Over 70 boats carrying around 3,000 volunteers from 100 countries set sail on Sunday as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), in the largest civilian attempt yet to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip since it was imposed in 2007 and tightened in October 2023.
The GSF is not only carrying aid, but also delivering a message.
“We sail because governments have failed,” said Saif Abukeshek, a Palestinian activist and member of the flotilla’s global steering committee.
“They want a society that feels helpless, that cannot act, that cannot mobilize. We refuse to be that society.”
Against this backdrop, the flotilla’s scale is deliberate.
“This time, we have 80 boats. We have thousands of people, we have a medical boat, an eco-builders boat,” Brazilian activist and GSF organizer, Thiago Avila, told Al Jazeera. “We're carrying aid and materials enough to build a whole primary school in Gaza.”
The new flotilla effort comes as Egypt remains Gaza’s only lifeline since the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.
Cairo, in collaboration with the UN and its humanitarian partners, has delivered over 70 percent of all aid that has entered the strip and received tens of wounded and sick Palestinians for treatment in Egyptian hospitals through the Rafah border crossing.
On Wednesday, in the face of continued Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid to the strip, Egypt’s Red Crescent (ERC) dispatched its 177th Zad El-Ezza: From Egypt to Gaza aid convoy, carrying around 1,975 tonnes of food baskets and flour, more than 2,210 tonnes of relief materials, and about 1,095 tonnes of fuel to support hospitals and essential services.
Meanwhile, Tel Aviv has closed most crossings to Gaza since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, for most of the time, impeding the implementation of an Egyptian-led plan for the reconstruction of the strip.
A central component of the flotilla mission is a medical fleet of about 1,000 doctors and healthcare professionals, transporting vital supplies intended to support Gaza’s overwhelmed health system.
Greenpeace, an independent global campaigning network, and the migrant rescue group Open Arms are among those backing the effort, deploying larger vessels—including the Arctic Sunrise—to provide maritime and technical support.
“We sail because the people of Gaza have a right to exist and to breathe and to thrive on their land,” Eva Saldaña, head of Greenpeace Spain, stated.
The flotilla departs at a moment of acute crisis inside Gaza.
Nearly two decades into the blockade and three years into a genocide, humanitarian conditions are worsening again, with shortages of food, fuel, and medicine intensifying across the territory despite a ceasefire brokered by Cairo, Doha, Ankara, and Washington in October 2025.
Since the start of the ceasefire, Israel has committed 2,400 violations of the truce, including bombardments and incursions into residential areas, according to a Tuesday report by Gaza’s Government Media Office.
The Israeli occupation forces have continued military campaigns inside the strip, killing at least 754 Palestinians and injuring 2,100 since the ceasefire, the Gaza media office stated.
As of mid-April, nearly 75 percent of Gaza’s population is facing extreme food insecurity, while more than 1.9 million people—around 90 percent of the Palestinian population—have been displaced, many of them multiple times, and are living in overcrowded shelters or makeshift tents with little protection from the elements, per the latest United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) report.
But participants say the flotilla is not only about aid delivery.
“We are not just going to give aid, we are coming to break the illegal siege because that's the main solution,” Turkish activist and GSF organizer, Sumeyra Akdeniz, told Al Jazeera on Sunday. “We need to have this global uprising to show the Palestinians that we don't forget them, because they are calling us.”
The risks are not abstract; they are rooted in a long history of violent Israeli interception, detention, abuse, and deportation.
The Free Gaza Movement launched its first successful maritime mission in August 2008, sending two small boats from Cyprus to Gaza.
Carrying 44 activists, the vessels reached the coast, marking the first time the blockade had been broken by sea. The moment was brief but symbolic, and it triggered a wave of similar initiatives.
That momentum culminated in May 2010 with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), a convoy of six ships carrying hundreds of activists and humanitarian supplies. Israeli naval forces intercepted the vessels in international waters before they could reach Gaza. During the raid on the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces killed 10 activists and injured dozens more, sparking international condemnation and a major diplomatic crisis.
Subsequent attempts to break the siege faced a similarly harsh crackdown by the Israelis.
Over the following years, multiple flotillas were blocked, diverted, or seized before reaching Gaza. Organizers adapted routes and tactics, but Israeli interceptions—often carried out far from Gaza’s coast—prevented any sustained breach of the blockade.
Forty boats set out with hundreds of activists, but Israeli forces again intervened. All vessels were confiscated, participants were detained, and some activists reported intimidation and torture during and after their arrest, including the Avila.
The Sumud flotilla made three attempts to break Israel’s naval siege since the outbreak of the genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023, which killed 72,350 Palestinians and wounded nearly 200,000, most of them women and children.
Despite this, the last GSF attempt in late 2025 managed to approach within 130 kilometres of Gaza, closer than any mission since the blockade began.
Organizers said reaching that distance was only a partial breakthrough, underscoring both the risks and the limitations of such efforts.
In the past six months, only 41,714 humanitarian aid trucks have entered Gaza out of 110,400 agreed upon in the ceasefire, according to the Gaza media office, due to a partial Israeli blockade, which has contributed to severe shortages of flour, bread, and fuel.
Israel has also barred the UNRWA from bringing supplies directly into Gaza for more than four and a half months, limiting the entry of food and essential goods.
The lack of cooking gas has forced many families to burn hazardous materials, increasing health risks, while fuel shortages—compounded by a lack of spare parts and lubricants—have disrupted generators needed for water treatment and transport.
The health system is nearing collapse, with hospitals and clinics struggling to operate amid extensive damage and critical shortages of supplies and equipment. Limited access to clean water and sanitation has triggered a surge in infectious diseases, including skin conditions such as scabies and lice, while a lack of diagnostic imaging machines is restricting care for the wounded and chronically ill.
Humanitarian operations have also been hit hard; Israel has killed over 390 UNRWA staff, and 127 of its facilities are located within Israeli militarized zones, further hindering aid delivery.
"After finishing the flotilla last year, we saw the change that we, or the impact that we managed to create, on the last flotilla. And obviously it wasn't enough. The genocide continues. Children are still being murdered, and aid is still not being let in. There's starvation, there's bombing, and yeah, I guess, a bigger movement is going to make more impact," Samuel Leason, an 18-year-old New Zealander activist and GSF organizer, told Al Jazeera.
American activist and GSF organizer Hannah Smith told Al Jazeera that “with the US and Israeli escalation in the region, it has changed the security situation. But ultimately, at the end of the day, we feel that this is the time to stand boldly with the Palestinian people. And so that means that we weigh the risks, we weigh the impacts, and we inform all of the participants.”
For organizers, the flotilla is both a humanitarian intervention and a political act, one shaped by nearly two decades of confrontation at sea.
Each previous attempt, whether it reached Gaza or was stopped short, has fed into the next.
Whether the current flotilla will succeed remains uncertain. But as they move further into open water, those on board say the journey itself carries meaning, a continuation of a campaign that, for them, extends beyond aid into a broader struggle over visibility, solidarity, and the right to act.
The flotilla is not only trying to reach Gaza, but to, once again, force the world to take concrete measures to end a genocide.
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