Five years and a month separate the naval flotilla to Gaza that centered around the Mavi Marmara and the current four-boat flotilla led by the Marianne. In May 2010, one flotilla participant was Israeli-Arab Knesset member Haneen Zoabi of the National Democratic Assembly Party, or Balad; this time, Israeli-Arab Knesset member Basel Ghattas, also of Balad, was on board the Marianne. But this is about the only similarity between the former event — which turned into a blood-drenched trauma with consequences that echoed across the region for years — and the current incident, which barely made the news or garnered any real attention. And this time, the boats that had been accompanying the flotilla flagship had turned around and were not intercepted by Israel.
The Marmara headed a flotilla consisting of six ships (out of nine that were supposed to participate), with hundreds of activists on board. Many of those activists were from the Turkish IHH Humanitarian Relief Organization. Some were armed with iron bars and knives, and apparently with guns as well. Turkey threw all its power behind the flotilla, and the spirit of that country’s all-powerful then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hovered over everything.
This time, however, Turkey isn’t a player. The trawler Marianne is flying a Swedish flag, and there were just 18 unarmed individuals on board, including an Israeli journalist (Ohad Chemo from Channel 2) and Ghattas. The former president of Tunisia, Moncef Marzouki, was also there as a kind of diplomatic bargaining chip, to ensure that Israel did not exert excessive force.
The Israeli navy seized the Mavi Marmara the night of May 30-31, 2010. The navy seized the Marianne the night of June 28-29. During the Marmara incident, 10 participants in the flotilla were killed and 30 were injured. Ten Israeli naval commandos who rappelled down to the ship from low-flying helicopters suffered injuries, two of them serious. Seconds after the Israeli commandos boarded the ship, they were surrounded by an angry mob, and the incident turned into a violent scuffle.
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