AMSTERDAM 

Dutch activists recounted mistreatment and abuses by Israeli forces after being detained aboard an aid flotilla seeking to challenge an illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Four Dutch activists reached Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport via Spain with support from the Netherlands’ embassy in Madrid.

“On Thursday morning, we were kidnapped by Israeli soldiers. They entered our boats while we were in international waters, trying to break the illegal blockade to reach Gaza and establish a unitarian border,” Roos Ykema, one of the Dutch activists, told reporters at the airport.

Ykema said four soldiers boarded their boat, forced them to sit at the front and later took them to Israel, where they were imprisoned.

“They left us in the sun. They left us without food and water. They refused (to provide) medication. Some people were beaten up and now we are the first ones, some of the first ones, that were deported from Israel back to the Netherlands,” she said.

“I wish that we had broken the siege, but I am sure that we will keep on pushing and more boats will go and Palestine will be free,” Ykema added.

‘We are coming back with more ships, with more people’

Another activist, Mohamed Abo Naser, also said they faced harsh treatment during detention.

“The peaceful participants of the Global Sumud Flotilla were treated in a very, very bad way,” he said, adding they had been intimidated for several days and were denied water for the first two days, while food was later given irregularly and insufficiently.

He said they were neither allowed to go outside to see the sun or walk, nor were they given the opportunity to meet their lawyers or contact their embassies.

“At the same time, some of the participants who needed urgent medication and emergency medical support were denied access to it,” Abo Naser said, noting that some detainees required insulin and that despite repeated calls from all 16 cells, there was no response, putting one participant’s life at serious risk.

He also said they were subjected to racist treatment.

“At the same time, we were treated in a very racist way, that the people of color and the people with Muslim or Arab backgrounds, they were taken away from their cells for no reason, and we didn't know when or where they will get back.

“Also the people from Palestinian backgrounds with other passports were also treated in a very, very bad way. They were, like some of us were tied, like our hands were cuffed on our back. We were blind, we couldn't see anything,” he said.

Abo Naser said they were transported in harsh conditions, packed into small buses where the temperature was deliberately raised or lowered to extremes.

“And at the same time, because you cannot see anything, your nose is also covered that you cannot breathe normally. At some moment, you feel that you cannot breathe. At some moment, you feel that you are going to die because you cannot breathe,” he said.

“But in the end, we made it,” he said, adding they had a message for “the prison guards, the Israeli government, and (Israeli National Security) Minister (Itamar) Ben-Gvir, who visited twice.”

“We are coming back with more ships, with more people, and we will not get enough from breaking the siege,” he added.