ISTANBUL

European Union lawmaker Rima Hassan sees her arrest and other activists aboard a Gaza-bound aid ship by Israeli forces as a sign of the “liberation of Palestine.”

“When they arrest us, I will look at them as Larbi Ben M'Hidi looked at the colonizers of his land: serene, assured of the liberation of Palestine,” Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament, said on her X account.

“They are the occupiers of this land; we are its roots,” she stressed.

Ben M’Hidi was a prominent figure of the Algerian War of Independence against the French occupation of the North African nation.

Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron officially acknowledged the killing of Ben M’Hidi by French soldiers after his arrest in 1957.

“We think we are liberating Palestine, but it is Palestine that is liberating us a little more every day,” Hassan said.

Hassan was among a 12-strong crew aboard the British-flagged aid ship Madleen that attempted to break a crippling blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza, where nearly 55,000 people have been killed in a brutal onslaught since October 2023.

The ship, carrying an amount of aid, including food and baby formula, was boarded by Israeli forces during the night before it could reach the Gaza shore and was towed to Ashdod Port in Israel.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that the activists will be deported to their home countries.

Hassan accused the West of “colonial complicity” and Arabs of “cowardice” and “collaboration of the Palestinian bourgeoisie.”

“Throw the revolution into the streets, the people will pick it up,” she wrote, quoting Ben M'Hidi.

Other activists aboard the Madleen aid ship include Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg; Yasemin Acar from Germany; Baptiste Andre, Pascal Maurieras, Yanis Mhamdi, and Reva Viard from France; Thiago Avila from Brazil; Suayb Ordu from Türkiye; Sergio Toribio from Spain; Marco van Rennes from the Netherlands; and Omar Faiad, a journalist with Al Jazeera Mubasher, also from France.

As Israel continued to close all Gaza’s border crossings to humanitarian aid since early March, aid agencies have warned about the risk of famine among Gaza’s 2.4 million population.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war crimes against civilians in the enclave.