A humanitarian aid ship, which set sail from a port in Sweden, is now en route to the Gaza Strip to break Israel\u2019s years-long blockade on the impoverished Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n
The Marianne of Gothenburg, which is part of the Freedom Flotilla III, a peaceful movement to break the siege of Gaza, began its journey on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It will stop at ports in Helsingborg, Malm\u00f6 and Copenhagen and other ports to be announced later before continuing its way to Gaza.<\/p>\n
The vessel is carrying solar panels, medical equipment as well as five crew members and eight passengers, according to a statement by the Ship to Gaza organization, one of two groups that purchased the vessel.<\/p>\n
The organization has called for an immediate end to the naval blockade of Gaza, opening of the Gaza port and a secure passage for Palestinians between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
Israel has said that it will deny entry to what it calls unauthorized ships to Gaza.<\/p>\n
Back in May 2010, Israel attacked a Gaza-bound civilian flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, killing nine Turkish citizens on board the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara. Some 50 other people who were part of the team on the six-ship convoy were also injured in the attack on the flotilla, which had set sail from Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza<\/p>\n
The Gaza Strip has been under a crippling Israeli siege since 2007. The blockade, which has cut off the Palestinian territory from the outside world, has led to economic and humanitarian crises in the densely-populated enclave.<\/p>\n
The people of Gaza are also grappling with repercussions of Israel\u2019s devastating offensive last summer, which left some 2,200 people dead and demolished buildings and structures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A humanitarian aid ship, which set sail from a port in Sweden, is now en route to the Gaza Strip to break Israel\u2019s years-long blockade on the impoverished Palestinian territory. The Marianne of Gothenburg, which is part of the Freedom Flotilla III, a peaceful movement to break the siege of Gaza, began its journey on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}