EYEWITNESS: Foreign editor David Pratt talks to volunteers setting off from Cyprus to - hopefully - deliver a shipload of aid
SOMETIME over the next 24 hours, it will set sail on its hazardous humanitarian mission. It is a voyage that will take the 22-metre ship - likely to be christened Spirit of Humanity - out across the cold winter Mediterranean from Larnaca, Cyprus, to its destination in what is arguably the most dangerous port in the world today: Gaza.
On board will be a crew of six, tons of medical and emergency supplies, and 30 passengers - among them doctors, surgeons, politicians, teachers and human rights workers - from countries as diverse as Greece, Britain, Spain, Italy and the United States.
All are committed to ensuring that their aid and expertise make it to the Gaza Strip, where for the past three weeks the Israeli military has continued an assault that has left hundreds of Palestinians dead and thousands wounded.
This weekend there was no let-up in the military operation, which Israel says is in response to rocket attacks by the Islamic group Hamas that have killed its own civilians.
In Gaza, however, aid agencies have described the humanitarian situation resulting from the Israeli response as "catastrophic".
Yesterday the Free Gaza Movement (FGM), the organisers of the voyage, were under no illusions about the difficulties ahead.
A few weeks ago, another of the US-based organisation's vessels, Dignity, while on a similar mission, was rammed by an Israeli warship in international waters 90 miles out from Gaza's port. The collision left a gaping hole around the wheelhouse of the ship and it began taking on water. It was towed to safety in the Lebanese port of Tyre.
"We have sent messages of notice to the Israeli government, its military and navy that we are coming in the next few days, and made available a full passenger list, so they have no excuses by saying they did not know of our presence," said Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian and US-educated lawyer who is now the FGM co-ordinator of the voyage.
She said FGM believes that Israel, being effectively the occupying power in Gaza, has responsibilities that include the welfare of the civilian population there.
"We believe that Israel has been allowed to flout international law and abuse the basic right of the Palestinian people for too long," she added.
Yesterday the FGM vessel was en route from Crete, where local authorities donated boxes of badly-needed medical supplies.
"We have a list of the most essential items needed in Gaza given to us by the Ministry of Health and the director of the Shifa hospital there," confirmed Arraf. Among the emergency cargo will be quantities of bandages, IV bags, and trauma equipment, as well as 1000 "life straws" as most of the 1.5 million people in Gaza are now without clean drinking water.
This latest vessel to attempt the trip is registered under the name Arion, after a poet and singer in Greek mythology said to have been saved by dolphins after being cast into the sea by pirates.
For its current voyage, however, the mission's organisers are thinking of renaming her Spirit of Humanity, though there are those among them who feel that it would only right to call it Dignity 2 after its damaged predecessor.
Despite the hazards of the trip, the volunteers seem singularly compelled by the humanitarian necessity of their mission.
"I'm a human being who happens to be a doctor, who happens to be a Palestinian, who has the support of his family and friends," said Ali Dabbagh, 52, a doctor and eye specialist who studied and worked in Stirling and Glasgow in the 1990s.
"Yes I'm scared, but more scared of looking at myself in the mirror if I do nothing. Doing nothing is not an option."
Ali Dabbagh's commitment is all the more remarkable given that he has not been in Gaza since his Palestinian father worked there for the United Nations in the 1950s. Forced to leave his home in Haifa in 1948 after the creation of Israel, the father eventually moved to Kuwait, where he went on to become the country's ambassador in Geneva.
Today, Ali Dabbagh runs a private clinic in Dubai - and a mobile eye clinic for Palestinians in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
There is a chill in the air and the seaside city of Larnaca, where we talk, is quiet now that the tourist season is long over. But sometime over the next few days crowds will doubtless gather at the city's port to see off the Spirit of Humanity - or Dignity 2, or plain old Arion - as the 22-hour journey to Gaza begins in a boat that makes barely 10 knots.
What if the boat should have to turn back and he doesn't make it into Gaza this time, I ask Ali Dabbagh?
"Then I will go to Egypt, the Rafah crossing perhaps, where some doctors are said to have gone through in the past few days," he replies. "I'll find some way to get in. I have to."
