Despite the connection between economic hardship and the settlements, Israeli protesters have been careful not to connect their struggle with Palestinian solidarity or an end to occupation.

Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians gathered in east Jerusalem, many carrying posters that read “only free people can negotiate,” Nelson Mandela’s words when imprisoned anti-apartheid leader.

Robert Lambert says the News of the World's toolbox of dirty tricks was deployed against supporters of the Palestinian cause, like George Galloway and Mohammed Ali from the Islam Channel.

Outsourcing the blockade to Greece, aggressive and vocal diplomacy and ridiculous lies thwarted the flotilla, says Israeli writer Amira Hass, but they have not taken Gaza off the international agenda.

How did Sheikh Raed Salah, revered by many Palestinians and by millions of Muslims across the Middle East, come to be arrested in Britain as a "vile militant extremist"?

The flotilla is a refusal to accept Israel's message to Gaza: We own you, determine what you can or cannot do, where you can and cannot live and go, who can and cannot be part of your lives, you have no freedom save what we give to you.

Greece and Turkey have done Israel's dirty work and stopped the Gaza Freedom flotilla sailing. Over 500 humanitarian activists, who include the writers Alice Walker and Henning Mankell, have been blocked from travelling to Gaza with aid from Europe and North America.

The British government, which preaches democracy and freedom to the extent of going to war to uphold those values, has resorted to denying freedom to someone on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations and media hype.

Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple", winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature, activist for civil rights, on why she is sailing with the freedom flotilla to Gaza. "It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off without delay."

Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution. We must not turn away from suffering in Gaza. We must continue trying to connect with Gazans living under siege.

It is the US that perpetuates the suffering of the Palestinians and aids and abets the Israeli crimes perpetrated against them.

Netanyahu says that the 1967 borders are indefensible. But what is really indefensible is the occupation of land, the starvation of Gaza, the jailing of dissenters and the lack of equal rights in the alleged Israeli democracy.

The documentary Budrus shows how Palestinian villagers used non-violent resistance against Israel's plans for a separation barrier through their land.

There is no future for Israel in a fortified country in which non-Jews live as a majority either as second-class citizens or not as citizens at all, writes Gary Younge.

The US is deeply complicit in almost every action the Israeli military takes to entrench its illegal 43-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

"They claim they are democratic, but we are paying for their democracy with our blood, our sons and daughters, our lives, our homes, our land, our future and our dreams."