"We Must Unshackle Our Imaginations" Break Israel’s Siege with Thousands of Civilian Aid Ships to Gaza
As consensus over breaking Israel’s siege grows, Omar Aziz explains how the largest civilian aid flotilla in world history could force open a humanitarian corridor to Gaza.
“We should not be waiting for Israel to give permission… we need to be breaking the blockade.”
These were the defiant words of Palestinian-American human rights lawyer Huwaida Arraf after being abducted at sea by Israeli forces.
She had been sailing aboard the Handala, a civilian aid ship loaded with food and medicine bound for Gaza. Before masked Israeli gunmen stormed it, Arraf told the military over radio:
“You are starving civilians… and enforcing an illegal blockade. Why are you afraid of baby formula and teddy bears?”
Though the Handala was seized in an act of Israeli piracy in international waters, the mission did not fail — it lit a fuse. Like the flotillas before it, it proved that Israel’s siege can be confronted head on by ordinary people – without waiting for state permission.
Gaza is being starved
Since March, Israel has sealed off Gaza, while bombing from the sky continues. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world’s leading body on famine, has now confirmed: “the worst-case scenario famine” is playing out and calls for an “unimpeded, large-scale, life-saving humanitarian response.”
At least half a million Palestinians are expected to be in Phase 5 on the Acute Food Insecurity scale by September indicating catastrophe, where starvation, acute malnutrition, and mortality are widespread. There is no Phase 6.
Alex de Waal, a leading famine expert with over 40 years of experience, warns Gaza is on the brink of an “exponential” surge in starvation deaths.
At least 175 Palestinians already died of starvation. But now the entire population of Gaza is at risk.
This is not a failure of logistics. This is deliberate policy. Israel’s starvation of Gaza has been part of its strategy from the beginning.
Netanyahu is now wanted by the ICC for war crimes including extermination and starvation. Yet weapons, intelligence, and political cover still flow to Israel from the US, UK, and EU. There are no sanctions. There is no arms embargo. And there is certainly no discussion on military intervention to stop Israel’s onslaught. Instead, there is spectacle.
Take the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — a US and Israel-led aid initiative. It’s been exposed as a lethal fraud: “aid sites” where Palestinians are lured, then shot by US mercenaries. UN figures say nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed trying to collect food at those sites since late May.
Meanwhile, British PM Keir Starmer has backed the idea of resuming aerial aid drops, promising to work with Jordan on the initiative, despite UNRWA calling them “inefficient, dangerous and humiliating.”
Meanwhile, land aid is being choked to a trickle: 36 trucks entered Gaza on Saturday 2nd August — far below the 500-600 per day which entered during the latest ceasefire.
As the reality of widespread famine sets in, we cannot wait for the mercy of states carrying out the genocide in Gaza to provide relief to Palestinians.
Every hour aid is delayed, more people starve. Israel knows this — but that’s its strategy. In fact, Israel has weaponised time for decades. In the West Bank, Palestinians wait endlessly at checkpoints, for permits to work, build and travel. Pregnant women have died giving birth at checkpoints. In Gaza, cancer patients have waited years for permission to seek treatment at Palestinian hospitals outside Gaza, often denied until it’s too late.
During the pandemic, Israel vaccinated its own citizens while withholding doses from Palestinians.
Now, it’s starving Palestinians slowly enough that by the time aid arrives, it’s already too late. Famine cannot be reversed overnight.
In our thousands…
A single civilian aid vessel cannot breach a siege enforced by one of the world’s most powerful militaries. But thousands might.
Imagine a flotilla born of the masses. Decentralised. Global.
What if trade unions, local solidarity groups and organisations mobilised in unprecedented numbers?
What if Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children sailed under their flags?
What if just 1% of the hundreds of thousands of Mediterranean pleasure craft set sail simultaneously toward Gaza?
Intense public pressure from a coordinated flotilla of such immense proportions could force Israel to open the prison doors of Gaza and allow aid to flow.
It could open up avenues for a civilian-led humanitarian corridor – a vital artery of life to Gaza across the Mediterranean.
In 1984, London trade unionists sent aid convoys to striking miners under the slogan “They Shall Not Starve.” In 1940, more than 700 civilian vessels crossed the English Channel to defend Dunkirk. The same spirit of solidarity and defiance can rise again.
This is not a pipe dream, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said the Madleen has “shown the way to thousands and thousands of others to start.”
Former UK Shadow Chancellor John McDonald posted on X: “the UK should break the blockade by sea with a fleet of aid ships.”
Consensus is growing: Israel’s siege must be broken by any means necessary.
Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd recently wrote: “The Pope should be on a flotilla headed for Gaza.” He’s right. And UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, should join him.
This is a time to unshackle our imaginations — to refuse to be bound by what is considered sensible or legitimate activism. This moment demands audacity. Those with privilege, platforms, and passports must wield them with purpose.
Greta Thunberg showed the way aboard the Madleen in June. Shouldn’t David Beckham, a UNICEF ambassador, be onboard a ship to Gaza too?
Thankfully, organisers are already heeding the call.
Two major campaigns are now attempting to coordinate massive aid flotillas. Organisers of the Global Sumud Flotilla say delegations from at least 40 countries will soon participate in “the largest maritime mission to break Israel’s illegal siege.” It will bring together previous land and sea efforts like the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla, Freedom Flotilla Coalition and the Global March to Gaza.
Another initiative, the 1000 Ship Flotilla is also being organised in Malaysia.
Real risks
As we have witnessed with flotillas in the past, abduction, imprisonment, torture, death — are risks facing anyone who dares to deliver aid to Gaza. And Israel has made clear there are no red lines in its campaign of extermination having killed at least 60,000 Palestinians.
While a handful of boats from the Free Gaza Movement reached Gaza in 2008–09, no aid vessel has broken the blockade by sea since 2010, when Israeli forces stormed the Mavi Marmara in international waters, killing ten activists on board.
Notably, the Viva Palestina convoys succeeded in reaching Gaza via the Rafah crossing in 2009 and 2010, delivering significant humanitarian aid overland. However, all attempts since failed to breach the blockade. And make no mistake, Egypt’s role in maintaining the Gaza blockade — by restricting aid, deporting activists heading for Rafah and closing crossings — makes it complicit in the collective punishment of a captive population.
In 2025, Israel has intercepted all three Gaza Freedom Flotilla missions. In May, drones struck the Conscience off the coast of Malta. In June, the Madleen, a British-flagged yacht carrying 12 activists including Thunberg, was seized 200 km from Gaza’s shore – an act of piracy undertaken against a UK-registered vessel which ought to have warranted a harsh response by the British government.
But despite all this, the fact remains the same: the greatest danger right now is allowing Israel to continue its genocide. Every effort must now be directed toward organising an end to this, at a scale capable of directly breaking Israel’s siege and delivering aid.
That is not to say efforts to isolate Israel and hold it accountable in every sphere should be parked, or that strategic work to dismantle Zionism should be side-lined. Rather, it is to recognise the absolute urgency of this moment as one critical to prevent the further annihilation of Palestinian life.
For almost two years now, Palestinians have been resisting Israel’s onslaught – by far the greatest crime of the 21st century. From the mass killing of besieged Palestinians on an industrial-scale to the starvation of an entire population, Israel’s crimes shatter every legal and moral boundary. Gaza is being obliterated — and the world is watching. Therefore, if governments will not uphold international law, people must.
After all, it’s our world, not theirs. We choose whether to go quietly — or to rise and rage against the dying of the light.
Send the boats. Now.
Article first published in The New Arab.
 | A guest post by
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Exactly right.
It is up to people of good conscience, all over the world, to take part. Most especially those who reside in European & North American countries, whose governments have acted as accomplices to the irredeemable perpetrator of this holocaust.
Europeans, Americans, Canadians, Australians, et al., have utterly failed to clean up our corrupt power-structures. Our leaders are failing (and stalling) intentionally. This initiative is exactly what has to happen.
That is just the beginning of what we owe Palestinians.
Israel should not exist. It is a criminal endeavour — not a state — and it is almost entirely populated with wilfully complicit criminals, who explicitly support its crimes.
Gaza has been “sealed off” by a decision on March 2nd. That lasted until mid-May but for partial opening compared to prior March 2nd. Since then basic foods prices are “only” 10× what they were instead of 100x. But let’s wait what will be with new situation in Gaza City. My take on this: https://open.substack.com/pub/calimero77/p/lets-just-rewind?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5jou0d