The ships that came out this Sunday from Barcelona and that, the biggest attempt to break Gaza’s naval blockade by Israel, have had to return last night to port due to bad weatheralthough they expect power re -navigate as soon as possibleaccording to .
The group of ships had to join many others on September 4 in Tunisia, from where they will seek to reach Gaza. After the frustrated attempts of the Fleets of Libertad Madleen or the Handala, both ships intercepted in international waters by the Israeli army, this time the Global Sumud Flotilla will gather More than 40 ships with civil crew from more than 40 countries. Despite being forced to return due to bad weather conditions, this morning the captains of the ships gather to establish the new game.
The attempts to get to Gaza through the Mediterranean Sea date back to 2008, when for the first time two fishing ships loaded with humanitarian aid, the Liberty and the Free Gaza, were able to dock in the strip after in 2007 Israel, but also Egypt, Egypt, They will block access to Gaza by land, sea and air. In one of the ships, the human rights activist born and raised in Khan Younis Musheir El-Farra was traveling. “For the first time in my life, I went to Gaza without being humiliated, without having to ask Israel permission. We did it. We finally achieve it. And now others must join us and do it too,” he said after the success of the journey. Last October 2023, El-Farra was back in Khan Younis and witnessed an Israeli bombing to a residential block that killed 16 of his relatives. “Every night I hear those screams, those regrets,” the activist told The Guardian.
From that successful rupture of the naval block, only four more trips had the same result. None more. Israel did not allow any other ship to reach the strip. In 2010, the Israeli army assaulted the Fleeta de la Libertad and murdered a dozen activists from the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara. Fifteen years later, the Benjamin Netanyahu government continues with the sending of elite teams of the Israeli military forces to prevent the arrival of more ships. The last attempts were those of the Conscience ships in May, the MADLEEN in June and the Handala in July. While the first was attacked by drones, Israel assaulted the last two, arrested his crew and deported them, as he told El HuffPost One of them, Sergio Toribio.
