A high-profile aid mission to Gaza with 12 activists on board, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, has reached the Egyptian coast and is nearing the Strip, organizers said on Saturday.
The Madleen, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), left Sicily last week with a cargo of relief supplies “to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza.”
“We are now sailing off the Egyptian coast,” German human rights activist Yasemin Acar told AFP.
“We are all good,” she added.
In a statement from London, the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza — a member organization of the flotilla coalition — said the ship had entered Egyptian waters.
The group said it remains in contact with international legal and human rights bodies to ensure the safety of those on board, warning that any interception would constitute “a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”
The Israeli Navy is expected to block the vessel should it enter Israel’s territorial waters.
Clashes aboard the Madleen would likely spark public and diplomatic outrage.
Britain has rejected Israeli requests to prevent the boat, flying under a UK flag, from reaching Israeli waters, an official in Jerusalem told The Times of Israel.
The group is carrying supplies for Gazans and protesting what they say is “Israel’s “illegal, decades-long blockade and ongoing genocide” in the enclave.
The FFC has staged other naval efforts to reach Gaza by sea over the last 15 years. The latest trip, which departed from Sicily, comes as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza turns 20 months old and includes Thunberg, one of the most prominent progressive activists in the world.
Israel has faced growing criticism oer its handling of aid to Gaza, where 2 million Palestinians live and where Israel has been fighting the terrorist group Hamas, the governing authority, since October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “basic aid” to enter Gaza last month amid growing concerns of starvation following a months-long aid blockade. Since Netanyahu’s announcement, aid distribution in Gaza has faced multiple setbacks, including deadly shootings near aid distribution sites.
According to the FFC, the Madleen is carrying baby formula, flour, rice, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, medical supplies, crutches, and children’s prosthetics.
“We are doing this because, no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying,” Thunberg said during a press conference ahead of the voyage.
“Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity,” she continued. “And no matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s not even near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide.”
Israel has strongly rejected such characterizations of its war against Hamas, saying it makes efforts to prevent civilian harm and that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, and mosques for its military purposes.
In the group’s first mission, in 2010, a Turkish flotilla ship called the Mavi Marmara was raided by the Israeli military during an aid mission. Violence erupted between passengers and soldiers, and nine people on board were killed.
Subsequent efforts in past years were intercepted, and passengers were detained and deported.
Last month, one of the ships in the group’s fleet, the Conscience, was hit by two alleged drones just outside Malta’s territorial waters. The group accused Israel of perpetrating the attacks. Israel has declined to comment.
Thunberg told USA Today that she was supposed to be on the Conscience voyage but had stayed behind.
Including Thunberg, there are 12 activists and journalists on board the Madleen, which is named for what the group says is Gaza’s only female professional fisherwoman. Among them is Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament. Hassan is of Palestinian descent and was barred from entering Israel in February due to her support for the BDS movement. Hassan has voiced support for armed struggle against Israel on social media, has denied some of the facts of the Oct. 7 attack and has and has been accused of lauding terrorism.
“Game of Thrones” actor Liam Cunningham was among a crowd of spectators who gathered in solidarity with the crew of the Madleen to bid them farewell in Catania, Sicily.
“Governments are not standing up for what their legal obligations are under international law, so it takes a disparate group like this to try and achieve it,” Cunningham said in a post on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s Instagram account. “Anybody who was fearful of using the word genocide, that’s gone now.”
A video of Thunberg was also featured at a concert of US rapper Macklemore in Ireland, where she was seen on the flotilla telling the audience to stand against the “genocide” and calling to “free Palestine.”
If it is not intercepted, the Madleen could reach Gaza sometime over the weekend, according to a post on X early Friday morning by the International Committee to Break the Siege, which was reposted by the FFC.
“We’re on our way to Gaza — expected to arrive in about 48 hours,” the post read. “These next hours are critical. Your voice is our protection. Let apartheid Israel know: the world is watching. Your silence gives them cover. Don’t stay silent.”
But the IDF has said it does not intend to allow the ship to dock. The army told The Times of Israel that it is “enforcing the maritime security blockade on the Gaza Strip, and is prepared and ready for a wide range of scenarios that it will handle in accordance with the political echelon’s guidelines.”
The “IDF is prepared to operate on all fronts, including in the maritime arena,” a spokesman, Effie Defrin, said this week.
JTA contributed to this report.