Breaking the Siege:
Voyages of Free Gaza and the Freedom Flotilla
Supporting the Civil Rights of Gaza’s Palestinians via the Sea
Edited by Dr. Bill Dienst, Greta Berlin and Huwaida Arraf
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 Dr. Bill Dienst
All rights reserved
This book will soon be available in print.
Visit www.freegaza.org to learn more.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the Palestinians of Gaza, as well as those living in present day Israel, the occupied West Bank, and in the Palestinian diaspora. You will never be forgotten!
We look forward to the day all Palestinians will be granted their basic human rights such as to travel freely, go to work and educate their children. Many of these rights are denied to the people of Gaza and much of the occupied West Bank.
Therefore, 80% of Royalties earned from this book will be donated to Gaza- based humanitarian organizations as directed through the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP). By purchasing this book, you will be contributing directly toward helping people living in Gaza. Additionally, a 20% of book royalties will support activists or international organizations promoting civil rights for Palestinians through Sea Efforts.
1) All Aboard the Free Gaza Movement
Greta Berlin, Hillary, Vangelis Pissias, Petros Giotis, Sharyn “Bella” Lock, Bill “Dr. Bill” Dienst and Anis Hamadeh
Bella, Paul Larudee, Dr. Bill, Petros Giotis and FG Steering Committee
3) Are We There Yet? Waiting for the Boats to Arrive
Mary Hughes-Thompson, Bella, Dr. Bill, Petros Giotis, Paul Larudee, Yvonne Ridley and FG Steering Committee
4) The Spies Who Did Not Love Us
Petros Giotis, Dr. Bill and Bella
Mary Hughes-Thompson, Dr. Bill, Petros Giotis, Ren Tawil and Bella
6) The Lay of the Land in Gaza
Dr. Bill and Greta Berlin
Lauren Booth
Bella and Dr. Bill
Jeff Halper
Dr. Bill, Bella and Greta Berlin
Donna Wallach and Dr. Mona El-Farra
12) Exiting Gaza: Takes One and Two
Dr. Bill and Bella
13) Setting Nets with Gaza Fishermen While Facing Down the Israeli Navy
Vittorio Arrigoni, Andrew Muncie and Bella
14) Marooned in Gaza
Lauren Booth
15) What Did You Do on Your Summer Vacation?
Dr. Bill and Lauren Booth
16) Farming and Fishing under Fire
Donna Wallach, Darlene Wallach and Vittorio Arrigoni
Vittorio Arrigoni
David Schermerhorn
Free Gaza Media Team, Ewa G. Jasiewicz, Eva Bartlett, Greta Berlin, Ramzi Kysia and Huwaida Arraf
20) Spirit of Humanity vs. Pirates of the Mediterranean
Stephanie Westbrook, Free Gaza Team, Greta Berlin, Ramzi Kysia, Adie Mormech, Cynthia McKinney, Fathi Jaouadi, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, Mairead Maguire, Eva Boss, Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro
21) Israel’s Attack on the Freedom Flotilla
Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza Team, Greta Berlin, Marianne Torres, Fatima Mohammadi, The Hindu, Johannesburg, Cynthia McKinney, Dr. Eyad Sarraj, Bjorn Borg, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Gila Norich, M.J. Rosenberg, Bianca Shaana, Niamh Moloughney, Lubna Masarwa, Kevin Neish, Iara Lee, Dr. Fintan Lane, Gene St. Onge, Henning Mankell and Mairead Maguire
22) Epilogue
Greta Berlin
Appendix A: Gaza Chronology, June 19 to December 27, 2008
Appendix B: Free Gaza-Related Books, DVDs and Websites
Breaking the Siege:
Voyages of the Free Gaza (FG) movement
This is a story about courage and determination as told by forty-three human rights activists who founded, organized and purchased boats to go to Gaza. On August 23, 2008, they made history by landing two small Greek fishing boats, the Free Gaza and the Liberty, in Gaza. They were the first internationals to land there in 41 years.
The volunteers managed to secretly repair two old fishing boats in hidden ports around Athens, Greece, and then sail them to Cyprus while remaining vigilantly alert for Israeli spies intent on sabotaging this global effort before it began.
This book details the harrowing thirty-two-hour maiden voyage through choppy seas from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Gaza Port; how the communication systems of both boats were jammed by Israeli intelligence and how Greek authorities feared that Liberty and Free Gaza had been sunk. But both boats emerged from the communication blackout and triumphantly entered Gaza Port to the cheers of tens of thousands of Palestinians who had gathered spontaneously to welcome them.
Because of this first success at breaking Israel’s illegal siege on 1.5 million people, donors stepped up and purchased a yacht we named the Dignity, which made four successful voyages to Gaza from October through December 2008. On its fifth voyage, as Israel was committing massacres on the people of Gaza in an attack called Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli warship deliberately rammed the Dignity three times while she was still in international waters, severely damaging the vessel and endangering the lives of the sixteen civilians onboard. Fortunately she was able to make it to safety in Sidon, Lebanon, without sinking.
Undeterred, we bought a fourth vessel, the Spirit of Humanity (Arion) that was nearly capsized by the Israeli Navy as we sailed in emergency care workers and medical supplies in January 2009. The boat was forced to turn back in rough waters
On June 30, 2009 while making another attempt to reach Gaza, the Spirit of Humanity was boarded and hijacked by the Israeli Navy. All twenty-one unarmed civilian passengers were imprisoned in Israel. Two of the passengers who hold Israeli citizenship were released. After about a week, the remaining nineteen Spirit passengers were deported to their various countries.
We organized for almost a year, knowing that sending in only one or two boats would not make a difference to the Palestinians and Israel’s draconian siege on them. We determined that the only way for the world to wake up to the collective punishment inflicted on a civilian population was to increase the size of the boats and the number of people going.
On May 31, 2010, while clearly in international waters sixty-five miles off the coast of Israel, a small fleet of five vessels known as the Freedom Flotilla was lethally attacked and illegally boarded by Israeli commandoes. Eight Turkish nationals and one American were killed aboard the Mavi Marmara, the largest ship in the flotilla. On all other ships, the passengers were beaten and tear gassed. Some with broken bones were thrown on the ground and handcuffed.
This act of Israeli aggression provoked worldwide condemnation and raised global awareness about the ongoing illegal siege of Gaza. Five days later, the Israeli Navy seized the sixth ship, Rachel Corrie, a cargo ship carrying reconstruction and education supplies for the people of Gaza. Again, the unarmed passengers were forced to the ground, handcuffed, and held on deck in the blazing sun guarded by dogs and heavily armed Israeli commandoes.
Breaking the Siege describes the human drama of what began as a crazy idea and an impossible undertaking. It describes the creation of this now internationally recognized, nonviolent, direct action movement and how an intense media campaign succeeded in putting the siege of Gaza on the map. We have much left to do. If governments will not force Israel to lift its illegal blockade of Gaza, we, the members of civil society, will continue to sail.
The book also gives insights into the hardships suffered by the people of Gaza as a direct result of Israel’s comprehensive land, sea, and air blockade, which are condemned by international human rights organizations as illegal acts of collective punishment against Gaza’s 1.5 million residents, more than half of them children.
Unfortunately the strangulation of the Palestinians in Gaza continues. Therefore, the work of the Free Gaza movement is only beginning.
Huwaida Arraf (US, Israel/Palestine)
Huwaida is a Palestinian with American and Israeli citizenship. She received her bachelor’s degrees from the University of Michigan and her juris doctor from American University (2007). In 2001 Huwaida cofounded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is co-author of the book Peace Under Fire: Israel, Palestine, and the International Solidarity Movement.
From 2007 to 2008 Huwaida taught in a human rights law clinic at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, the first legal clinic in the Arab world. She was on the maiden voyage to Gaza in August 2008, and after that led three more successful sea voyages to the Gaza Strip as well as two voyages that were attacked by Israel. Huwaida is currently the chairperson of the Free Gaza movement.
Vittorio Arrigoni (Italy)
Vittorio (Vik) had wide experience in international charity work and in the battle for human rights in Europe, Eastern Europe and Africa. In 2003, Vittorio made his first visit to Palestine, initially in a work camp managed by International Palestinian Youth League in East Jerusalem and later in Nablus in the Balata refugee camp. In 2006, he attempted to return to Palestine, but he was denied entry. He was held in Israeli detention for a week while appealing the decision, then he was expelled from the country.
In August 2006, at the request of the European Union, Vittorio attended the first free elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an international observer.
Vik arrived on the maiden free Gaza boats in August 2008 and stayed in Gaza. After being abducted in Gaza waters by the Israeli Navy and deported in November, 2008, Vik immediately returned again to Gaza on a FG boat. He was there during the winter of 2008-2009, and his book, Gaza: Stay Human (Kube Publishing, 2010), is his eyewitness testimony of Israel’s attack on Gaza at that time. Vittorio managed one of the most popular blogs in Italy at http://guerrillaradio.iobloggo.com. He later returned to Gaza, volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
Vik was murdered in his beloved Gaza on April 14, 2011 by a little-known faction there. His tragic death has devastated the activist and Palestinian communities who knew and loved him for his joy of life. The second Freedom Flotilla has been named STAY HUMAN in his honor.
Eva Bartlett (Canada)
Eva is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 working with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in West Bank communities, documenting Israeli soldier and settler aggressions against Palestinian civilians (see opt2007.wordpress.com). After spending four months trying to enter the Gaza Strip via Egypt, Eva sailed to Gaza with the third Free Gaza movement boat in November 2008 and lived in the strip until June 2010.
Before the Israeli war on Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009, Eva and ISM members accompanied fishermen on the sea while Israeli gunboats opened fire with live ammunition and water cannons on the unarmed fishermen. During the Israeli massacre of Gaza, she and other ISM members accompanied ambulances while witnessing and documenting the Israeli air strikes and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Following the war on Gaza, Eva and the ISM continued accompanying farmers to their land in border areas where Israeli soldiers target farmers and other civilians with live ammunition. Eva also participated in the Palestinian-led, nonviolent demonstrations against the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone,” in which dozens of farmers, civilians, and demonstrators have been killed and injured by Israeli firing and shelling.
Eva blogs about the situation at “In Gaza” (ingaza.wordpress.com) and is writing a book about her years in Palestine.
Greta Berlin (US and France)
Greta is one of the five co-founders of the Free Gaza movement. Greta has worked for justice for the Palestinians since the early 1960s. She is the mother of two Palestinian-American children whose father was born and raised in Safad, Palestine and was forced to flee there in 1948. She has been an outspoken advocate for the rights of Palestinians, and has spoken and written extensively on the issue.
Greta was in the West Bank three times since 2003 working with the ISM either in the occupied towns of Bil’in, Jenin or Ramallah or working in the media office. She was wounded in the leg by Israeli gunfire in July 2003 while protesting Israel’s apartheid wall. She was on the first boat into Gaza and has either organized or been in charge of the land and media team for most of the other voyages of the Free Gaza movement. When not working for the rights of Palestinians, Greta teaches engineers and scientists how to design and deliver presentations.
Lauren Booth (UK)
A broadcaster and journalist, Lauren Booth first traveled to the West Bank in 2005, and returned in 2007 and 2009. While living in Gaza, she witnessed the daily humiliations suffered by the Palestinian people under occupation. During the first Free Gaza mission, Lauren was aboard one of the two ships to break Israel’s sea blockade of the Palestinian coast—an experience she describes as the greatest moment of her life. She presents the groundbreaking program “Remember Palestine” on Press TV, working closely with a variety of groups committed to ending Israel’s illegal occupation and the siege of Gaza.
Bjorn Borg (Sweden)
Bjorn is the president of the Swedish Port Workers Union.
Eva Boss (Sweden)
A journalist, Eva has been covering the Middle East while based in Cyprus since 1991. Cyprus has good communication and good relations with both the Arab world and Israel. She began as a volunteer at Vestmanlands läns tidning. After receiving a bachelor of science degree in political science and sociology, she went to work for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet’s Suburban Capital Press. This was followed by a newspaper job with Stockholm newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet, and the now defunct news agency FLT. She came to Cyprus as the Middle East correspondent for the FLT. She now works as a freelance journalist.
Bill Dienst, M.D. (US)
Bill is a family and emergency room physician from Omak and Tonasket, towns in rural Washington in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. In 1985, after an intensive summer course in Arabic, Bill took an extra year of medical school and spent six months in Egypt, the West Bank, and Gaza volunteering with various Palestinian health care organizations, initially with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which was headquartered in Egypt. He has been to Palestine a total of six times on trips sponsored by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, by Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, and with the Palestine Medical Relief Society. He was on the maiden voyage of the Free Gaza movement
Mona El-Farra, M.D. (Gaza, Palestine)
Dr. Mona is a Palestinian from Gaza who wears many hats. She is a physician by trade and a human and women’s rights activist by practice. She is currently the chair of Gaza Red Crescent, Heath Care Committee but has also worked with Al Awda Hospital in Jabalya refugee camp and Union of Health Workers Committee. She is also the projects director for Gaza for the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA).
Petros Giotis (Greece)
Petros Giotis was born in 1956 in Filippiada, a small town of Epirus, Greece. After high school in Filippiada, he went to Salonica and completed a chemical engineering degree at Polytechnic University. Petros has worked as a journalist since his early university years; he eventually became a professional journalist. Today, he is the chief editor for the Greek newspaper KONTRA. For many years he has been a pro-Palestinian author and activist.
Jeff Halper, Ph.D. (Israel)
Jeff is an Israeli professor of anthropology and coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), a nonviolent Israeli peace and human rights organization that resists the Israeli occupation on the ground. In 2006, the American Friends Service Committee nominated Jeff to receive the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize with Palestinian intellectual and activist Ghassan Andoni.
Jeff was on the first boat into Gaza in August 2008.
Anis Hamadeh (Germany)
Anis is a writer, musician, journalist, and editor of www.anis-online.de and www.nonkilling.de. Born in 1966 in Hamburg, his mother is German and his father is Palestinian. He spent two years in Baghdad and Alexandria, and has a master of arts in Islamic studies, English, and linguistics. He is the author of the book Islam für Kids (in German) and the translator of the book Nonkilling Global Political Science. Since 2005, he has lived in Mainz, Germany, where he works as a freelance copywriter and artist. From 2006 until 2008, he was the web master for the Free Gaza movement.
Mary Hughes-Thompson (US/UK)
Mary is a retired TV documentarian and a cofounder of the Free Gaza movement. Before helping break the siege of Gaza on board the Free Gaza, she visited the West Bank six times during the current intifada. In 2002 she was beaten and robbed by American-Jewish youths from the illegal settlement of Itamar near Nablus. Mary has gone back to the occupied West Bank to work with the ISM and has also worked several times in Cyprus as part of the Free Gaza land team, most recently during the Freedom Flotilla voyage.
She is also a licensed pilot. A long time nonviolent activist for Palestine, she was also a participant in the recent Gaza Freedom March in Cairo.
Fathi Jaouadi (Tunisia, UK)
Fathi finished a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking at Brunel University in London (see www.arabdochouse.org). Fathi was on the first voyage to Gaza, then has been on several of the voyages as one of the delegation leaders and was on board the Dignity when Israel rammed it in international waters on December 30, 2008. He is on the board of directors of the Free Gaza movement and has been one of the indefatigable fund-raisers for the voyages.
Ewa Jasiewicz (UK, Poland)
Ewa is an experienced journalist, union organizer, and solidarity worker. She arrived in Gaza on the Dignity and stayed. She was Gaza Project co-coordinator for the Free Gaza movement on the ground in Gaza during Israel’s 2008-2009 winter massacre of Gaza (Operation Cast Lead). She is one of the primary organizers of the Freedom Flotilla and was on the Challenger 1 when it was illegally boarded on May 31, 2010.
Ramzi Kysia (US)
Ramzi is an Arab-American writer and nonviolence trainer and activist. Since September 11, he has spent almost four years working in the Middle East, including a year in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness, a year in Lebanon (during the 2006 Israeli bombardment), and several months in Jordan, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine. He was last in Palestine in May-June 2005, before arriving in Gaza on the first voyage of the Dignity. He was a major part of the Cyprus land team during the maiden voyage of the Free Gaza and the Liberty.
Fintan Lane, Ph.D. (Ireland)
Fintan is a Dublin-based member of the Free Gaza movement and the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He participated in the Freedom Flotilla and was aboard Challenger 1 when the ships were attacked. He is an historian and the author of several books on Irish history.
Paul Larudee, Ph.D. (US)
Paul, a cofounder of the Free Gaza movement, is a San Francisco Bay Area activist on the issue of justice in the region known as Palestine, which includes Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem. He was born to an Iranian Presbyterian minister and his American missionary spouse in 1946 and grew up in the American Midwest and has been to the occupied West Bank several times as a member of the ISM.
Iara Lee (US, Brazil)
Iara, an activist and filmmaker, founded the Caipirinha Foundation, which focuses on global solidarity, cultural diversity, and peace with justice. Under the umbrella of CULTURES OF RESISTANCE (www.culturesofresistance.org), Iara is producing several shorts and a full-length documentary promoting conflict prevention and resolution; she is also working on a variety of arts, cultural, and diplomacy projects.
She was on board the Mavi Marmara when it was attacked on May 31, 2010 and smuggled her chips out so the world could see what happened to the passengers. Her footage has now been used around the world to show what happened that terrible morning.
Sharyn Lock, AKA Bella (Australia)
Sharyn is originally from Australia but now lives in the United Kingdom. A veteran ISM activist in the West Bank, and was badly wounded in an Israeli attack there while working with the ISM in the occupied West Bank. She is one of the cofounders of Free Gaza (FG). After making the initial FG trip, she returned on the Dignity and was on the ground with other FG/ISM activists who directly witnessed the twenty-two-day Israeli assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 called Operation Cast Lead.
Her book, Gaza Beneath the Bombs (2010, Pluto Press, with Sarah Irving), is her eyewitness account of the attacks. For many years, she fit community work around environmental and human rights campaigning. Her time spent in Palestine led her to acquire basic medical skills, and she is currently a student midwife in the United Kingdom.
Henning Mankell (Sweden)
Henning is the author of some of the world’s best-selling books, some of which have sold more than thirty million copies. The books in his Kurt Wallander detective series are perhaps his most well-known books. In addition to his Gaza activism, he is committed to the global fight against AIDS. He was on board the Mavi Marmara when it was attacked and has been an outspoken advocate for the flotilla since returning to Sweden.
Mairead Maguire (Ireland)
Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was cofounder of the Community of Peace People for a peaceful resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict. She has been to Palestine several times to defend the human rights. In April 2007 she was wounded by the Israeli army while nonviolently protesting with Palestinians against the wall in the village of Bil’in. She was on board the second voyage to Gaza, then on board the Spirit of Humanity in 2009 when Israelis hijacked the boat. She was also on board the Rachel Corrie when it, too, was hijacked and hauled into Israel.
Lubna Masarwa (Israel-Palestine)
Lubna is a Palestinian 48 living in Israel. She is a political dynamic activist in Jerusalem working for the Alternative Information Center and Al Quds University. She chooses struggle as her way against the occupation. She believes that activists should take the authority to change the reality and not wait for someone else to do it. It’s important for her as a Palestinian from 1948 to break the siege and keep the relationship with her people. She has also built links with the Palestinian community in Cyprus, where she is regularly active as an educator and adviser at Masjid Mosque.
Cynthia McKinney (US)
Cynthia is a former U.S. congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice. The first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives, McKinney served six terms from 1993-2003 and from 2005-2007. She was arrested, forcibly abducted, and taken to Israel while attempting to take humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to Gaza on June 30, 2009.
Niamh Moloughney (Ireland)
Niamh is the Irish Free Gaza coordinator, cultural officer of the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, a community arts worker, and mother of three. She worked to get the Rachel Corrie out of Ireland and then worked with the U.N. to get the supplies into Gaza after Israel abducted the ship.
Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad (Malaysia)
Tun Mahathir was the fourth prime minister of Malaysia. He held the post for twenty-two years (1981 to 2003), making him Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister and one of the longest-serving leaders in Asia. Mahathir’s political career spanned almost forty years, from his election as a Malaysian member of parliament in 1964, until his resignation as prime minister in 2003. As prime minister, he was credited with engineering Malaysia’s rapid modernization. During his term in office, he was considered by many people as one of Asia’s most influential leaders. Mahathir was also widely known as an outspoken critic of Western-style globalization.
Fatima Mohammadi, (US)
Fatima helped organize two land convoys from the United States to Gaza in 2009 and was aboard the Mavi Marmara on the Freedom Flotilla in 2010, an extension of her experiences as a human rights activist, attorney, and educator. Of Iranian and American descent, she believes that through education and direct action, all can come to understand the struggles, as well as see the beauty of others throughout the world. She believes that there can be no peace without justice and no justice without truth. This makes it imperative that we all place ourselves in situations where we can see and intimately know injustice. From there, we must be compelled to speak truth into every circumstance at every opportunity. She strives to honor this practice on a daily basis through both personal interaction and public speaking, and through a continued commitment to actions challenging the ongoing occupation and colonization of Palestine.
Adie Mormech (UK)
Adie is a human rights advocate based in the Gaza Strip; he arrived through the Rafah border in March 2010, He was abducted by the Israeli Navy while abroad the eighth Free Gaza movement boat, the Spirit of Humanity. He continues to volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and document Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.
Andrew Muncie (UK-Scotland)
Andrew is from Spean Bridge in the Highlands of Scotland. He has philosophy degrees from Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities, plays online poker for a living, and has been deported twice from the West Bank by the Israeli government—once while trying to prevent a collective-punishment house demolition in the Balata refugee camp by the Israeli army and the second time while working with the Tel Rumeida project in Hebron. After arriving on the first Free Gaza boats, Andrew became a long-term ISM observer in Gaza. In spite of being abducted at sea by the Israeli Navy and deported, he returned to Gaza and stayed until fall 2009.
Kevin Neish (Canada)
Kevin is a retired vocational school instructor who has been a human rights activist all his life; he acted as a human shield and human rights observer in Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, and Bethlehem, Palestine. “I basically just don’t like bullies and try to fight them whenever I see them, regardless of their race, religion, color, or nationality.” Many of the photos he smuggled out when he was one of the passengers on board the Mavi Marmara have been used around the world.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that strives to promote a more fair and inclusive society in which the right to health is applied equally for all. It is PHR-Israel’s view that Israel’s prolonged occupation over Palestinian territory is the basis of human rights violations. For this reason they oppose the occupation and endeavor to put an end to it. PHR-Israel stands at the forefront of the struggle for human rights—the right to health particularly—in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Yvonne Ridley (UK)
From County Durham in the United Kingdom, Yvonne is a TV presenter, author, and activist. She first came to prominence when arrested and held for ten days by the Taliban in Afghanistan following the 9/11 atrocity. She was released on humanitarian grounds. A founding member of Stop the Wall and the Respect Party, she has been trying to enter Gaza for many years to show solidarity with the people trapped there. After arriving on the initial FG voyage, she has returned to Gaza as part of the “Viva Palestina!” land convoy.
M.J. Rosenberg (US)
M.J. is senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matters Action Network. Previously, he worked on Capitol Hill for various Democratic members of the House and Senate for fifteen years. He was also a Clinton political appointee at USAID. In the early 1980s, he was editor of the AIPAC weekly newsletter, Near East Report. From 1998-2009, he was director of policy at Israel Policy Forum.
Bianca Shanaa (France)
Bianca is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee who was exiled to Lebanon in 1948.
She has a master’s degree in political sociology and runs a company dealing with educational products for children in Paris. She is also an activist for the Palestinian Right of Return.
Gene St. Onge (US)
Gene, principal of St. Onge and Associates, is a Lebanese-American and a licensed civil/structural engineer who lives and works in Oakland, California. He has over thirty years of experience with all types of structural building systems worldwide. Most recently, he has been involved with the Qatar Working Group (QWG), which was established by the Qatar Foundation to develop a program for rebuilding Gaza. As part of his work with the QWG, once reaching Gaza with the flotilla, he was planning to meet with the lead UNRWA engineers in charge of reconstruction to better assess needs and resources.
Gene is working with the QWG to explore ways to use appropriate technology, i.e., local materials with green building systems, to substantially reduce cost and increase the use of locally trained labor. Gene is also cofounder of the Middle East Policy Advisory Committee (MEPAC), a consortium of over fifteen peace and justice groups in the San Francisco Bay Area, which work toward transforming U.S. policy in the region to one based on respect for human rights and international law.
Eyad Sarraj, M.D. (Gaza, Palestine)
Dr. Eyad is a psychiatrist and founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program and founder of the International Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza. He is also a commissioner of Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights and is one of Free Gaza’s advisors in Gaza.
Adam Shapiro (US)
Adam is a documentary filmmaker, human rights activist, and Palestinian rights activist. He lived in the occupied Palestinian territory from 1999-2002 and helped found the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). His films include the award-winning documentary film About Baghdad (released in spring 2004), Darfur Diaries: Message from Home (released in fall 2005), and Becoming Nadya (released 2007).
His latest film is a documentary series on Palestinian refugees all over the world called Chronicles of a Refugee. Adam previously served as country director in Afghanistan for the internationally-renowned human rights organization Global Rights. He is co-author of the book Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival (Nation Books).
David Schermerhorn (US)
David is a commercial film producer and is eighty one years young. He was part of the crew of the Free Gaza on its voyage to Gaza in August and also of the Dignity on its voyage in October. He is an explorer, adventurer, and has traveled around the world on boats. He has been part of the crew on almost every voyage and was on the Challenger 1 in May 2010 when Israel attacked the flotilla.
Hillary S. (UK)
Hillary lives in Sheffield, England, and has long been an advocate in Palestinian solidarity work there. She has been involved grassroots organizing, particularly in the initial grant and fund-raising efforts that made the Free Gaza movement possible. She continues to do media support work on behalf of Free Gaza.
Ren Tawil (US)
Ren was born in San Francisco, California (USA) in 1953, as was his mother. His father Afif George Tawil was born and raised in Jerusalem, Palestine, and was visiting the United States in May 1948 and as a result could not freely return and became a ‘displaced person’. Ren first became aware of the politics surrounding the ‘Palestinian Problem’ after the June War of 1967 as an 8th grader, and has maintained an interest ever since. He was on the first voyage to Gaza in August, 2008.
Marianne Torres (US)
Marianne (retired social worker/MSW) spent more than two weeks in Palestine in the summer of 2010 on a delegation with Christian Peacemaker Teams. The delegation visited Palestinian and Israeli organizations involved in nonviolent resistance to Israel’s military occupation, visited refugee camps, stayed with Palestinian families in Hebron and provided mosque and school patrols, to provide international protection to children and farmers from routine violence by Israeli settlers.
They visited the Bedouin village of Al Arakib in the Negev just three days before the Israeli army and high school students demolished it. Marianne reports that after working for Palestinian self-determination for twenty-five years, the visit still presented many surprises and was an emotional roller coaster—from sadness and despair to joy and serious reason to hope, and sometimes back again, even in just one day.
Donna Wallach (US)
Donna is an anti-Zionist activist working for social and environmental justice. She lives in San Jose, California (USA), and is of Eastern European-Jewish descent. She lived in occupied Palestine in the Tel Aviv area from 1981 to 1997 and experienced firsthand the impact of the brutal Israeli occupation on Palestinians living inside Israel, as well as the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. She was in Ramallah during the 2002 siege and spent a week in the Gaza Strip at that time. She shares the grief and outrage of the boat crew that all historic Palestine is still occupied by the apartheid state of Israel. After arriving on the first Free Gaza movement boats, she stayed as a long-term volunteer until December 2008.
Darlene Wallach (US)
Darlene is an anti-Zionist activist for social and environmental justice. She lives in San Jose, California (USA), and is of Jewish-Eastern European descent. Darlene spent almost two months in Palestine from May to July 2002. She visited Gaza, Ramallah, and then a night at the Balata Refugee camp, where she was detained and arrested with seven other internationals. All eight received deportation orders from the minister of the interior. They had witnessed brutal collective punishment of the Palestinians. Although Darlene fought the deportation order and was the first person to be released from prison on bail, she was eventually deported. Darlene arrived on the first FG boats, stayed in Gaza, and was hijacked from an Israeli fishing boat by the Israeli Navy, and deported, along with Vittorio Arrigoni and Andrew Muncie (see above), in November 2008.
Stephanie Westbrook (US, Italy)
Stephanie is a founding member of U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice in Rome, Italy,
(http://www.peaceandjustice.it). She is active in the peace and social justice movements in Italy and traveled to Gaza in 2009 with Code Pink.
By Col. Ann Wright
Ann Wright is a twenty-nine-year veteran of the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserves who retired as a colonel. She served sixteen years in the U.S. Diplomatic Corps in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. She was deputy ambassador in the last four embassies where she served.
You might not expect someone with my background (having served in eight presidential administrations, beginning with Lyndon Johnson and ending with George W. Bush), to be writing a foreword for a book critical of U.S. foreign policy; particularly policies that protect the State of Israel no matter what criminal acts it commits, including many that have been so extraordinarily uneven and harmful to the Palestinians.
In March 2003, after almost four decades of U.S. government service, I resigned from the U.S. State Department in opposition to the Iraq war.
In my three-page letter of resignation,* I explained my rationale for opposing the Iraq war, but I also took the opportunity to criticize the Bush Administration on other policies, including the Israel-Palestine conflict.
* (See: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0303/032103wright.htm)
In my resignation letter, I said that I disagreed with the Bush Administration’s lack of effort in resolving this conflict and its indifference toward using its influence to resurrect the peace process. I said that “as Palestinian suicide bombers kill Israelis and Israeli military operations kill Palestinians and destroy Palestinian towns and cities, the administration has done little to end the violence. We must exert our considerable financial influence on the Israelis to get them to stop destroying cities and on the Palestinians to curb their youth suicide bombers.”
Since my resignation over seven years ago, I have been using my voice from long U.S. government experience to attempt to end the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, to stop U.S. sponsored torture, and to end unnecessary curtailment of civil liberties as a direct result of the Patriot Act.
It has been in the past two years that I have added my voice and presence to those who have been working so tirelessly to end unjust treatment of the Palestinian people by the United States and Israel.
It was the twenty-two-day Israeli assault on Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 that jolted me into action. I went to Gaza for the first time in late January 2009, ten days after the brutal Israeli attack ended. As a twenty-nine-year U.S. Army veteran, I was stunned by the amount of destruction. The twenty-two day Israeli attack with American F-16 jets, drones, American Apache attack helicopters, American white phosphorus bombs, and American dense inert metal explosive bombs killed 1,440 Palestinians including 380 children. The attack also wounded over 5,000 and left 50,000 homeless.
Entire areas had been systematically smashed with American–made weapons. Housing for over 50,000 had been blown up; people were living in tents and piled into family and friends’ apartments that were very small and already crowded with their own immediate families. The electrical grid, and water and sewage systems had been destroyed. Schools and hospitals were severely damaged. Ambulances were destroyed. Ambulance crews risked their lives to take injured persons out of destroyed neighborhoods by wheelbarrow.
I decided to help groups get into Gaza and see for themselves the disproportionate force that the Israeli military used against the few people in Gaza who had sent homemade, unguided rockets into areas of Israel along the border with Gaza. In the next six months, I worked alongside many others with CODEPINK: Women for Peace. We were able to get hundreds of international activists into Gaza. These activists returned home to speak of the unbelievable destruction they witnessed there.
They then joined the large group of international citizen activists already challenging the Israeli government’s illegal siege of Gaza. Activists are also challenging the complicity of other nations, including the United States, and international organizations, particularly the European Union. These national and international entities participate in the illegal blockade of goods that has resulted in a massive shortage of basic food and materials necessary to keep alive the 1.5 million people who live in Gaza. A narrow strip of land, only twenty-five miles long and between four and seven miles wide, Gaza is considered one of the most densely populated places on earth.
The stated objective of this blockade has been to strangle the Palestinians in Gaza until they overthrow Hamas, a political, militant, and social services group that won the most seats in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections. Hamas subsequently took over the governance of Gaza. Israel and the United States have put Hamas on their lists of “terrorist” organizations and are doing everything possible to make life so miserable for the people of Gaza that they “overthrow” the government.
The blockade has resulted in the people of Gaza having to dig hundreds of tunnels underneath the border with Egypt to move food and supplies to keep people alive.
Other blockades have previously been used by the United States and other countries in an attempt to effect political change (i.e., overthrow of governments the United States does not like) in Cuba, Iraq, and Iran. But the result of these blockades is that the most vulnerable suffer: women, children, and the elderly. Seldom do the political leaders of the country suffer. None of the blockades have led to the change the blockading country intended. In contrast, citizen-initiated boycotts of goods from apartheid countries, such as South Africa, have been instrumental in effecting political change.
International citizen activists in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) have protected Palestinian farmers, shepherds, and schoolchildren in the West Bank and Gaza. In the past two years, international citizen activists in five convoys of Viva Palestina have brought hundreds of vehicles and tons of medical supplies to Gaza following the twenty-two-day Israeli assault. In December 2009, the Gaza Freedom March brought 1,350 activists from fifty-five countries to Cairo in an attempt to march in solidarity with the people in Gaza.
But the Free Gaza movement is where a well-coordinated activist challenge to the illegal Israeli siege on Gaza all started. In August 2008, the Free Gaza movement began sailing small vessels into Gaza, directly confronting and bringing international attention to the naval blockade that isolated the port of Gaza from international trade for over forty years. This book is their collective story.
Over the following year, another seven small boats of the Free Gaza movement attempted to bring internationals from around the world, including European Parliamentarians, to see for themselves the devastating results of Israel’s policies in Gaza. The boats also brought in Palestinians to reunite with families they had not seen in decades and took out of Gaza Palestinians who needed medical treatment and students with international scholarships who were denied exit visas by the Israeli government.
After the Israeli Navy rammed the DIGNITY and almost capsized the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, the Free Gaza movement decided on another strategy. The idea of sending not just one or two ships, but six or eight ships to challenge the Israeli blockade moved from concept into reality in May 2010 with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
The unnecessary lethal force used by the Israeli Navy, that led to the death of nine passengers on board the Mavi Marmara and wounding of more than fifty international activists, resulted in an international firestorm against the Israeli government. The pressure from activists on their governments to not let Israel “get away with murder” had some effect. The Israeli government modified the land blockade, allowing more types of goods and a symbolic increase in the volume of goods that could enter Gaza. However, this is still inadequate. The Israelis did not modify the naval blockade, ban on exports, or the travel restrictions on Palestinians in Gaza that have continued to make the Gaza Strip a large “open-air prison” for its people.
I was honored to be a participant on the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla and to work with the tremendous Free Gaza movement team that pulled the flotilla together.
In face of the Israeli criminal actions of murder, piracy on the high seas, detention, and abuse of hundreds of human rights activists, including theft of personal possessions during the May 2010 Gaza flotilla; at the time of this writing, a second international flotilla is forming to again challenge the Israeli naval blockade.
The steadfast commitment of the Free Gaza movement to challenging the Israeli blockade is one of the great historical nonviolent actions by citizen activists, and I am very proud to be a small part of it.
All Aboard the Free Gaza Movement
Greta Berlin, one of five cofounders of the movement
Now that we have successfully sailed two small fishing boats into the port of Gaza, people are asking, “How was this idea hatched? Who came up with such a crazy idea to sail boats to Gaza? What were you thinking?”
The idea came from Michael Shaik, a long-time activist from Australia. After Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, several of us had been tossing ideas around about how to bring to the attention of the world that Israel was locking up Gaza while it attacked Lebanon.
Michael wrote the following to us:
Okay. I have been thinking about this for a long time but am aware that I’m better at ideas than practicalities, so I’ll outline what I’d envisaged and let the rest of you do the sanity check.
My plan was this:
- Charter a big boat to sail from New York. Make it clear that its purpose is to: Break the Siege of Gaza (that can be the slogan of the campaign). It is very important that the boat have a big send off, with speeches by important people that will get it as much publicity as possible
- The ship sails to Gaza but stops along the way to pick up supplies from supporters. This would obviously require liaison with the relevant solidarity groups at the places where it was stopping.
- I was thinking of an itinerary along the lines of New York-Havana-London-Casablanca-Barcelona-Marseilles-Rome-Istanbul-Alexandria-Gaza
- The idea would be to build up publicity as we go. If we could get someone like Desmond Tutu to go at least part of the way, that would really help put pressure on other religious leaders to see us and give the boat their blessing.
- The hardest part would obviously be the Alexandria-Gaza leg of the trip. I doubt that the Israeli military would try to sink the boat or anything.
That was my plan. I think it could really bring some serious attention to the hidden violence of economic warfare that Israel is using against Gaza and put pressure on international actors to deal with the issue.
Like I said, it’s only an idea, and I don’t know how much it would cost to charter a boat. It’s a hell of a lot more ambitious than an airport sit-in, but I’ve been doing solidarity work for Palestine for almost four years now, and the situation on the ground there keeps getting worse and worse. I realize that just about everyone else reading this would probably share my frustration. So my thinking was that maybe it’s time to think big, and try to capture people’s imaginations to force the issue.
He sent that message in September 2006 to Mary Hughes Thompson, Huwaida Arraf, Sharyn Lock, Paul Larudee, Donna Wallach, and me.
And thus an idea was hatched, and the Free Gaza movement was born. It turns out that several other people in other areas of the world were thinking the same thing. When we began to publicize that we were going to sail to Gaza—granted a much smaller project than what Michael has envisioned—activists began to add their ideas, asked to join our group, and the beginnings a long two-year project started to take shape.
If we had known it would take two years, 150 people, and eventually close to a million dollars to sail two small fishing boats from Greece to Gaza, I’m not sure how many of us would have signed on to this crazy adventure. But we did. And we made history.
Hillary, a UK Volunteer
My introduction into the world of the Free Gaza movement came at a public meeting in Sheffield in 2007 where, in spite of ourselves, we became entranced by this crazy idea being presented to us through the ubiquitous PowerPoint.
But this was unlike any other PowerPoint presentation I had seen. However, we are a pretty sensible bunch of activists, and we thought we knew a thing or two about fund-raising for a cause as “controversial” as the Palestinians. So we asked the tough questions: How much is this going to cost? On hearing that it would be a modest (!) $300,000, we protested that it didn’t sound anywhere near enough (as if we knew anything about boat buying or sailing across the Mediterranean). And then the killer question—how much have you raised so far? Oh… well…
So it was a great idea—but was it ever going to happen? I’d had a bit of experience getting funding from trusts for relatively “unpopular” causes, and this felt like a challenge I couldn’t resist. Like most people though, I was already involved in far too many things… and I still thought it wasn’t really realistic.
And then Mushir El Farra, said, “Well, I need to be on that boat!” Mushier, who has lived in Sheffield for many years, is from Gaza and rages silently and not so silently about the way he is forbidden from traveling to his homeland. He is also the inspirational chair of Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign and one of the reasons for my involvement in working with Palestinian people. Well, if he was on board, then I had to be on board, too.
Mushir El Farra Leaving Sheffield, UK for his Gaza Birthplace
Sharyn and I spent many hours trawling through databases looking for likely trusts to which we could apply, and along the way we had some fairly tortuous phone calls. Try concisely answering the following: What are the aims of your organization? How are you going to achieve your aims? What are your short- and long-term expected outcomes? The one I liked best was: Who are the likely beneficiaries of your project? If possible, give an estimate of the numbers.
Well, let’s see—would one and a half million Palestinians, plus about two million of their relatives throughout the world, be enough for you?
And then, little by little, we got some money! Our first successful grant application was for £5,000 and even better, when we converted it to dollars to let our friends across the Atlantic know, it sounded a lot bigger.
But the long slog of fund-raising was not particularly glamorous, and the number of trusts to which we could apply was pitifully small. Let’s face it—most organizations are not interested in ideas about funding small boats sailing across the Mediterranean with the likelihood that they will be stopped and confiscated by the Israeli Navy. Added to that, was the challenge of working with a steering group based in the United States. They didn’t seem to understand our need for financial information to make our applications seem even remotely sane.
After all, we were putting in applications for such an off-the-wall idea. The application itself had to come across as 100 percent boringly sensible and thorough. Part of the challenge, of course, was coming to terms with the well-known fact that British English and American English aren’t exactly the same language. And while I was fussing, in my terribly British way, about the need for copies of constitutions and accounts, our colleagues in the States were coping with anxieties about so-called anti-terror legislation.
One of our leading activists for FG in the United States, Riad Hamad, was literally hounded to death by the FBI. Whether he committed suicide or he was murdered, he became the victim of constant US government harassment.
(See: http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2008-05-09/621848)
In the end, we raised several thousand pounds from a few trusts, mostly trusts started by good old lefty families with a bit of cash and a conscience. My favorite was the £1,000 we were awarded by the Lipmann Miliband Trust, a fund in the name of socialist intellectual Ralph Miliband. I wonder what his son, the current foreign secretary of the British government, would feel about his father’s legacy being spent on the boats that were going to break the siege of Gaza? This was the first of two interesting links between the Free Gaza movement and British politicians.
Calderdale and Manchester Palestine solidarity people put on fund-raiser after fund-raiser, overwhelming Sharyn (whose home region it was) with their enthusiastic work for a plan they could only support from a distance, and a diversity of groups and individuals all over the United Kingdom quietly handed over sums of various sizes.
View from the UK: A Backroom Perspective
As the plans for the boat departure began to seem more and more real, a little bit of e-mail discussion began to take place on how those of us left in Britain, the “backroom team,” were going to support those in Cyprus and on the boat. It was also becoming increasingly clear that the backroom team was not so much a team as, well, approximately two of us.
Sharyn was really the lynchpin to much of the planning activity, including publicity, fund-raising, and communication between activists in different countries, but she was heading off to Cyprus or wherever (none of us knew from where the boats would start and that was fine by me). What I didn’t know, I couldn’t tell Mossad. Likewise Eliza and Osama, both heavily involved, would be either on the boat or the land team, as would Jonny. Other people, who had made contributions in the early days of the project were, for one reason or another, no longer able to give us much time.
So in the last week or two before Sharyn left we tried to set up what we optimistically called the UK support team. We could see two roles for ourselves: first, working to generate publicity and secondly, supporting and campaigning on behalf of the boat crew/ passengers if/when they got stopped or arrested by the Israelis. Since most of us thought this was the likely scenario, much of our attention was focused on this work, including identifying the members of parliament for our UK passengers in order to be ready to bang down their doors if our boat got impounded or the passengers were thrown into an Israeli jail.
We decided to hold a press conference in London and with the help of the London-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Jonny (later to join the Cyprus land team) was able to get some “names” who agreed to speak on our behalf.
Getting a press pack together that would attract attention was tricky for all sorts of reasons: basic factual information (like who the passengers were!) kept changing, much of the information was being kept secret, some of our activists did not want any personal publicity, and crucially, we had no photos of anything—not even the boats.
The other problem we faced was that although prospective passengers for the boat had been asked to provide short bios of themselves plus photos, only a minority had done so. This was very frustrating for those of us who were to trying to interest the media.
Of course, in a sense we didn’t really want the individuals on the boat to be the story. The endurance and bravery of Palestinians in Gaza was the real story. The passengers didn’t see themselves as heroes—but the dilemma was that we needed to make them famous in order to get the publicity that the boats needed in order to shout to the world that Gaza was under siege.
And then… I got a phone call. We had sent out an initial press release alerting media two weeks in advance about our planned press conference, which in turn was to be held about four days in advance of the departure of the boats. The day after the press release went out, the voice at the other end of my mobile said:
“Hello, I’m Lauren Booth, and I want to be on the boat.”
Pause…
I sort of felt as though I should know this person, but I didn’t, and I made that classic mistake of not saying so straightaway. As the conversation progressed it became clear that she was a journalist and that she was keen—no, not keen, absolutely 110 percent determined to be on our boat to Gaza.
I tried to explain that I thought that the first boat was full, that we had a list of interested people for the second boat, and that, although we were very keen to have some journalists on board, we needed a balance of people with different things to offer.
“Look,” she said, in a polite but determined voice. “If I’m on that boat, and I get to Gaza two weeks after Tony Blair didn’t, then it’s going to be front-page news.”
At last, the penny dropped: Blair… Booth… Blair—Booth! I ran upstairs to my computer, to see an e-mail from the Palestine Solidarity Committee office alerting to me to the fact that a journalist was about to phone me and that she was the sister–in-law of Tony Blair, former British prime minister. Blair was now the Middle East envoy for the quartet. He had been in post for over a year and so far had not set foot inside the Gaza Strip. Blair was apparently oblivious to the conditions under which people were living there. Just two weeks previously he had canceled his first proposed visit to Gaza following “security advice” from Israel.
A flurry of e-mails to and from the States and elsewhere followed. Were we or were we not interested in having the sister-in-law of Tony Blair on board? Some rapid googling revealed that Lauren had written some excellent articles about her previous visits to occupied Palestine (good) and that she had also been a contestant on the British reality TV show “I’m a Celebrity: Get Me out of Here” (bad—at least in the eyes of some of us more earnest activists).
There was some anxiety about involving a journalist who wrote pieces for British tabloids, but we were aware that Lauren was, of course, dead right. Her involvement would be a huge publicity coup for Free Gaza and not just in the UK but in the States and across the Arab world.
Vangelis Pissias in Athens:
Finding the Dimitris K (the future Free Gaza)
May 2008,
DEAR PAUL, GRETA, DEAR ALL,
WE CAN CELEBRATE. WE ARE SERIOUS. JUST NOW I CAME BACK HOME FROM A SHIPYARD LITTLE BIT FAR FROM ATHENS... I FOUND IT, AN EXCELLENT BOAT, WOOD BEAMS OF HIGH QUALITY.
DATE OF “BIRTH” 1980: ALMOST COMPLETELY REHABILITATED. VERY CLOSE FRIEND WHO I’D ASKED TO MAKE INVESTIGATIONS IN THAT AREA KNOWS THE STORY OF THIS STRONG AND SAFE BOAT. HE WAS INVOLVED IN REHABILITATION WORKS, AND HE ASSURES FOLLOW-UP FOR SOME MARGINAL ADAPTATIONS. HE KNOWS SOME LOCAL COASTAL AUTHORITY ADMINISTRATORS SO ARRANGEMENTS FOR LEGAL POSSESSION AND EMBARQUEMENT PROCEDURES WILL BE EASIER IN THAT REGION.
THE OWNER ASKED 150,000 EURO. WE TOLD HIM NO MORE THAN 105,000 (IF ALSO ENGAGED TO INSTALL A NEW, SAME TYPE, MOTOR). HE AGREED AFTER MANY HOURS OF NEGOTIATION. NO NEED FOR SIGNIFICANT ADDITIONAL EXPENSES, ONLY SOME ACCESSORIES AND “COMFORT” EQUIPMENT. I CONSIDER THE PRICE UNEXPECTED FOR THAT KIND OF BOAT, AND I HOPE THAT WITH SOME MORE EFFORT WE CAN AFFORD IT. PERHAPS WE CAN MAKE AN ADDITIONAL EFFORT FOR COLLECTING SOME MORE MONEY IN GREECE.
FIRST GENERAL DATA
LENGTH 21 METERS (67 feet long)
WIDTH 6 METERS (21 feet wide)
MOTOR 365 HP, 1700 RPM, TYPE: PENTA VOLVO, VELOC. 9-10 KNOTS,
FUEL TANK 4 CUBIC METER, STRONG HIGH MAST ASSURING EFFICIENT SAILING, 8 CABINS, 4 WC. POSSIBLE EMBARQUEMENT OF 25 PERSONS +/- ONE MONTH—MAY BE 45 DAYS FROM THE STARTING DAY OF THE FINAL STAGE (INCLUDING ADAPTATION WORKS AND LEGAL PROCEDURES) EMBARCQUATION IS POSSIBLE.