Day three of the Gaza flotilla story closed without the document the paper has been asking for. The paper's Tuesday brief said the maritime-law hinge of the boarding was the Marmaris-to-Cyprus notification chain — whether the Sumud flotilla had filed the standard transit notification with Turkish or Cypriot authorities before Israeli forces intercepted in international waters. Wednesday close: no Cyprus port authority filing has surfaced, no Turkish coast guard record, no Israeli legal filing on the boarding. [1]

The cargo handling is still unconfirmed. Italy's Tajani filed a force-use review letter Tuesday; the U.N. experts demanded immediate release of the 428 detainees; Italy and France summoned Israel's ambassadors today after Ben-Gvir's onboard video. None of those steps produces the notification record. They sit alongside it.

Catherine Connolly, the sister of the Irish President, is still detained. Her name is the one the Irish press has kept in the headline because her detention converts an institutional question into a household one. A notification record, if one exists, would tell readers whether the boarding was legally clean. Its absence — three days in — is itself becoming the story.

The paper will keep counting days until either the document appears or Tel Aviv explains why it never did.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem