Israel Cannot Win Against the Sumud Flotilla

Israeli warships sailed hundreds of miles to illegally intercept the global Sumud Flotilla in international waters before it could reach Gaza. Whether the humanitarian fleet ultimately reached the shores of Gaza or was stopped far out at sea, its message reached every corner of the world.

The interception was an act of active aggression. Israeli forces jammed coordination channels, VHF maritime emergency SOS frequencies, the Global Navigation Satellite System, and Iridium satellite bands, cutting off vessels in open sea and placing civilian lives in direct risk. Contact had been lost with several flotilla vessels entirely when the Israelis illegally boarded them with lethal weapons. Jamming emergency maritime frequencies in international waters is a deliberate act of endangerment against unarmed civilians. Israel has systematically disabled the vessels in the face of an impending storm, going above and beyond in their act of piracy to jeopardise the lives of the civilians onboard. 

The Global Sumud Flotilla is the largest civilian-led maritime convoy of its kind in history. Its participants include healthcare workers, journalists, teachers, legal experts and humanitarian workers, all committed to nonviolence. By the time the flotilla reached Italian waters, it had grown to exceed the entire size of the previous year's mission, with 25 additional boats joining in Sicily alone, a sign that participation was not declining under Israeli pressure but expanding in direct response to it.

One hundred ships carrying a thousand people from a hundred countries and nationalities are now besieged near the shores of Crete. What is unfolding around this vast solidarity fleet deserves to be called the Eighth Front, added to the seven fronts on which Netanyahu's army is already fighting, without having achieved a decisive result on any of them.

The Israeli army confronting a hundred civilian ships is not a military engagement between two armies. It is a confrontation with people whose motivation is a genuine love of justice and humanity, and in that confrontation, Israel is the inevitable loser. Even if it succeeds in preventing the fleet from advancing toward Gaza, this battle has already given the Palestinian cause thousands, perhaps millions, of new ambassadors who will carry its message across the world.

The Israeli military force may have the capacity to prevent the ships of the solidarity fleet from reaching Gaza, but it does not have the capacity to stop those who organised this major global demonstration from organising larger ones, with wider participation and deeper resolve.

What is happening is the latest chapter in a decades-long arc of solidarity with the Palestinian cause that has grown more organised and more legally grounded with each passing year. Palestinian civil society launched its call for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in 2005, drawing direct inspiration from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, where continuous economic and cultural pressure had played a decisive role in dismantling a system of racial rule. The flotilla belongs to the same tradition. It is civil society stepping up where governments have fallen short, where ordinary citizens of the world, with extraordinary bravery, stand between a besieged population and the violent force that besieges it.

In this battle that Netanyahu has added to his many others across the Middle East, the outcome for Gaza's shores is almost secondary. Whether the fleet arrives or not, Israel carries the weight of having mobilised its navy against unarmed civilians, and that image travels faster and further than any warship. The Palestinian cause gains ground not just in the East, but also in the conscience of a world that seeks justice and stands on the side of humanity.

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The writer is Ambassador of Palestine to Bangladesh