A Brief History
On January 3, 2002, an Israeli operation called “Noah’s Ark” resulted in the seizure of a ship load of munitions bound for Gaza to arm Palestinian militants.
Digging Deeper
The freighter, Karine A, had been purchased by the Palestinian Authority and renamed and crewed with Palestinian sailors, loaded with 50 tons of weapons, and sailed to the coast of the Gaza strip between Israel and Egypt, a territory set aside as a Palestinian homeland and home to over 2 million people.
The purchase of the weapons had been arranged and facilitated by Iran and the Iran allied Palestinian militant group, Hezbollah. The plan included placing the weapons in watertight containers specially designed and built in Iran to be dropped off the freighter and picked up by Palestinian boats off the coast of Gaza.
In October of 2023, the Hamas Palestinian group in Gaza mounted a massive terror attack on Israel, allegedly with Iranian support.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Gilboa, Amos. A Raid on the Red Sea: The Israeli Capture of the Karine A. Potomac Books, 2021.
Roy, Sara. The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development. Institute for Palestine Studies, 2016.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by David Memi via the PikiWiki – Israel free image collection project, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.
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