Gaza Aid Flotilla With 1,000 Passengers, Tons Of Supplies Poised To Sail - As IDF Awaits
A flotilla of ships packed with a thousand activists, human rights observers and more than 5,500 tons of food and medical supplies is ready to sail from Istanbul to for Gaza. To do so, they'll need the Turkish government to let them leave the port, and then run the risk of being subjected to a deadly Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attack -- as their predecessors were in an infamous 2010 incident.
“The Freedom Flotilla has the support of millions around the world who are outraged at the failure of our governments to protect the Palestinians people from Israel’s genocidal actions, including the deliberate starvation of over two million people,” said the organizing coalition's Zohar Chamberlain-Regev.
The group has three ships ready to go: one packed with food and medical supplies, and two ships for passengers who hail from 40 different countries. The cargo ship also has eight ambulances and a fire truck aboard -- a grim reminder of the IDF's Nov 3 bombing of an ambulance convoy next to Al-Shifa hospital that killed 15 and wounded dozens.
CodePink's Medea Benjamin is among those hoping to set sail, but says she's worries about diplomatic interference. "The Turkish government might cave to pressure from Israel, the United States and Germany, and prevent the boats from even leaving Istanbul," she wrote on Tuesday.
“We expect that Turkey will not be bought off and we will indeed sail,” Palestinian-American human rights lawyer Huwaida Arraf optimistically said at a press conference hosted on one of the ships. “Anything less than this is collaborating with the illegal siege on Gaza, and we don’t think that is what the Turkish government will do.”
While the IDF has said little, an Israeli news outlet reported that the Israeli military has already started "security preparations" for commandeering the flotilla. In an infamous 2010 incident, the IDF killed 10 activists aboard a Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessel, the Mavi Marmara.
With that precedent in mind, organizers have been giving volunteers "non-violence training" and educating them on what the Israeli forces may use on them -- such as tear gas and concussion grenades.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition was founded in 2010 to circumvent economically-devastating travel and trade restrictions imposed by the State of Israel on the 25-mile-long Gaza strip. Long before the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, the Zionist state has blocked the people of Gaza from having an airport or even a seaport.
From the first days of Israel's post-Oct. 7 attack on Gaza, Israel made clear its intentions to cause widespread devastation in the strip. "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed," Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters on Oct. 9. "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."
On Tuesday, US Special Envoy for Humanitarian Issues David Satterfield belatedly acknowledged that the risk of famine in Gaza is "very high." This comes long after a various news outlets and humanitarian organizations have reported on increasingly desperate measures Gaza residents have resorted to, including boiling weeds and eating animal food. Acute malnutrition among young children is soaring, and UNICEF says the entire population is in increasing peril:
"The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) projected that 1.1 million people face catastrophic levels of hunger (IPC Phase 5) and are at risk of famine in the Gaza Strip, the highest number of people ever recorded in this category by the IPC system."
On Wednesday, President Biden signed off on a controversial foreign aid package that included another $26 billion for Israel. In his State of the Union address, Biden announced that the Pentagon would create a floating port off the Gaza coast to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid. Some six weeks later, construction hasn't even started, but a spokesman on Tuesday said it should begin "in the coming weeks."
