Margaret Connolly, the sister of Ireland’s head of state, is among the pro-Gaza activists intercepted by Israel at sea.
DUBLIN — Ireland’s president on Monday said she was “very proud” of her sister, who earlier in the day was detained by Israeli forces while sailing to Gaza as part of an aid convoy.
Margaret Connolly, a general practitioner in the town of Sligo in Ireland’s northwest, was among at least six Irish members of the Global Sumud Flotilla to be detained when Israeli troops boarded her vessel on Monday, according to Karen Moynihan, an Irish spokesperson for the pro-Gazan aid group.
President Catherine Connolly, speaking after visiting King Charles at Buckingham Palace in London, said she was “very proud of my sister but I’m also very worried about her.”
“I’ve been very busy today … I haven’t really had a chance to get details in relation to my sister and indeed, equally importantly, her colleagues on the boat,” the president said, declining further comment on the matter.
The incident, and the president’s overt support for the Irish citizens aboard the flotilla, could worsen already deteriorating diplomatic relations between Ireland and Israel. In 2024 Israel closed its embassy in Dublin in protest against Ireland’s decisions to recognize Palestinian statehood and to accuse the Israelis of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s government denies that charge.
President Connolly, an independent socialist politician who has been sharply critical of Israel, was elected to the largely ceremonial office in October; since then she has offered only veiled criticisms of Israel.
The Sumud Flotilla group said Israeli forces were intercepting and boarding more than a dozen vessels in Mediterranean waters south of Cyprus and north of Gaza — the third such interdiction this month.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many protesters have been detained, nor where the Israeli forces were taking them.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a video showing what it said were Monday’s detainees greeting each other while waiting to board unidentified Israeli vessels.
Earlier, the Israeli Foreign Ministry dismissed the flotilla as “a provocation for the sake of provocation” that had set sail “to serve Hamas, to divert attention from Hamas’ refusal to disarm, and to obstruct progress on President Trump’s peace plan.”
Israel’s foreign press department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Dublin, the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement it was “actively monitoring” what was happening to the flotilla, which activists were live-streaming Monday as Israeli vessels intercepted and boarded their ships at sea. Most of the flotilla had departed Sunday from the Turkish port of Marmaris, some after sailing from Italy.
Flotilla activists issued a pre-recorded message from Margaret Connolly in conjunction with their announcement of her detention by Israel.
“If you are watching this video, it means I have been kidnapped from my boat in the flotilla by the Israeli occupying forces and am now being held illegally in an Israeli prison,” she said, holding her Irish passport in her right hand and wearing a T-shirt bearing an outline map of Ireland.
“The cause of Palestine is the moral compass of our time. It is what makes us human,” she added in the video. “Palestinians will save our humanity.”
Margaret Connolly’s detention at sea coincided with the start of her sister’s three-day visit to the U.K. as Ireland’s head of state.
During her Buckingham Palace meeting with the king, President Connolly issued an official invitation to the monarch to visit Ireland. Charles’ late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 2011 became the only reigning British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland since its 1922 independence.