"We've changed the coordinates twice because reportedly Israel has threatened to capture the Turkish ship so we decided to delay getting all the boats together," Audrey Bomse of the Free Gaza Movement that organised the multi-national flotilla gathering off the coast of Cyprus told AFP.
"This has delayed everything by a day because changing coordinates takes time ... There were also technical difficulties with one of the boats so we had to move passengers from it onto the Turkish one."
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Hundreds of activists were bracing for the final leg of their attempt to bust the Gaza Strip embargo, a bid Israel vowed to defeat, as each side accused the other of violating international law.
Two cargo ships and five smaller boats loaded with thousands of tonnes of supplies and hundreds of passengers steamed towards a rendezvous off Cyprus where they planned to group before setting out for the Palestinian territory.
Organisers said an eighth ship, the Rachel Corrie that had left from Ireland, was lagging behind and would travel towards Gaza separately.
The ships will meet in international waters, they said.
"The Cypriot government does not want us to leave from Cyprus. I can only assume pressure was put on them," Bomse said.
A Cypriot government official said of the flotilla that Nicosia had not received any formal request from the Palestinian Authority for humanitarian aid.
Bomse said that a plan to ferry about 25 multi-national MPs from Cyprus to one of the ships also had been abandoned.
"This is a group of MPs waiting to be ferried to another boat. The government said if we kept it quiet we would be able to do it but there was a huge amount of pressure and I suppose they gave in to Israel," she charged.
Bomse said the group would now try to get the MPs on board from the Turkish-occupied northern part of the island, minus the MPs from Greece and Cyprus, which regard the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus as an illegal entity.
Cypriot denial
Cypriot Communications Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis denied that her government's decision to forbid the flotilla to sail from Cyprus was due to pressure from Israel.
"This was a decision that the Cyprus Republic took by itself," she said.
Israel earlier told the ambassadors of Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, and Ireland – the countries from which the ships set sail - that it "issued warrants that prohibit the entrance of the vessels to Gaza" and that the flotilla would be breaking international law.
It said it intends to halt the vessels and detain the hundreds of people aboard in the port of Ashdod before deporting them.
"We are planning on getting there and staying in Gaza for two days," Bomse said.
Israel has stepped up its warnings in recent days and readied naval forces.
Organisers dismissed the claim that their blockade-busting bid is illegal.
"Most despicably of all, Israel claims that we are violating international law by sailing unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid to a people desperately in need," the FGM said in a statement.
Crippling blockade
Israel imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas - an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of Israel - seized power in the impoverished, overcrowded Palestinian territory.
Because of the blockade, only limited reconstruction has been possible in the wake of a devastating 22-day offensive Israel launched on December 27, 2008.
Pro-Palestinian activists have landed in Gaza five times, with another three attempts unsuccessful since their first such sea voyage in August 2008, all of them from Cyprus.
To date, the aid has been largely symbolic, but organisers say the flotilla now under way is laden with 10,000 tonnes of aid, ranging from pre-fabricated homes to pencils.
