More than a dozen ships have managed to divert this Monday through “direct action” in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea a ship that is loading “raw materials intended to supply the Israeli war machinery,” as reported by the organization in a statement. “It is the first time in history that a civilian flotilla intervenes directly to interrupt the maritime flow of materials linked to the military operations of a State“, they have pointed out from the GSF.
The MSC Maya ship, a container ship almost 400 meters long, sails under the Panamanian flag and belongs to the Mediterranean Shipping Company, an Italian shipping company that defines itself as “a world leader in maritime container transport.” According to the flotilla organizers, the diversion of their ship “occurs following mounting evidence of MSC’s role as the main logistical artery of the Israeli occupation military apparatus“Although the company maintains an appearance of commercial neutrality, investigative reports and labor observers have identified a systematic pattern of transporting high-quality alloy steel used in the manufacture of heavy artillery,” they explained in the statement.
The investigation they refer to from the flotilla. Thanks to “commercial documents obtained through US import databases”, both revealed last February that The famous Italian shipping company “has regularly transported goods from companies located in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory”. “Between January 1 and November 22, 2025, bills of lading show that MSC facilitated at least 957 shipments of goods from Israeli outposts to the US. Of these shipments, 529 transited through European ports, including 390 in Spain115 in Portugal, 22 in the Netherlands and two in Belgium,” they revealed in their information.
According to the GSF, the diversion of the MSC Maya “is not an isolated act.” The action “is part of a growing global movement to confront complicity wherever it operates: in boardrooms, in factories, in ports and, now, at sea“. “We reject the idea that commerce exists in a moral vacuum. There is no neutrality in the transportation of materials that support systems of violence. The companies that facilitate these flows are not passive actors; They are participants,” they have defended.
For a long time, they have continued since the organization of the flotilla, “the Mediterranean has been used as a space of profound injustice: At the same time it has been a mass grave for asylum seekers and a corridor where weapons move without obstacles while vital aid is violently and illegally blocked. This action is about more than just a single ship; “is about reclaiming the sea as a space for justice and life, rather than an arena of state-sponsored violence.”
A few days ago, it set sail from the port of Barcelona which will be the largest civilian maritime mission to try to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. It left with a consolidated fleet of more than 70 boats with more than 1,000 participants from also 70 different countries. On this occasion, they are also accompanied by the organizations Open Arms and Greenpeace, with their famous ship Arctic Sunrise.
