Gaza, 29 August 2025 – Al Mezan expresses its full solidarity with the Global Sumud Flotilla, a coordinated fleet of unarmed civilian vessels carrying food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies that will depart Mediterranean ports starting from tomorrow, 30 August 2025, bound for Gaza. The flotilla seeks to break Israel’s genocidal siege of Gaza and to open a desperately needed humanitarian corridor by sea. Led by grassroots organizers, seafarers, doctors, artists, and solidarity activists from over 40 countries, this mission represents a response by people of conscience to Israel’s ongoing genocide amid the failure of States to uphold their legal and moral duties to act to prevent and stop genocide.

For nearly two decades, Israel has imposed a comprehensive blockade and closure by air, land, and sea on Gaza, amounting to collective punishment of more than two million Palestinians and constituting, in itself, the crime against humanity of persecution. In the past 22 months of genocide, in parallel with relentless military attacks, Israel has dramatically intensified its blockade and closure of Gaza, escalating it into a total siege that seeks to deprive Palestinians of the essentials necessary for physical survival.

Despite clear legal obligations under international law and three binding provisional measures orders issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in South Africa v. Israel, States and international organizations have failed to take effective action to prevent and end the ongoing genocide in Gaza, to halt the use of starvation as a weapon of war and a tool of genocide, and to compel Israel to lift its unlawful closure and blockade of Gaza.

Where the international community has failed, the Global Sumud Flotilla steps in. “From inside Gaza, we see that the initiatives of activists around the world in solidarity with the Palestinian people are truly remarkable. They give us hope”, said Al Mezan’s Deputy Director, Samir Zaqout, currently displaced in central Gaza. “For us living under genocide, hunger, bombardment, and displacement, they bring hope that one day this will end, as long as free people around the world continue to struggle and persist in the fight against it.”

Al Mezan reminds that Israel, as the occupying power in Gaza, is legally obliged to allow and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian aid for civilians in need, including food and medical supplies.^[1] Under international humanitarian and maritime law, unarmed vessels engaged in delivering aid, such as the Global Sumud Flotilla, are entitled to safe passage.^[2] These obligations are even more urgent now that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has officially declared famine in Gaza, a long-overdue formal recognition of the catastrophic conditions deliberately created by Israel and endured by two million Palestinians for nearly two years.

Over the past 22 months, Israel has deliberately and systematically obstructed the distribution of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilian population as part of its ongoing genocide. This is done through the deliberate targeting of humanitarian facilities and convoys, and the killing of hundreds of humanitarian workers. Since March 2025, Israel has further restricted the entry of humanitarian aid through land checkpoints and replaced the longstanding UN-led humanitarian aid system with a newly created body, the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (GHF). Operating under Israeli control and backed by the United States, the GHF has been deliberately designed to strip Palestinians in Gaza of their dignity and to entrench starvation as a weapon of genocide.

Following Israel’s unlawful interception and seizure of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC)’s Handala and Madleen vessels in international waters, and the arrest, detention, and/or deportation of their crew members, Al Mezan calls for the international protection of all Global Sumud Flotilla vessels and their crew members. This call is especially directed at the flag states of the vessels, which bear a legal and moral responsibility to safeguard their ships and nationals, to take all necessary actions to ensure the flotilla’s safe and unimpeded passage to and arrival in Gaza.

We reiterate our full solidarity and gratitude for the Global Sumud Flotilla, while stressing that the primary legal responsibility to stop Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza lies with the international community. Israel must be compelled to open all of Gaza’s land crossings for the swift and upscale delivery of humanitarian aid via land routes. At the same time, the international community must ensure the re-establishment of the UN-led aid system and the dismantling of the GHF.