 Sol Phryne with Sol Maritime Services markings[1] | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name |
|
| Builder | Mitsubishi Jukogyo,Kobe,Japan |
| Launched | 1948 |
| Completed | October 1948 |
| Fate | Crippled by a limpet mine on 16 February 1988 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Ferry |
| Displacement | 6150 tonnes. |
| Length | 118.7 m (389 ft) |
| Beam | 15.9 m (52 ft) |
| Speed | 15.5 knots (28.7 km/h; 17.8 mph) |
| Capacity | 630 passengers |
Sol Phryne was aferry of Sol Maritime Services Ltd. She was bought by thePalestine Liberation Organisation and sunk on 16 February 1988.
Sol Phryne was built in Japan in 1948 asTaisetsu Maru（大雪丸）.
From 1967 to 1974, she was owned byEfthymiades Line and used for regular ferry duties betweenGreek islands asEolis. In 1974, she was purchased by Sol Maritime Services Ltd., renamedSol Phryne and was then used in the Middle East, notably evacuating Palestinian guerrillas fromBeirut in 1982. She was sunk during an attempt to ferry Palestinian deportees toHaifa,Israel.
The 6,151-tonSol Phryne was purchased in some secrecy by thePalestine Liberation Organization and renamedAl Awda ("the Return"). The PLO planned to symbolically ferry 135 Palestinian deportees and, if they accepted the short notice invitation, hundreds of journalists and other observers, to the Israeli port city ofHaifa for a "journey of return", echoing the 1947 journey ofSS Exodus.[2][3]
Israeli Defence MinisterYitzhak Rabin stated that Israel would oppose the voyage "in whatever ways we find,"[3] while Prime MinisterYitzhak Shamir labeled the journey "a declaration of war".[4]
A different, chartered ship had been scheduled to sail fromPiraeus on 9 February, but the departure was postponed several times because Greek ship owners feared commercial retaliations from Israel if their vessel was used.[3] With this difficulty chartering a ship, on 13 February 1988 the PLO purchased theSol Phryne inLimassol,Cyprus at auction for $600,000. By the time of the sinking the crew of the ship had not been informed of the new owners.
On 15 February, three high-ranking military officials of the PLO were assassinated in Limassol by a remote-controlled bomb planted on their car.[5]
18 hours later, on the night of 15 February, alimpet mine[6] attached to the hull exploded and holed a fuel tank of theSol Phryne, flooding it and causing the ship to list. No casualties were reported[7] but this ended the attempt. Yassar Arafat alleged that this was done by Israeli frogmen but did not provide any evidence to support his claim,[8] TheSol Phryne was raised and transferred toBijela, inYugoslavia.AsTime reported, "Israel officially denied complicity in the car bombing but hardly bothered to conceal its role in disabling the ferry"[2] and suspicions of Israeli involvement were further reinforced when Israeli Transport MinisterChaim Corfu threatened that, if a further attempt was made by the PLO, "its fate will be the same".[4] Fuad al-Bitar, Athens representative of the PLO told an Athens news conference that "it is clear that the only one interested" in the sabotage was Israel.[3] In July 2008,Haaretz referred to this attack, without admitting Israeli responsibility, in the context of the scheduled[9] and ultimately successfulFree Gaza Movement voyage which broke Israel's siege of Gaza.[10]
Three claims of responsibility were made,[7] two of them being:
In 2011 the JournalistsDan Margalit,Ronen Bergman published a book, in which they claimed that Israel'sShayetet 13 unit, was responsible for the bombing of theSol Phryne. And that Israel's Minister of DefenceYoav Gallant was the commander of the operation.[11]
Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1988 | |
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| Shipwrecks |
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| Other incidents |
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