Highland human rights activist Andrew Muncie vowed yesterday to go back to Gaza to help Palestinians – just days after being deported from Israel.
Mr Muncie, 34, was one of three pro-Palestinian protesters taken into custody in the waters off Gaza on Tuesday last week alongside 15 fishermen.
He said he planned to sneak back into the trouble-torn land within weeks and continue helping in the Palestinian struggle.
The fishermen held with Mr Muncie were later released and their impounded boats returned, but he and two activists from the US and Italy were imprisoned at Lida in Israel.
Mr Muncie was deported on Tuesday after a hearing before an interior ministry representative. No charges were brought against him.
He was staying with his brother, David, at Harlow, Essex before returning to Scotland next week for a reunion with parents, John and Margaret, from Spean Bridge.
Mr Muncie spent the last few days of his seven-day imprisonment on hunger strike and in isolation.
The activist had been accompanying fishermen to support their claim to fish up to 20 miles offshore.
Mr Muncie said: “I was treated very much like any other prisoner who is suspected of illegally residing in Israel and kept in solitary confinement. When I heard that the Palestinian trawlers had not been returned, I went on hunger strike. The boats were returned just as lawyers were going to an Israeli court to argue for them to be handed back.”
Mr Muncie said the Israeli navy was ignoring the Oslo Accords, which he claims give Palestinians the right to fish up to 20 miles from land.
He said he had tried without success to make that point to the interior ministry representative and she had said the military had declared the limit six miles.
Mr Muncie said: “They are pushing the fishermen closer and closer to the shore. This six-mile limit is being dictated by Israeli gunfire.”
He said fish was of vital importance to Palestine at present because its borders were virtually sealed and food supplies were not getting through.
When “internationals” such as himself accompanied the fishermen, the Israeli navy treated them much better, he said, although guns and grenades were still used to damage the nets and water hoses and jets of foul-smelling liquid were aimed at them.
“I believe 14 fishermen have been killed over the past few years and I know of one fisherman who was shot in the leg while only one mile offshore,” Mr Muncie said.