Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that he instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prevent a high-profile activist mission sailing to Gaza from reaching the Strip.
The Madleen boat was organized by the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel Freedom Flotilla Coalition in an attempt to challenge Israel’s blockade on the Strip. Among the 12 activists on the ship are Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, Brazilian activist Thiago Avila, and Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian European Parliament member who has been barred from entering Israel.
“I have instructed the IDF to act so that the Madleen does not reach Gaza. To the antisemitic Greta and her friends, I say clearly: You should turn back, because you will not reach Gaza,” Katz said in a statement.
“The State of Israel will not allow anyone to violate the naval blockade on Gaza, the primary purpose of which is to prevent the transfer of weapons to Hamas, a murderous terror organization that holds our hostages and commits war crimes,” he added.
The vessel departed Sicily last Sunday on a mission that aims to break the naval blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, while raising awareness over the growing humanitarian crisis 20 months into the war between Israel and the Hamas terror group.
After a two-and-a-half-month total blockade aimed at pressuring Hamas, Israel started allowing some basic aid into Gaza last month, but humanitarian workers have warned of famine unless the blockade is lifted altogether and Israel ends its military offensive.
The activists had said they planned to reach Gaza’s territorial waters as early as Sunday.
On board the ship, Brazilian activist Avila claimed Sunday afternoon that Israel had “jammed their communications” on the ship, after their GPS tracker briefly showed them at Jordan’s Queen Alia Airport, miles away from their current position in the Mediterranean Sea.
“We just received some very weird news that, according to our tracker, we are no longer 162 nautical miles from Gaza, but we are [at] Jordan airport,” he said in a video uploaded to social media aboard the Madleen.
“We know what that means, when they start jamming our communication and messing with our devices, it means they are preparing for an interception or an attack,” he claimed.
Since the start of the war, users of driving navigation apps in Israel have often said their GPS was showing them to be in Beirut, Cairo, or Jordan. The GPS signal disruptions have been part of the IDF’s efforts to prevent attacks on Israel, especially drone attacks, which rely on GPS for guidance.
In recent months, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have launched several drones at Israel, some of which have flown via the Mediterranean Sea. Regardless, the GPS disruptions are unlikely to prevent the Madleen from approaching Gaza.
An attempt last month by Freedom Flotilla to reach Gaza by sea failed after another of the group’s vessels, which was reportedly affiliated with Hamas, was attacked by two drones while sailing in international waters off Malta. The group blamed Israel for the attack, which damaged the front section of the ship. Israel did not comment on the incident.
Past attempts to break the blockade have also failed, most notably the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010, which saw Israeli commandos board a Turkish-led flotilla bound for Gaza. The violence that ensued when those aboard the ship attacked the soldiers resulted in the deaths of 10 activists and left a soldier badly wounded, sparking international condemnation and a severe diplomatic rift between Israel and Turkey.
Israel and Egypt have imposed varying degrees of blockade on Gaza since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007 in a violent coup. Israel says it was necessary to keep Hamas from smuggling in arms it would use to attack the Jewish state. Critics of the blockade say it amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinians.
Israel sealed Gaza off from all aid in the early days of the war ignited by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, but later relented under US pressure. In early March, shortly before Israel ended a ceasefire with Hamas, it again blocked all imports, including food, fuel and medicine.
Hamas-led terrorists killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the October 7 attack and abducted 251 hostages. Hamas is still holding 55 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 53,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.