Israel News.

Israel Deports Nobel Laureate Maguire After Rejecting Appeal of Entry Ban

By Gwen Ackerman - Oct 5, 2010 7:16 PM GMT+0530===================================================

Israel today deported Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire after the Supreme Court rejected her appeal to join an international women’s delegation meeting Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.

Maguire boarded a plane at 4 a.m. Israeli time today, the Interior Ministry said in an e-mailed statement. The Supreme Court yesterday ruled against 66-year-old Maguire’s appeal, saying she should have applied to remove the ban against her before trying to visit Israel.

Her lawyer, Fatmeh el-Ajou, said Maguire, who was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, would fight the 10-year banning order after arriving home and recovering from her seven days in Israeli detention.

Israel said the order was issued in June when Maguire was expelled after commandos boarded an Irish aid ship trying to break Israel’s embargo on the Gaza Strip and arrested those on board, including the Nobel laureate. The Nobel Women’s Initiative said Maguire, one of its co-founders, was told by Israeli officials in June that there was no ban on her return.

Israel says the blockade on the Hamas-controlled territory is legal because it is in “a state of armed conflict” with the Islamic group, which is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., European Union and Israel.

“She is insisting that we act to revoke the ban as soon as possible,” el-Ajou, from Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in a phone interview. “She wants to meet her partners in Israel and the occupied territories and continue spreading her message for peace and justice.”

Reason for Ban

The 10-year deportation order was issued against Maguire because her participation in the attempt to break the embargo was seen as an illegal attempt at entry, Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabin Hadad said today in an interview.

Maguire was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her “extraordinary actions to end the sectarian violence in her native Northern Ireland,” according to the website of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, a global organization to promote nonviolence in conflict situations.

“She is not a threat to Israel’s security,” said initiative co-founder Jody Williams, a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, according to an e-mailed statement from the women’s organization.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative said the delegation to Israel and the territories was aimed at highlighting the work of female Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.

Activists Killed

The Irish aid ship’s effort to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza followed an attempt by Turkish activists. On May 31, an Israeli commando operation used force to stop the Turkish aid ship, killing nine activists, and provoking international condemnation. The raid is under investigation by Israel, Turkey and the United Nations.

Hamas seized control of the Mediterranean enclave in 2007, ending a partnership government with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party that began after Hamas won a majority in parliamentary elections in 2006.

Israel started a military operation in Gaza in December 2008 that it said was meant to stop the firing of rockets into its territory. More than 1,000 Palestinians and Israelis were killed in the conflict. Since the end of the three-week operation, more than 450 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel, killing one foreign worker in March of this year, the Israeli army said. (bloomberg)

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To contact the reporter on this story: Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem atgackerman@bloomberg.net.