseless act against unarmed humanitarian activists. But I'm even more outraged that once again, Israel has been aided and abetted by the silence of the world's onlookers whose hearts have grown cold with indifference.” BM
