Anti-Israel activists announce plans for new Gaza flotilla in March

Organizers of an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian international flotilla aiming to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza announced plans Thursday for a new mission to the Strip with more than 100 boats in March.

The announcement was made at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in South Africa, and speakers included Mandla Mandela, grandson of the late former South African president. They called on the international community to prevent Israeli forces from intercepting the operation, as they have in the past.

The anti-Israel campaigners, who last year organized a similar flotilla carrying a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid, described the upcoming mission as the biggest civilian-led mobilization against Israel’s actions in Gaza. Israeli officials repeatedly denounced last year’s mission, and previous smaller-scale attempts to reach Gaza by sea, as publicity stunts.

Mandela was part of the flotilla that embarked on a mission to Gaza last year and was detained along with other activists when their boat was intercepted by Israeli forces before they could reach Gaza shores.

According to organizers, more than 1,000 activists, including medical doctors, war crimes investigators and engineers, will form part of the new flotilla.

It will be supported by a land convoy that is expected to attract thousands more activists across countries, including Tunisia and Egypt.

The boats are expected to sail from Spain, Tunisia and Italy toward Gaza.

“This time around we expect hundreds and thousands to sign up and to mobilize entry through Egypt, through Lebanon, through Jordan and every other border that is feasible for us to get into occupied Palestine and to Gaza,” Mandela said. “We want to mobilize the entire global community to join forces with us.”

If the flotilla is blocked again, the activists said it would still be worth it to highlight the humanitarian crisis facing the roughly two million people living in the Strip, the vast majority of whom have been displaced by Israeli bombing amid the war with the Hamas terror group following the latter’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.

“We may not have reached Gaza physically [but] we have reached… the people in Gaza,” said one of the activists, Susan Abdallah. “They know that we care, that we will not stop at anything until we actually break the siege.”

Thiago Avila, a Brazilian activist who is part of the steering committee, claimed the flotilla was protected by international law.

“The International Court of Justice in the provisional ruling in the case opened by South Africa against the genocide state of Israel, states very clearly that Israel or any other nation are prohibited to hinder any type of humanitarian mission on the way to Gaza,” he said.

Israel has angrily rejected the genocide case, which South Africa filed to the ICJ in December 2023 — two months after the October 7 Hamas massacre that sparked the war in Gaza.

Mandela said the flotilla organizers had chosen to host the briefing at the Nelson Mandela Foundation to highlight Nelson Mandela’s support for the Palestinian cause. They also welcomed South Africa’s decision last month to expel Israel’s chargé d’affaires, which Israel responded to in kind.

Last year’s mission mobilized about 50 vessels and 500 activists, all of which were intercepted by Israeli forces before they reached the Strip.

An estimated 443 participants were detained and then deported, including Mandela, activist Greta Thunberg and European Parliament member Rima Hassan.

The announcement of the new flotilla came as COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that oversees aid to Gaza, said it has facilitated the entry of 4,200 trucks of humanitarian aid trucks a week to Gaza since a fragile ceasefire took hold there in October.

The deliveries included over a million tons of food, or “four times Gaza’s need, based on the UN methodology,” COGAT said on social media on Tuesday.