Activists from seven different countries set sail on Sunday for Gaza in hopes of breaking Israel’s blockade on the ravaged territory and delivering desperately needed humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.
Organized by the grassroots Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the small sailboat named “Madleen” launched from the Sicilian port of Catania and will journey across international waters in an effort to reach Gaza’s ports, with some aid and 12 activists in tow.
“All of us here have families, and we wish we didn’t have to do this,” Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila said at a virtual panel Sunday while on board. “But families just like ours are being bombed. And children just like my baby, they’re being amputated without anesthesia. And we cannot stay still.”
Among those joining Ávila on the journey is Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, Irish actor Liam Cunningham, retired U.S. Army Col. Ann Wright and European Parliament member Rima Hassan. Israel banned Hassan, a French member of Palestinian descent, from entering the country after she vocally opposed the siege on Gaza.
“We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying. Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity,” Thunberg said through tears before boarding the vessel. “And no matter how dangerous this mission is, it is nowhere near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of a livestreamed genocide.”
Fabrizio Villa via Getty Images
The boat is expected to reach Gaza’s territorial waters in approximately seven days. The public can follow the Madleen’s journey via a tracker on the FFC’s website, an effort the group says will help maintain transparency about its location, ensure safety of those on board and hold potential aggressors accountable for any actions.
The newly departed civilian ship is the FFC’s second attempt this year to get aid to Gaza. A month earlier, a boat called “Conscience” was carrying humanitarian assistance and 18 civilians when it was bombed twice off the coast of Malta. The FFC maintains that Israel was responsible for the May 2 attack on international waters, though the Maltese and European Union authorities have yet to allow an independent investigation into it.
“We know the risks. We know how violent they are ― they just bombed our mission four weeks ago, they killed 10 of our participants 15 years ago,” Ávila said. “What we know is that despite their hate, despite their violence, we are part of something huge.”
Gaza has been under siege for nearly 19 months by Israeli forces, leading to the humanitarian catastrophe it’s experiencing today. Israel came under intense backlash this year for enacting a total blockade on all aid that lasted months, leading to a mass starvation crisis that much of the international community has considered a violation of international law.
“What we have seen in the past three months … this is the final collapse,” U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese said Sunday. “This is the nail in the coffin of humanitarianism, whatever it means.”
The Madleen is carrying aid like baby formula, flour, rice, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits and medical supplies. The goal of the trip is not only to deliver the aid, the FFC says, but to also bring international solidarity and awareness to the crisis in hopes of challenging Israel’s 18-year policy of controlling the land, air and sea around Gaza.
“Israel has created a death camp whose walls have to be broken down, and yet we are waiting for Israel to give us permission to go in,” human rights attorney Huwaida Arraf said last month. “And until when? Until it’s too late? It’s already too late for so many. And so because our governments are failing, we have been trying to act.”
Israel and the United States recently launched its widely condemned aid distribution system in Gaza, in an effort to replace the well-oiled network long established by the U.N. agency responsible for helping the Palestinian population (UNRWA). The new system requires Palestinians to trek farther distances for even a chance at food, though it has already proven unable to handle the breakdown of order resulting from a desperate, starving population. On Sunday, Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinians who were on their way to receive food at an aid site.
“We are not going to stop trying to get to the people of Gaza, even if we have to go on a raft,” Arraf said. “And we encourage all of civil society to keep acting the way they are, and we hope those that claim leadership of this global community will join and do what’s right and stop being complicit in the extermination of Palestine.”
