[5] Organizers estimated 600 to 1,000 international activists planned to participate, with delegations from France, Great Britain, Sweden, Germany, the USA, Japan and several African countries.
[6] Upon arrival on 8 July in Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, the international activists were to openly declare their intent to go to occupied Palestinian territory to Israeli immigration officials.
[1][2] According to the New York Times, Palestinian organizers include "well-known advocates of non-violent protest like Sami Awad of the Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust and Mazin Qumsiyeh, a science professor at Bethlehem University.
[8] Donzel Jean Claude, spokesman for Swiss Air said that this issue is regulated by the International Civil Aviation Organization and that airlines are "legally obliged" not to board passengers for whom they have information from the destination country that these people will not be allowed to enter.
[12] Two Australians, Vivienne Porzsolt of Jews against the Occupation,[13] and former parliamentarian Sylvia Hale, who had been participants on the Canadian Boat to Gaza, the Tahrir,[14] as part of the Freedom Flotilla II,[15] flew from Crete to Tel Aviv and were detained but won a precedent-setting court decision allowing them stay in Israel and apply for permission to travel to Palestine.
[17] The Jerusalem Post reported on 10 July that group of Belgian men being held in Beersheba issued a statement declaring a hunger strike that French and German detainees at the same facility may also have joined.
[2] According to Benyamin Netanyahu, the flytilla activists were barred because they represented a "provocation [that] was conceived by extremist Islamic and anti-Israel organizations who object to peace and call for Israel's destruction.
"[20] Israel had warned airlines to bar personae non gratae from flying or face footing the bill for deporting them, fines, and denial of their aircraft to use Israeli airspace.
[24] In a sarcastic letter, the Israeli government proposed alternative objects of protest for the activists to focus on: "Syrian regime's daily savagery against its own people, which has claimed thousands of lives, Iranian regime's brutal crackdown on dissidents and its support for terrorism throughout the world, and Hamas rule in Gaza, where terror organizations commit a double war crime by firing rockets at civilians while hiding behind civilians".