Voyage
The 6,151-ton Sol Phryne was purchased in some secrecy by the Palestine Liberation Organisation and renamed Al Awda ("the Return"). The PLO planned to symbolically ferry 135 Palestinian deportees and, if they accepted the short notice invitation, hundreds of journalists and other observers, to the port of Haifa for a "journey of return" echoing the journey of the Exodus.
Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated that Israel would oppose the voyage "in whatever ways we find, while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir labeled the journey "a declaration of war".
A different, chartered ship had been scheduled to sail from Piraeus on 9 February, but the departure was postponed several times because Greek ship owners feared commercial retaliations from Israel if their vessel was used. With this difficulty chartering a ship, on 13th Feb 1988 the PLO purchased the aging Sol Phryne in Limassol, Cyprus at auction for $600,000. By the time of the sinking the crew of the ship had not been informed of the new owners.
On 15 February, three high-ranking military officials of the PLO were assassinated in Limassol by a remote-controlled bomb planted on their car.
18 hours later, on the night of the 15th February, a limpet mine attached to the hull exploded and holed a fuel tank of the Sol Phryne, flooding it and causing the ship to list. No casualties were reported but this ended the attempt. Yassar Arafat alleged that this was done by Israeli frogmen but did not provide any evidence to support his claim, The Sol Phryne was raised and transferred to Bijela, in Yugoslavia. As Time reported, "Israel officially denied complicity in the car bombing but hardly bothered to conceal its role in disabling the ferry" and suspicions of Israeli involvement were further reinforced when Israeli Transport Minister Chaim Corfu threatened that, if a further attempt was made by the PLO, "its fate will be the same". Fuad al-Bitar, Athens representative of the PLO told an Athens news conference that "it is clear that the only one interested" in the sabotage was Israel. In July 2008, Haaretz referred to this attack, without admitting Israeli responsibility, in the context of the threatened but ultimately successful "Free Gaza" breaking of Israel's blockade of Gaza.
Three claims of responsibility were made, two of them being:
- an anonymous caller, claiming to be from the Palestine Salvation Front because "rejected many times Yasir Arafat's idea to arrange this propaganda trip" - denied by Abdul Hadi al-Nahhad for the Damascus-based group and by the PLO.
- a telephone call received by the Associated Press claimed the attack for the Jewish Defence League
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Famous quotes containing the word voyage:
“He makes his voyage too late, perhaps, by a true water clock who delays too long.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I dare say I am compelled, unconsciously compelled, now to write volume after volume, as in past years I was compelled to go to sea, voyage after voyage. Leaves must follow upon each other as leagues used to follow in the days gone by, on and on to the appointed end, which, being Truth itself, is One—one for all men and for all occupations.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)