Post date: Apr 15, 2012 10:37:26 AM
BEN GURION AIRPORT, ISRAEL (APRIL 15, 2012) (REUTERS) - Israeli police was on high alert in the state's national airport on Sunday (April 15), preparing to block an influx of pro-Palestinian activists planning to visit the occupied West Bank in a mass 'fly-in' dubbed the 'flytilla'.
Hundreds of Israeli policemen stand firm ahead of the planned arrival of pro Palestinian activists at the national airport where right wing activist hold a protest against the "flytilla" demanding they be summarily thrown out of the country.
Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Israeli police, said that hundreds of police officers had been deployed in and around Ben Gurion airport, Israel's main gateway to the world. Rosenfeld added that four activists who came on a flight from Paris overnight were being questioned at the airport.
Some 1,200 Palestinian supporters throughout Europe have bought plane tickets for an April 15 visit to the West Bank as part of a campaign called "Welcome to Palestine".
Organisers said the aim was to help open an international school and a museum, but Israel has denounced the activists as provocateurs and said it would deny entry to anyone who threatened public order.
An Interior Ministry spokeswoman said the Immigration Authority had on Wednesday given airlines the names of some 1,200 activists whose entrance to Israel has been barred.
Leehee Rothschild, a "Welcome to Palestine" member, said that dozens of activists had since been informed by airlines that their tickets to Tel Aviv have been cancelled.
Palestinians hope to establish a state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, areas which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War.
A similar, though smaller operation last year led to a few hundred activists being blocked at European airports and more than 100 others being deported from Israel after their entry was denied.
Several right wing Israeli nationalists who came to the airport to protest against the flytilla demanded the government treat the pro-Palestinian activists more harshly.
"Modern anti-Semitism is to support the terrorist organisations that want to destroy the land of Israel, the State of Israel. And we came here to tell (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and (Israeli internal security minister Yitzhak) Aharonovitch: stop playing with these anti-semites, stop playing with these anarchists. You have to take care of them in a way that they wouldn't dare come even close to the borders of the State of Israel. Not on flights, not on ships, not on foot," activist Baruch Marzel told Reuters television.
"Young women from France and elderly women from Norway, this does not impress us much. The leadership should not send them letters, (Israeli internal security minister Yitzhak) Aharonovitch should send them to see the insides of our prison cells for a month or two and only later to speak to them, otherwise he is inviting more flotillas and flytillas," legislator Michael Ben Ari said at the airport.
On Saturday, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a letter it hoped to hand the activists upon their arrival.
"You could have chosen to protest the Syrian regime's daily savagery against its own people, which has claimed thousands of lives," the letter read. "You could have chosen to protest the Iranian regime's brutal crackdown on dissent and support of terrorism throughout the world."
"But instead you chose to protest against Israel, the Middle East's sole democracy ... We therefore suggest that you first solve the real problems of the region, and then come back and share with us your experience. Have a nice flight."