According to the GSF live tracker, over 20 foreign-flagged boats are currently moored in Bizerte, with two or three others expected to join later following inspection.
"We had hoped to set sail days ago," Khaled Boudjemaa of the flotilla's Maghreb coordination committee told Al Jazeera. "Instead, we've been repairing boats, waiting out storms, and trying to understand who wanted to set our ships on fire."
Attacks off the Tunisian coast
The GSF, which includes hundreds of activists, seafarers, doctors, artists, and lawmakers from over 40 countries, departed from Barcelona and Genoa earlier this month.
The flotilla draws together the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), North Africa's Maghreb Sumud Convoy, and Malaysia's Nusantara Sumud in a "unified strategy" to challenge the siege.
Since it started its genocidal war on Gaza in 2023, Israel has tightened the naval blockade it has enforced on Gaza beginning in 2007.
The FFC, now part of the GSF, has been attempting to break the siege since 2010.
The coalition describes its allegiance as being solely "to justice, dignity, and the sanctity of human life".
Though docked at Tunisia's Sidi Bou Said marina on 7 September, the GSF's launch toward Gaza has been repeatedly disrupted.
On 9 September, two flotilla vessels—the Portuguese-flagged Family and the British-flagged Alma—were damaged in separate suspected drone attacks while anchored off Tunisia's coast.
GSF posted videos showing a device dropping onto the Alma, setting its deck alight. Organizers said an incendiary object also ignited a blaze on the Family.
In this image made from video, a vessel known as the "Family Boat" carrying members of an activist group seeking to deliver aid to Gaza, is hit by an object. AP
No one was injured, and the crew extinguished the fires.
Tunisian authorities denied any drone activity, insisting one blast originated internally, and have opened an investigation.
However, BBC Verify confirmed the authenticity of footage showing the impacts. Independent military analysts stated that the angle of the strikes suggested the payloads were "dropped, rather than launched or fired."
United Nations (UN) special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who was at the port, warned that if confirmed, the strikes would amount to "an assault on Tunisian sovereignty."
In the aftermath, flotilla vessels quietly sailed north to Bizerte to complete repairs and wait out rough seas.
Albanese and Thunberg in Tunisia.
The Italian fleet of the Global Sumud Flotilla departs from the port of Siracusa. AP
Italian reinforcements incoming
Fresh reinforcements are expected to join. According to Turkey's Anadolu Agency, 18 boats from Sicily's Augusta port have already set sail and are expected to rendezvous with the main convoy in international waters.
Unlike the larger yachts that departed Barcelona, most of the Italian vessels are small sailboats and do not appear on either the GSF live tracker or vessel tracking sites. It is unclear whether the flotilla will depart Tunisia before the Italian vessels arrive.
Meanwhile, a small contingent of Canadian activists has joined the mission.
Newfoundland-based campaigners Sadie Mees, Devoney Ellis, and Nikita Stapleton flew to Ajaccio, France, ready to sail with the FFC, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
"Gaza is being starved in plain sight… Joining this flotilla is about breaking the silence and demanding our leaders end their complicity," Ellis said in a statement.
This photograph shows a flotilla departing for Gaza carrying humanitarian aid and activists vowing to try "to break the siege of Gaza", in Ajaccio, on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica. AFP
In Tunis, Newfoundlander and York University law professor Heidi Matthews is providing legal support to the GSF. She plans to sail aboard a dedicated legal support boat to document potential violations and provide real-time legal analysis as the convoy approaches the Gaza Strip.
Egyptian activists plan to join
Egyptian activists plan to join
Egyptian activists have announced plans to put together a solidarity flotilla and link up with the GSF when it crosses Egypt's maritime border.
A grassroots committee calling itself the Egyptian Sumud Flotilla to Break the Siege on Gaza said it had secured a vessel, which a citizen had donated, and intends to depart from an Egyptian port around 16 September.
Group coordinator Khaled Basiony says over 55 Egyptian activists and civil society actors have pledged to join. The group has formally requested permits from Egypt's presidency, cabinet, and ministries of foreign affairs, interior, and transport.
They have received no official response yet.
A war must end
The flotilla carries tons of food, water, and medicine to open a maritime humanitarian corridor to Gaza.
Israeli occupation forces have killed almost 65,000 Palestinians, injured over 160,000, and more than 9,000 remain missing under the rubble, per local authorities.
In August, the UN announced a famine in Gaza—the first declared in the Middle East—with over half a million people facing catastrophic hunger.
The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that 422 Palestinians, including over 145 children, have already died of starvation or malnutrition, 185 of those deaths having occurred in August.
Hospitals south of Gaza are operating at triple their capacity, lacking fuel and medicine. Meanwhile, over a million displaced people remain without shelter as Israeli bombardment forces thousands more south into what aid workers warn are "death zones."
On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes targeted a residential building in Doha, killing five members of Hamas's ceasefire negotiating team in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an "entirely Israeli operation.
The attack drew swift condemnation from Qatar, Egypt, the Arab League, the UN, and several Western capitals, who warned it violated Qatar's sovereignty and endangered ongoing mediation efforts.
It came only days after Hamas said it had accepted a US-backed 60-day truce framework and hours after talks with Qatari officials on a new ceasefire proposal.
Israel has intercepted past flotillas in international waters.
In June, 12 activists, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, were detained at sea and deported after their sailboat, the FFC's Madleen, was stopped 185 kilometres from Gaza.
In July, Israeli forces seized 21 activists aboard the FFC's Handala, confiscating their aid cargo of food, baby formula, and medicine.
Despite the dangers, GSF organizers insist they will continue.
"We are everyday people, and we are carrying life," said Saif Abukeshek, a flotilla spokesperson. "We are not asking permission from those who starve children."
If not intercepted, the flotilla hopes to reach Gaza's waters in mid-September. Whether its decks of aid will be allowed through, or meet the same fate as those before, remains uncertain.
For now, the Global Sumud Flotilla drifts in Tunisia's harbours, gathering strength and waiting for the winds to change.
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