The flotilla's documentary chain runs from Marmaris through the interception zone to Ashdod. One link is still blank. Cyprus has not produced a public document confirming or denying that Israel notified it before the boarding in waters outside its territorial limit.

The paper's May 19 brief on Marmaris as the flotilla receipt before the Cyprus boarding set the departure scale, and the same edition's major on how Israeli forces turned the Gaza flotilla into a Cyprus jurisdiction fight made the notification claim the live jurisdictional fact. Wednesday adds nothing to that fact except its continued absence.

NBC News, carrying the AP account, repeated the operational record: more than 50 vessels departed Marmaris, the interception happened roughly 167 kilometers from Cyprus, well outside its 22-kilometer territorial waters, and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said Israel did not inform Cypriot authorities of the operation. [1]

What is missing is the Israeli-side document. Israel has not published a formal account of whether it notified Cyprus, declined to, considered itself not required to, or notified another body. Cyprus's search-and-rescue center has confirmed the no-distress-call detail and the location but not the underlying notification log. Flag-state assignments are also unpublished.

Without that document, the operation is a sequence of statements: organizers sailed for Gaza, Israel intercepted a non-humanitarian provocation, Cyprus was not told. With it, lawyers, flag states, and consular officers would have something to cite.

The next receipt is whether Cyprus, Israel, or any flag state publishes the notification record. Until one does, the missing notification is the missing center of the case.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem