(LONDON) — The Israeli Foreign Ministry said early Monday that Israeli forces had boarded and diverted a privately owned ship carrying Swedish human rights activist Greta Thunberg and several others, who said they were attempting to bring humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
The boat, the Madleen, was “safely making its way to the shores of Israel,” the ministry said in a statement, deriding the efforts by those aboard as a “media provocation.”
“The passengers are expected to return to their home countries,” the ministry said.
The ship had been approaching the coast of the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of breaking an Israeli blockade on aid via the sea and delivering humanitarian supplies to the territory. According to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the group that organized the aid trip, the 12 people on board were unarmed.
“The ship was unlawfully boarded, its unarmed civilian crew abducted, and its life-saving cargo — including baby formula, food and medical supplies — confiscated,” the coalition said in a statement on Monday.
The sea blockade of Gaza predates the current conflict that started when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and has been in place since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
Israeli officials released images of Thunberg and others wearing orange life vests and sitting closely together on the Madleen. People in Israel military uniforms are seen in the video handing bread and water to the activists.
The ministry also released a separate image of Thunberg, in which a soldier is handing her bread and water. The ministry accompanied that image with a statement saying Thunberg was “currently on her way to Israel, safe and in good spirits.”
A video posted by the coalition appeared to rebuke the characterization that Thunberg was in “good spirits.”
“If you see this video we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces or forces that support Israel,” Thunberg says in a video that was shot prior to the vessel being intercepted.
In the video, which was verified by ABC News after it was posted online, Thunberg urged her “friends, family and comrades” to apply pressure on the Swedish government to push for their release “as soon as possible.” Other activists onboard recorded similar messages.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement to social media that he had “instructed the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] to show the flotilla passengers the video of the horrors of the October 7 massacre when they arrive at the port of Ashdod.”
Katz had prior to the ship being diverted announced that he had instructed the IDF to act so that the flotilla “does not reach Gaza.” The statement from Katz said the IDF had been instructed to stop the ship from reaching Gaza “and to take any measures necessary to do so.”
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