Israel Thwarts Fly-In Pro-Palestinian Protest

By Yaniv Kubovic (Haaretz) July 8, 2011

Israel successfully prevented the entry of 200 passengers attempting to fly into Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport on Friday in a bid to stymie an influx of pro-Palestinian activists to the country, according to the police.

The 200 activists were on a list of 342 blacklisted passengers scheduled to arrive in Israel later Thursday and early Friday, submitted by the Transportation Ministry to foreign airlines on Thursday.

Israeli police warned activists ahead of time that they would not be allowed entry to the country, however dozens of pro-Palestinian activists staged a protest at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris Friday morning after being barred from boarding their flights to Tel Aviv.

The activists, many of them French but also at least one German, only discovered that they appeared on the list of undesirables when they arrived for their flights.

For more, see haaretz.com

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