The military wing of Hamas has reported that the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG) has announced that together with another Hamas front group known as the Euro-Mid Observer, it intends to launch another “Freedom Flotilla” to the Gaza Strip at the end of May 2015. According to the report: (caution: link is the website of the Hamas military wing)
Hamas
December 7, 2014 The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza announced intents to dispatch the Freedom Flotilla II to the Gaza Strip by the end of May 2015 to mark the 5th anniversary of the notorious Israeli attack on the 2010 flotilla.
Activist in the campaign said, during a meeting held Saturday, the flotilla is to set sail to Gaza in the last week of May with a wider international participation, the local SAFA News Agency quoted Chairman of the campaign, Mazen Kahil, as stating.
Kahil said the projected multinational fleet comes as a reaction to Israeli and Egyptian attempts to tighten the noose around Gazans’ necks, adding that a roadmap was devised to that end.
The Turkish Relief Organization said activists from 100 states will partake in the planned flotilla in an act of defiance to the blockade enforced on Gaza since 2007.
The move is intended to replicate the May 2010 flotilla, which failed to reach Gaza but led to a significant propaganda victory for the anti-Israel movement after Israeli commandos killed ten Turkish activists during a violent attack on board one of the ships.
SAFA said, quoting reliable sources, that a comprehensive plan has been delineated for the voyage and enhanced by the Euro-mid Observatory for Human Rights to push for the launch of a waterway into Gaza.”
The report casts doubt on the ability of Hamas to count since by our count, the May 2015 flotilla should properly be designated #4. In May 2014, we reported that a ship intended to be the part of the third Gaza flotilla was hit by an unidentified explosion in the Gaza port.
The Euro-Mid Observer is headed by Dr. Ramy Abdu who formerly was the Regional Director of the Council of European Palestinian Relations (CEPR), the pro-Hamas lobbying group for the European Union. Prior to that, Dr. Abdu was known to have been a spokesperson for the European Campaign To End The Siege On Gaza (ECESG), a central player in the two Hamas-backed Gaza flotillas of 2010 and 2011. In November 2012, Euro-Mid was one of the organizers of a Geneva demonstration against the prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the UAE which called the international community “the slave of the Emirati financial lobby.” Other organizers included the Swiss Muslim League, the Swiss member organization of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), in turn representing the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, and the now-defunct Emirates Center for Human Rights, itself tied to both the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK and to Hamas. In July 2014, the GMBDW reported that he Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights had issued an incendiary report in the midst of ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza claiming that Israeli security forces have stolen cash and property worth $3 million from Palestinians in the West Bank.
