Two years after the S/V Estelle was seized, Israeli court decision granted it to be freed.
The Haifa District Court blocked the state from setting a precedent that would help it deter flotillas by legalizing confiscating captured flotilla vessels and their cargo under international law.
The S/V Estelle is the biggest sail ship in Finnish register, owned by a Swedish company "Ship to Gaza". It was used in the Flotilla which tried to break the siege of Gaza in 2012.
The vessel was built in Germany in 1922 as a 42-meter (137.8 feet), steel-hulled ship for trawl-fishing in the Baltic Sea. She sailed from Finland on May 28, 2012, with an announced intention of breaking the Gaza blockade.
The vessel was boarded and commandeered by the Israeli navy on October 20, 2012, as it approached Gaza. She covered 5000 nautical miles from the Baltic Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, via Naples, Italy, when Israeli forces blocked and rerouted the ship to Ashdod.
Since then, the ship has been seized by the State of Israel. Judge Ron Sokol issued a rare ruling, sitting in his court’s capacity as a maritime court, stating that the sea provision international law that the state wanted to apply, England’s Naval Prize Act of 1864, was too esoteric, too infrequently used – not used anywhere internationally since World war II – and too vague for an Israeli court to utilize.
The court’s ruling was a major blow to one of the state’s broader strategies for discouraging foreigners from organizing flotillas to break its Gaza blockade by making them face the risk of large monetary losses, such as the sea vessels and cargo. The state filed the petition to confiscate the boat in August 2013, in a substantial delay of around 10 months, which was also part of the court’s decision to reject the request.
