2nd Aid Fleet Sails To Gaza After Outrage Over Sumud Flotilla Interception

By Staff, Agencies

Another international humanitarian fleet has set sail to break the "Israeli" occupation’s near-total siege of Gaza after Tel Aviv intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla, a monumental 50-strong convoy seeking to deliver aid to the coastal sliver’s war-stricken and starving Palestinians.

The 10-boat fleet headed out of the Italian and Spanish coastlines between September 25 and 27, Drop Site News, an American investigative outlet, reported on Friday.

The fleet, it said, has been organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition [FFC], which has been organizing such Gaza-bound convoys since 2010, with the grassroots Thousand Madleens to Gaza [TMTG], named after a Gaza-bound aid ship that was targeted by the occupation entity in June.

It carries nearly 70 people from more than 20 countries, including parliamentarians and elected officials from Ireland, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, France, and the United States.

On its way, the fleet was joined by the Conscience, a massive vessel that departed from Otranto, Italy on September 30 carrying 80 people, including international journalists, medics, and several Palestinian doctors, who volunteered in Gaza.

“For nearly two years, the illegal 'Israeli' occupation has blocked international journalists from entering Gaza, creating one of the most dangerous press blackouts in modern history,” the FFC said. “This boat is our challenge to that silence.”

The report followed "Israel’s" interception of the last Global Sumud Flotilla vessel, which left Barcelona to challenge what rights groups call one of the world’s harshest blockades.

Described as the largest maritime effort of its kind in decades, the flotilla had brought together delegations representing at least 44 different countries. The interception spree was met with far-and-wide global condemnation.

Also on Friday, Drop Site News cited Adala, a rights group based in the occupied city of Haifa, as enumerating the violations committed by the regime against the GSF’s activists.

After being seized from international waters, the participants “were forced to kneel with their hands zip-tied for at least five hours, after some participants chanted Free Palestine,” the group reported.

At the occupied port of "Ashdod", at least 331 of the activists faced hearings before "Israeli" immigration authorities, it added.

Adalah condemned "Israel’s" handling of the detainees as unlawful, humiliating, and systematically abusive.

It noted that far-right "Israeli" minister Itamar Ben-Gvir would disrupt lawyer visits, while participants were being filmed.

The outlet posted a video on X, former Twitter, showing Ben-Gvir addressing the detainees in a degrading manner and calling them “the flotilla terrorists.”

Detainees were denied water, medicine, and legal access, with lawyers being excluded from hearings that began without representation, the group said.

Transferred from "Ashdod" to the entity’s Ktzi’ot Prison afterwards, participants reported threats and harassment.

Adalah stressed that the entire process violated the international law, calling the naval interception an abduction and the blockade itself an illegal act of collective punishment and genocide.

It demanded the activists’ release, accountability on the part of "Israel", and return of confiscated belongings and aid supplies.

The developments come as "Israel" continues to weaponize starvation alongside bombings in its war on Gaza, which has claimed nearly 66,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since October 2023.