The Israeli navy intercepted a ship aiming to bring aid to Gaza this weekend, Israeli officials and pro-Palestinian activists said, in at least the third case this year in which a vessel has been stopped while challenging Israel’s naval blockade of the enclave.
The ship was rerouted to Israel and all its passengers were safe, Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement early Sunday.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition, an activist group, said it had organized the mission by the ship, which it called the Handala, to aid a population in Gaza facing rising starvation. The Israeli foreign ministry called the ship the Navarn, using another name associated with the vessel.
The ship was roughly 40 nautical miles from Gaza when it was intercepted, according to a statement by the activist group, which opposes the nearly two-decade-old naval blockade of Gaza. Twenty-one activists from 12 countries were on board, the group said, adding that the ship carried supplies like baby formula, diapers, food and medicine from Italy, from where it set sail last week.
One of those aboard was a French member of the European Parliament, Emma Fourreau, according to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s website.
The group’s efforts to reach Gaza by sea have been repeatedly thwarted. In May, a Gaza-bound aid ship called Conscience was crippled by explosions and an ensuing fire, stopping the mission off the coast of Malta. In June, Israel intercepted the coalition’s second effort, the Madleen, whose passengers included the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and another French member of the European Parliament, Rima Hassan.
After the latest vessel was stopped, the coalition described the Israeli navy’s actions as a “violation of international maritime law.”
Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza, with Egypt’s help, after the Islamic militant group Hamas took control over the coastal strip in 2007. Israeli officials say the measure was necessary to prevent the smuggling of weapons into the territory.
Since Hamas led the October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the current war in Gaza, living conditions in the territory have steadily deteriorated, and Israel has tightly controlled the flow of aid into the territory by land, sea and air.
Its restrictions have drawn condemnation from many nations and rights groups, and on Saturday night the Israeli military announced that it would revive the practice of dropping aid from airplanes, and make it easier for aid convoys to move through Gaza by land.
Before the ship was captured, the activist coalition published a statement saying that two vessels believed to be operated by the Israeli military were nearby. At that point, the ship altered its course toward the Egyptian coast, the statement said.