The Israeli Navy early Wednesday intercepted a new flotilla attempting to break its maritime blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, detaining some 150 activists who were being brought to Israel for deportation.
The incident came a week after the Navy intercepted 42 vessels that formed the Global Sumud Flotilla, the largest to challenge the Gaza blockade to date. Israel has deported the vast majority of the 479 activists who took part in that armada, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday morning that the new flotilla that attempted to break the maritime blockade on Gaza was prevented from realizing its goal, with its vessels and passengers intercepted and taken to Ashdod Port.
“Another futile attempt to breach the legal naval blockade and enter a combat zone ended in nothing,” said the Foreign Ministry on X. “The vessels and the passengers are transferred to an Israeli port. All the passengers are safe and in good health. The passengers are expected to be deported promptly.”
The Navy’s interception of the flotilla came after organizers rejected calls to transfer the small amount of symbolic aid they had been carrying with them to Israel or international organizations to be taken to the Strip and distributed.
The nine-boat flotilla organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, said to include about 100 activists on one of the boats and around 50 others on the other eight ships, set sail from Italy some two weeks ago.
The interception took place in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, in the Mediterranean Sea, around 150 nautical miles off the Gaza coast. Within 40 minutes, forces of the Shayetet 13 naval commando unit and other Navy forces took control of the nine vessels, including one named Conscience, a 68-meter-long passenger ship.
Because of the size of the Conscience, the naval commandos rappelled from an Israeli Air Force helicopter onto the ship’s deck.
The other eight sailboats were boarded by naval commandos from Navy vessels.
The organizers of the Conscience said in the early morning that “Our vessel is currently being attacked by an Israeli military helicopter while the eight sailboats are being illegally intercepted and hijacked.”
The FFC said “participants — humanitarians, doctors and journalists from across the world — have been taken against their will and are being held in unknown conditions.”
“The Israeli military has no legal jurisdiction over international waters,” it said. “Our flotilla poses no harm.”
The ships carried aid worth more than $110,000 in medicines, respiratory equipment, and nutritional supplies intended for Gaza’s hospitals, the FCC claimed on its Instagram account.
Footage published by the activists showed Israeli Navy forces boarding the vessels.
All nine ships with the 150 activists were being taken to Ashdod Port by the Navy, where they will be processed by police and immigration authorities before being deported.
In addition to last week’s flotilla, Israel blocked similar attempts in June and July, amid spiking international anger at Israel over the hunger crisis in the Strip. Israeli officials have denounced the flotilla missions as pro-Hamas stunts.
The Global Sumud Flotilla’s 42 ships were carrying only around two tons of aid, according to the Foreign Ministry. “This amounts to less than one-tenth of a single aid truck,” it said. Around 300 aid trucks enter Gaza daily.
Israel and Egypt have imposed varying degrees of blockade on Gaza since the Hamas terror group seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007 in a violent coup.
Israel said it was necessary to limit Hamas’s ability to smuggle in arms. Critics of the blockade said it amounted to collective punishment of Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinians.
Israel has come under huge international pressure over its war in Gaza. The war started on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
The war has sparked a humanitarian crisis in the Strip, with most of the population displaced.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 66,000 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 had killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Agencies contributed to this report.