GAZA CITY: A boat carrying 27 international activists sailed into the Gaza Strip yesterday, braving stormy seas and defying an Israeli naval blockade to bring attention to Israeli sanctions on the Hamas-controlled territory.

Israel had threatened to block the boat. But navy ships did not interfere, and the boat sailed unhindered into a Gaza harbor, where it was greeted by Hamas policemen and a small group of Palestinian activists.

In the West Bank, Palestinians said Israeli troops shot and killed a 67-year-old farmer during a nighttime raid.

The 66-foot yacht Dignity took off from the nearby island of Cyprus on Tuesday with a shipment of humanitarian supplies.

The passengers included Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

“The government of Israel cannot cut off Gaza forever. We will come again and again,” Maguire said. The activists are scheduled to remain in Gaza for four days.

Israeli activist Gideon Spiro said he joined the boat to express his opposition to his government policy toward Gaza. “It is collective punishment against people who did not do anything wrong, especially children, women, elderly people, and I think that’s not the way to handle it and that’s why I’m here,” he said. Jamal Khoudary, one of the Palestinian organizers of the protest, said the boat would take 10 Gazans back to Cyprus, including students and patients needing medical care.

In the West Bank early yesterday, Israeli troops killed a 67-year-old farmer in a nighttime raid, Palestinians said. Taher Abahreh, 40, of the West Bank town of Yamoun, said his father, Muhammad Abahreh, was near a small enclosure outside the town guarding his livestock when he was shot. Troops were unsuccessfully trying to treat his father when he arrived about an hour after neighbors called him and reported hearing gunfire, he said. The Israeli military said the man opened fire at the soldiers before he was killed. The military said troops found a shotgun on his body and ammunition nearby. Abahreh said his father would not have confronted troops. Palestinian security officials confirmed Abahreh’s account.

— With input from Mohammed Mar’i