The Freedom and Sumud Flotilla, a successor of the original Global Sumud Flotilla that almost reached besieged Gaza last year, will set sail again on April 12. The Turkish delegation of activists who will join the campaign held a news conference on Wednesday in Istanbul to explain their plans to navigate the dangerous waters to the Palestinian enclave amid Israeli aggression.
The flotilla will host thousands of activists from more than 150 countries who will travel aboard more than 100 vessels and small boats. They plan to leave Spain on April 12.
Dilek Tekocak, a spokesperson for the Turkish activists, informed the press on how they would proceed and how the flotilla differed from the previous one.
The Global Sumud Flotilla reignited hope across the world for support for Palestinians suffering at the hands of Israel. Although the flotilla was intercepted miles away from Gaza, the activists detained by Israel received a hero’s welcome in their countries, cementing growing resistance to Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza across the world. Nowadays, Hamas and Israel maintain a cease-fire, although Israel repeatedly violates it. Though killings by the Israeli army have been reduced, violations are ongoing while Gazans still strive to survive in winter conditions and amid a vast concrete jungle of rubble left by constant bombardment.
Tekocak said the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has moved beyond a crisis and evolved into systemic destruction and genocide. She noted that months of blockades, closed borders, interrupted humanitarian aid, targeted health infrastructure and severe violations of the rights of civilians deliberately ended Palestinians’ right to live. She noted that 132 days have passed since the declaration of a cease-fire, but what was portrayed as “calm” in Gaza was, in reality, a form of continued chokehold on Palestinians as it sustained the blockade. “The cease-fire has been violated more than 1,000 times in its first 100 days, and 477 Palestinians were killed,” she noted.
She added that the flotilla was a demonstration of global civilian resistance. “This is not merely a humanitarian aid campaign that emerged when international mechanisms proved to be insufficient. This is also a peaceful civilian objection on a global scale to the illegitimacy of the blockade,” Tekocak noted.
The flotilla will be joined by delegations from more than 50 countries after it departs from Spain and will stop by Italy, Tunisia and other Mediterranean ports.
“Along with aid, it will carry health care workers, educators, infrastructure construction crews, jurists and war crimes researchers,” Tekocak said, noting that more than 1,000 doctors, nurses and health care professionals would be among participants.
“Since Oct. 7, 76,230 civilians, including women and children, have been killed, and 174,000 people have been wounded. Nearly the entire population has been forcibly displaced at least once. Access to water has decreased by 98%, and nearly all international humanitarian aid missions have been blocked. Under these conditions, a cease-fire does not serve as protection for Palestinians but instead becomes a cover that spreads the management of death and destruction over time. The blockade is not merely a security measure. It constitutes a human-made famine, calorie control and strategic starvation. It is one of the primary instruments of a regime of colonial domination and destruction aimed at genocide,” she underlined.
Tekocak said that with U.N. Security Council Resolution 2803, U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza received the U.N. seal and gained legal status, and that Gaza was effectively deemed worthy of a governance model amounting to foreign, colonial trusteeship.
