The Israeli navy said that it would not allow the ship to reach the besieged Palestinian territory.
“The Israeli army applies the legal maritime blockade of security on the Gaza Strip and is ready for various scenarios, which it will implement in accordance with political level guidelines,” a military spokesman told AFP on Saturday.
War in Gaza, towards a crisis within Arizona?
This former Norwegian trawler carries medical equipment, foodstuffs, children’s equipment and medicines.
The expedition, funded by donation campaigns, aims to break the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, plagued by a major humanitarian crisis, and to send aid.
UN agencies and several NGOs have alerted to an imminent risk of famine in Gaza.
The Handala crew said on X that it would start a hunger strike if the boat were to be intercepted by the Israeli army and its owned passengers.
The initiative comes six weeks after the departure of Madleen, another ship from the flotilla, left of Italy on June 1.
This sailboat then had 12 activists on board including the ecologist Greta Thunberg and MEP LFI Rima Hassan, who had been held three days after the interception of the ship, about 185 kilometers west of the Gaza coast.
Israel, whose offensive began in the aftermath of the attack on the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, 2023, a strict humanitarian blockade imposed in the Palestinian territory.
This blockade led to very serious shortages of food, medicines and other basic necessities, and was only partially relaxed at the end of May.
The king denounces “the serious humanitarian drifts in Gaza, where innocents die of hunger and fall under the bombs”
