Israel Deports, Detains, Allows Some Activists

By Shannon Liao
Jul 10, 2011

Israel on Sunday deported over 30 activists who were arrested Friday after flying into the country as part a West Bank-bound pro-Palestinian "flytilla," according to media reports.

The Jerusalem Post reported that 124 activists were arrested while 50 to 100 were allowed to enter Israel. The fate of the other activists remains unclear.

Around 600 activists were planning to fly into Israel to spend a week of solidarity with Palestinians in the West Bank, according to one of the groups organizing the fly-in, Bienvenue Palestine.

The French-based group reported that Israel was still holding 46 French activists on Sunday, but did not know the status of the other detainees.

The activists were deported via Lufthansa airlines to Frankfurt, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported.

Lufthansa also refused to allow some activists black-listed by the Israeli authorities to board planes to Israel.

Lufthansa said its actions were not political and that it was only complying with Israel’s country regulations.

"The fact that we prevented the activists from boarding the planes is no evidence of our supporting the State of Israel against the activists, or the opposite. Our actions are bereft of any political statement, for one side or the other," the Israeli Lufthanza manager said, according to Haaretz.

A Lufthansa representative was told that certain passengers did not have permission to enter Israel.

"Lufthansa is obliged to honor the immigration rules and regulations of the countries we fly to. … As a result, Lufthansa is obligated not to fly passengers that do not have entry visas and passengers whose entry is refused by the destination country, as in this case," the representative explained to Haaretz.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday that Israel had been successful in preventing the activists.

“Last week, we stopped the defiant fly-in against the State of Israel. We acted methodically and successfully in a variety of spheres—diplomacy, intelligence, public security, migration control, and others, in order to frustrate this provocation. And indeed the provocation was foiled,” he said.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/israel-deports-detains-allows-some-activists-58912.html.