The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) vowed Wednesday to press on toward Gaza after the Israeli military intercepted dozens of its vessels off the coast of Crete last week, violently boarding the boats and forcibly dragging two leaders back to Israel where they were held on terrorism charges, interrogated and abused before being released.
In a defiant move, the civilian fleet regrouped in the Turkish port of Marmaris on Wednesday to announce their next step—and it was Palestinian leading activist Saif Abukeshek himself who delivered the news, one of the two activists abducted and taken to Israel after the interception.
“Yesterday we had a collective general assembly with crew, steering committee and captains to review our options,” Abukeshek said at the press conference. “The genocidal government of Israel has no respect for human rights or international law. We have decided to continue. Tomorrow our mission will continue to Gaza.”
The flotilla will sail from Marmaris with 54 boats, with 37 coming from Crete and the rest from Turkey and including five supporting boats from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, with more than 500 participants.
At one point during the press conference, steering committee member Sümeyra Akdeniz Ordu paused to urge participants who had yet to complete their passport formalities with Turkish authorities to leave and do so immediately.
“We are very clear about the risks we may face. However, the danger of inaction is much greater,” Abu Keshek said. On April 30, Israel’s naval forces intercepted the GSF overnight in international waters near Crete, approximately 600 to 700 miles (over 1,000 km) from the Gaza coast.
Organizers denounced the move as “piracy” and “unlawful abduction” of 22 civilian vessels in international waters. Israel detained over a hundred members aboard the ships before releasing them. Videos posted by activists in the days that followed showed severe beatings sustained during their detention.
Along with steering committee member Thiago Ávila, Abukeshek was held in Israel’s Ashkelon prison for 10 days, where both were reportedly subjected to sensory deprivation, 24-hour high-intensity lighting, constant blindfolding and death threats against them and their families.
Israel repeatedly extended their detention on charges of “assisting the enemy during wartime” and membership in a terrorist organization, charges Adalah, the Israeli Arab legal rights group representing them, dismissed as legally baseless. Their detention drew condemnation from the UN, Spain, Italy and Turkey and international rights groups. Israel released and deported both men on May 9 without charge.
A Shabak agent boasted during his interrogation that Israel has killed as many Palestinians as possible, as the agent spelled out the logic: no indigenous population, no occupation, Abukeshek recounted at the press conference.
The decision to resume the mission has been grounded in the brutality of Israel’s action towards the activists and more importantly towards Palestinians, he said.
“We sail one day before the Nakba. We do not just commemorate, we act. Israel is intentionally implementing a slow genocide, starving Gaza, displacing the West Bank. We are the olive trees. We do not abandon our land. It is the people of Palestine who inspire us with their resilience.”
For the GSF, the mission isn’t only humanitarian, it is explicitly political. The attacks and aid blockade on Gaza, they argue, does not persist because the world lacks the means to stop it, but because powerful states have chosen to allow it and the media has been silenced.
Sailing, then, is a direct challenge to that complicity. Nobody, Abukeshek said, can define the outcome. But the flotilla can define the continuity.
Israel has intensified its attacks on Gaza over the past five weeks, since a fragile ceasefire was reached between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other, Reuters reported Wednesday. According to Gaza's Health Ministry, 72,742 people have been killed since the genocide began in October 2023, a figure that does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
