A UN representative has called Israel's seizure of a ship carrying relief aid to Gaza "unlawful" as an ex-US Congresswoman and an Irish Nobel laureate were still in jail after their arrest in the incident.

Israeli authorities on Tuesday intercepted the vessel, which was also carrying 21 pro-Palestinian activists, as part of its naval blockade of Gaza.

Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said on Thursday the move was part of Israel's "cruel blockade of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza" in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Ein Gedi, Israel - Eli Raz was peering into a narrow hole in the Dead Sea shore when the earth opened up and swallowed him. Fearing he would never be found alive in the 30-foot-deep pit, he scribbled his will on an old postcard.

After 14 hours, a search party pulled him from the hole unhurt. Five years later, the 69-year-old geologist is working to save others from a similar fate, leading an effort to map the sinkholes that are spreading on the banks of the fabled saltwater lake.

These underground craters can open up in an instant, sucking in whatever lies above and leaving the surrounding area looking like an earthquake zone.

The phenomenon, Raz said, stems from a dire water shortage, compounded in recent years by tourism and chemical industries as well as a growing population. "This is the most remarkable evidence of the brutal interference of humans in the Dead Sea," he said.

Israel's Feb. 10 election saw the rise of Avignor Lieberman's extreme right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party. As Newsweek described it: "...the big winner turned out to be ultranationalist Avignor Lieberman, who considers Israel's Arabs a dangerous fifth column and favors separating Arab and Jewish populations. Doves dismiss his plans as racist, but according to one recent poll, a solid majority of Israelis - 60 percent - now favor 'encouraging' Arabs to leave the country."

Several days before Israelis went to the polls, according to the Feb. 27 issue of The Forward, Harvard University mathematician Dennis Gaitsgory "called his friend Josh Tenenbaum, a professor at M.I.T., and told him he could not sleep at night. The thought of Lieberman becoming Israel's kingmaker drove the two Jewish academics to launch a petition calling directly on Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu and Tzipi Livni, head of Kadima, not to include Lieberman in a governing coalition...'We respect the right of Israeli citizens to elect their own political leaders. Yet as supporters of a democratic state, we cannot remain silent at a crucial time,' read the petition, signed by more than 400 people as of Feb. 18. 'We remember well how democracies in the 20th century were brought down by anti-democratic leaders who came to power through popular elections.'"

Reported The Forward: "To the petitioners' surprise, major Jewish organizations were reluctant to take on the issue. 'They said it is not part of their mission,' Tenenbaum said...The two professors learned quickly that they had stumbled on a sensitive issue of the American Jewish community in its relations with the state of Israel: the fear of being perceived as meddling in internal Israeli politics. In the days following Israel's elections, there has been a growing sense of unease within the Jewish community, as organizational leaders have tried to navigate between an apologetic approach to Lieberman and his position and mild expressions of concern..."

Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, notes that, "This is one of those things that drives home two competing truths - one, that Israelis have the right to choose whoever they want, and the other, that we can say that it is outside the agreed views of American Jews."

Transcript

This is Cynthia McKinney and I'm speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies - and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

New International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano may have been the candidate of choice for Western nations, and in particular Israel, but he sought to assure the world today that he would remain independent and would seek to de-politicize the office.

In particular, Amano noted that going through the IAEA's documents he didn't see any evidence that Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons. The IAEA had repeatedly certified that Iran was not diverting any of its civilian program's enriched uranium to any other purpose, but outgoing chief Mohamed ElBaradei claimed to have a "gut feeling" that Iran secretly wanted the technology.