Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has said she was kidnapped in international waters by Israeli forces, as she arrived in Paris Charles de Gaulle airport after being deported from Israel.
"We were kidnapped in international waters," she told reporters at her arrival in Paris.
"This is yet another intentional violation of rights that is added to the list of countless other violations that Israel is committing," Ms Thunberg said, stressing that her own experience was "nothing compared to what the Palestinians are going through".
Ms Thunberg, 22, arrived in Paris a day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza.
The activist group had departed Italy on 1 June on board the Madleen carrying food and supplies for Gaza, whose entire population the UN has warned is at risk of famine
Israeli forces boarded the charity vessel as it neared Gaza early yesterday, trying to break through a years-old naval blockade of the coastal enclave, and seized the 12-strong crew, including Ms Thunberg.
Ms Thunberg said she did not recognise that she entered Israel illegally, and called for the immediate release of activists still in Israel.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said those on board what it described as the "selfie yacht" had arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv "to depart from Israel and return to their home countries".
"Those who refuse to sign deportation documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial authority," it added.
Watch: Gaza-bound aid boat Madleen is intercepted by Israeli forces
A founder of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the activist group operating the vessel, said there was 12 civilians onboard the ship.
Huwaida Arraf, a human rights lawyer, said they were sailing lawfully in international waters and that Israel has no jurisdiction to interfere with lawful, peaceful navigation in those seas.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme, she said Israel abducted the 12 people, took them to Israel and is now claiming they entered unlawfully.
Ms Arraf explained the civilians had been told in advance of the journey they could sign an agreement to deportation while others who do agree to sign will be brought before an immigration judge. However they will all ultimately be deported, she added.
"This is all pro forma. There is no justice to be had in the Israeli legal system, so they will eventually be deported."
Ms Arraf said another flotilla is planned and success will only be achieved when the siege in Gaza has ended.
Video released earlier by the group showed the activists with their hands up as Israeli forces boarded the vessel, with one of them saying nobody was injured.
Turkey condemned the interception as a "heinous attack" and Iran denounced it as "a form of piracy" in international waters.
In May, another Freedom Flotilla ship, the Conscience, was damaged in international waters off Malta as it headed to Gaza, with the activists saying they suspected an Israeli drone attack.
A 2010 Israeli commando raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was part of a similar attempt to breach the naval blockade, left ten civilians dead.
On Sunday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said the naval blockade, in place for years before the Israel-Hamas war, was needed to prevent Palestinian militants from importing weapons.
The Madleen was intercepted about 185km west of the coast of Gaza, according to coordinates from the coalition.
French President Emmanuel Macron requested that the six French nationals on board the boat "be allowed to return to France as soon as possible", a presidential official said.
Two of them are journalists, Omar Fayyad of Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Yanis Mhamdi who works for online publication Blast, according to media rights group Reporters Without Borders, which condemned their detention and called for their "immediate release".
Al Jazeera "categorically denounces the Israeli incursion", the network said in a statement, demanding the reporter's release.
Adalah, an Israeli NGO offering legal support for the country's Arab minority, said the activists on board the Madleen had requested its services, and that the group was likely to be taken to a detention centre before being deported.
Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza to alleviate widespread shortages of food and basic supplies.
In what organisers called a "symbolic act", hundreds of people launched a land convoy from Tunisia with the aim of reaching Gaza.
Israel recently allowed some deliveries to resume after barring them for more than two months and began working with the newly formed, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
But humanitarian agencies have criticised the GHF and the United Nations refuses to work with it, citing concerns over its practices and neutrality.
Dozens of people have been killed near GHF distribution points since late May, according to Gaza's civil defence agency.
In Gaza City, displaced Palestinian Umm Mohammed Abu Namous said she hopes "that all nations stand with us and help us, and that we receive ten boats instead of one".
"We are innocent people," she said. "Our children are dying of hunger ... We do not want to lose more children because of hunger."
The 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 54,800 people, the majority civilians, have been killed in the territory since the start of the war. The UN considers these figures reliable.
Out of 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack, 54 are still held in Gaza including 32 the Israeli military says are dead.
