The Sea of Blockade — When Humanitarian Aid Becomes a Crime
The images are stubborn: small hands reaching for bread that never arrives, hospital wards running out of oxygen, mothers carrying babies with swollen bellies piled on rubble where a house once stood. In early October 2025, two international efforts — the Global Sumud flotilla and a follow-on Freedom Flotilla Coalition convoy — set out across the Mediterranean with a single, simple purpose: deliver medicines, respiratory equipment, and basic food supplies to hospitals and families trapped inside Gaza. Instead of reaching a humanitarian corridor, many of the vessels were intercepted, boarded and their passengers detained by Israeli forces while still hundreds of kilometres from Gaza. The world watched the live feeds cut and saw volunteers — doctors, journalists, lawmakers — bundled off naval decks and taken to port.
