Israel to Take "All Necessary Measures" to Block Greta Thunberg's Boat

Israel's defense minister has vowed to take "all necessary measures" to prevent a 60-foot sailboat carrying activist Greta Thunberg from reaching the shores of Gaza.

Likud party Knesset member and current Minister of Defense Israel Katz said Sunday that he had given instructions to the Israel Defense Forces to block the vessel's progress, before it reaches the territory's shores. "You'd better turn back - because you will not reach Gaza," Katz warned the boat's operators, calling them a "hate flotilla" of "antisemitic" activists.

Gaza has been under a strict Israeli naval blockade for nearly two decades, a method of preventing infiltration of Iranian arms (and a source of longstanding friction for the enclave's fishermen). The last time a foreign vessel attempted to run the blockade was in the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010. Israeli special forces boarded the ship as it neared shore, and the exchange that followed resulted in the deaths of ten people on board, including one who succumbed to his wounds years after the altercation.

The current mission's organizers say that their plan is to deliver humanitarian aid to residents of Gaza, who have not received full-scale food imports since early March because of certain border control factors. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC, the UN's reference system for degree of deprivation) currently classes all areas of Gaza as a Phase 4 nutrition "emergency," with risk of edging into Phase 5, "famine."

The size of the group's boat suggests that the delivery would be symbolic in nature. The organizers originally intended to use a larger vessel, but it was damaged by two unexplained explosions while anchored off Malta. The group alleges that Israeli drones caused the blast damage, but no conclusive evidence has emerged and Israel has not claimed responsibility.

Thunberg and her co-organizers framed the voyage in symbolic terms. "We are seeing a systematic starvation of 2 million people. The world cannot be silent bystanders," Thunberg asserted.