Drawing a Line in the Sea: The 2010 Gaza Flotilla Incident and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The deadly May 31, 2010 Gaza flotilla incident has been misunderstood. This book explores the incident in more detail than mainstream media coverage has allowed-explaining the background, key players, and the incident itself-enriched by the authors having had unique access to senior Israeli officials in the immediate aftermath of the event. The incident is a microcosm of the struggle between terrorism and democratic societies, and raises a number of legal, ethical, and strategic political issues in the contemporary Middle East. Chapters address the political and military scenario preceding the incident, key state and non-state actors involved, military and ethical dimensions of the operation, and the aftermath in the media and politics. The book provides thoughtful and readable analysis that is useful to policy makers and to the general public, and draws some important conclusions for the continuing conflict between democratic states and terrorists and their sponsors.

Deane-Peter Baker is an Associate Professor of Ethics at the University of New South Wales, Australia; a Visiting Research Fellow in the Kings College London Centre for Military Ethics, UK; and a Research Associate in the Centre for Applied Ethics at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Previous books include Citizen Killings (Bloomsbury 2016) and Just Warriors Inc. (Continuum 2010).

David Walker was born in or near Wilmington, North Carolina, the son of a slave father and a free black mother (thus, under the laws of slavery, he was born free). the year of his birth is uncertain, although the most convincing recent research contends that it was 1796 or 1797. By his own account in the Appeal, Walker left Wilmington as a young man and wandered around the United States, residing for an unspecified period in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1825, he turned up as a used-clothes dealer in Boston, where he would spend the rest of his abbreviated life. He died suddenly in 1830.