Revealed On 6 Sep 2025
Tunis, Tunisia – At 61 Station Avenue, downtown Tunis, volunteers are busy receiving and documenting donations for the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla – certainly one of 4 organising teams of the Global Sumud Flotilla, aiming to interrupt Israel’s siege on Gaza.
The preliminary plan was for the boats to set sail from Tunis on Thursday. However the Tunisian boats must wait till the Spanish flotilla – led by, amongst others, the Swedish local weather activist Greta Thunberg – that units off from Barcelona on Monday arrives, having been delayed on account of a storm.
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One other flotilla leaving from Sicily is anticipated to affix the Tunisian one on Sunday, with all of the vessels then departing collectively in the direction of the jap Mediterranean.
On board the vessels can be medical doctors, activists, convoy organisers, attorneys and social media influencers. Contained in the holds: cardboard containers full of drugs and toddler milk – and a few touching messages and items from Tunisian kids to their counterparts in Gaza.
All seven flotillas which have set sail to Gaza since 2010 have been both intercepted or attacked by the Israeli military earlier than even reaching Gaza’s territorial waters. On Could 2, the ship Conscience was struck twice by Israeli armed drones when it was simply 25 kilometres (16 miles) away from the shores of Malta.
Raring to go
Thorough preparations for the flotilla are ongoing in lots of Tunisian cities, together with Tunis, Bizerte, Beja, Sousse, Sfax and Gabes. For most of the volunteers at work in Tunisia’s donation centres, their ties to Gaza run deep, and plenty of have felt helpless having watched virtually two years of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, killing greater than 62,000 Palestinians.
Many right here keep in mind native political activist Hatem Laayouni’s becoming a member of efforts to interrupt the Israeli siege of Gaza on board the Handala mission in July, in addition to the Tunisian-led Sumud convoy that tried to get via the earlier month.
Each makes an attempt appear to have made Gaza really feel inside attain for a lot of now volunteering to produce and sail throughout the newest flotilla. “Tunisians now not suppose Palestine is way away. Palestine is shut. It’s positively not far-off,” says a volunteer who goes by the title Sahraoui.
Volunteers from throughout Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and the USA are participating, and know that they don’t have any time to waste, significantly as Gaza is now formally in a famine.
The workforce behind the Maghreb flotilla have labored rapidly. On August 22, the organising committee of the flotilla launched a fundraising marketing campaign and a name for in-kind donations. Ten days later, the vessels have been purchased.
“I can’t share the variety of boats as a result of it’s confidential data, however we’re good in terms of boats,” Ghassan Boughdiri, a member of the organising committee, informed Al Jazeera, including, “We have now the precise quantity we want.”
Boughdiri additionally confirmed that the names and variety of individuals can be communicated as soon as the flotilla is able to sail.
Donations
Massive quantities of donations, akin to drugs and toddler milk, have already been collected and packed into cardboard containers, with organisers prepared to offer extra as soon as Israel lifts its blockade.
With a lot of the preparation work completed, solely the ending touches stay: equipping the vessels with wi-fi, cameras, life jackets and different security instruments.
And for this, Tunisians proceed to affix lengthy queues at Station Avenue to donate cash and no matter different items they will.
“The particular factor about this marketing campaign is the quantity of people that confirmed as much as give donations,” mentioned Boughdiri. “We’ve had individuals bringing 5 and 10 dinars [$1.70 to $3.40]. In case your day’s pay is 20 dinars [$6.80], these 5 dinars are so treasured for us. It reveals we’ve managed to behave collectively to assist our individuals in Gaza.”
With assist for the flotilla gathering steam world wide, and extra vessels asserting their participation, there’s hope that the world can be pressured to behave if Israel makes an attempt to violently cease the boats.
However regardless that sending humanitarian assist on flotillas to disaster zones is authorised by worldwide legislation, it’s nonetheless extra possible that Israel will resort to violence.
“That is the most important assist flotilla to Gaza ever,” mentioned Sahraoui. “No comparable mission has been launched earlier than. So we don’t actually understand how they’ll reply. I hope we do attain Gaza finally.”
