A civilian ship carrying aid to Palestinians in Gaza was intercepted by the Israeli military in international waters on Saturday, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition confirmed.
The Handala flotilla was carrying baby formula, diapers, food, and medicine. The passengers were detained and the cargo was seized. The coalition said the boat was intercepted “in international waters outside Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, in violation of international maritime law.”
“Israel has no legal authority to detain international civilians aboard the Handala,” Ann Wright, a member of the Freedom Flotilla’s steering committee, said in a statement. “This is not a matter of internal Israeli jurisdiction. These are foreign nationals operating under international law in international waters. Their detention is arbitrary, unlawful, and must end.”
This week, the United Nations’ World Food Program said the famine in Gaza has reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation, with a third of the population not eating for multiple days in a row.” According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, there have been 40 hunger-related deaths this month.
More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups have warned of a “mass starvation” across Gaza.
“There is no one in Gaza now outside the scope of famine, not even myself,” Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, who leads the pediatric ward at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, told The New York Times. “I am speaking to you as a health official, but I, too, am searching for flour to feed my family.”
There were 21 civilians from 12 countries on the flotilla, including Christian Smalls, the former president of the Amazon Labor Union; European Union Parliament member Emma Fourreau; human rights attorney Huwaida Arraf; and two Al Jazeera journalists. The crew members said they would go on hunger strike if they were to be abducted.
“Israeli officials have ignored the International Court of Justice’s binding orders that require the facilitation of humanitarian access to Gaza,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said in a statement. “The continued attacks on peaceful civilian missions represent a grave violation of international law.”
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Arraf was among a group of activists who sought to travel on an aid flotilla to Gaza last spring, when the population was already considered to be at imminent risk of famine.
“We can’t sit by and let it happen,” Arraf told Rolling Stone at the time. “People have been marching in the millions around the world, and still our governments are not listening to the people. And so we’re taking that protest to the sea and we’re directly challenging Israel’s closure policy — the siege, the blockade, which are unlawful.”
During that attempt, Turkish port authorities blocked the ships from leaving.
Since the deadly Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has led a brutal siege on Gaza and a near-total blockade.
Israel has tightly restricted the flow of humanitarian aid, arguing that Hamas had been stealing aid provided through the U.N. According to a Times report on Saturday, military officials admitted that Israel had no proof for such claims. The U.S. Agency for International Development, the foreign aid bureau shuttered by President Donald Trump’s administration, similarly found no evidence that Hamas was regularly stealing assistance to Gaza, according to ABC News.
In recent months, Israel has been accused, in several instances, of indiscriminately firing on Gazans attempting to get food at operations run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a recently created aid group backed by Israel and the Trump administration.
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Israel’s military said Saturday it would begin airdropping aid into Gaza and implementing humanitarian pauses for the delivery of aid this weekend. However, the Israeli military has killed more than 1,000 people trying to get food since May, mainly near aid sites, according to the United Nations.
“This is a deliberate and human-made disaster,” Joseph Belliveau, executive director of MedGlobal, a charity working in Gaza, told NPR. “Those children died because there is not enough food in Gaza and not enough medicines, including IV fluids and therapeutic formula, to revive them.”
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In June, the Israeli military intercepted another humanitarian aid ship from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. Among those captured were climate activist Greta Thunberg and European Parliament member Rima Hassan. Thunberg was deported the next day. Hassan spent three days in Israeli custody, including time in solitary confinement.
“Over the years, Israel has tried various methods to stop us,” Arraf, the human rights attorney, told Democracy Now on Friday. “It has been very violent, from attacking, beating, abducting, arresting, jailing and even killing our volunteers. In 2010, a flotilla that… I was on, Israel killed 10 of our volunteers. But that did not stop us. And it’s not going to stop us now.”
