Greta Thunberg aboard the Freedom Flotilla to deliver aid to Gaza

While the world watches aid efforts collapse in Gaza, a group of activists, including Greta Thunberg and the Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham have risked their lives to hand-deliver supplies to Palestine. As Israel continues to set aid ships ablaze, the group’s voyage could face violent interception.

From aboard the Gaza-bound flotilla “Madleen”, Greta Thunberg told Middle East Eye that while governments had failed Palestinians, it fell “on us to step up and be the adults in the room”. Thunberg, Cunningham, and 10 other activists set sail from Sicily on June 1, carrying urgent supplies for besieged and starving Palestinians.

For nearly 3 months, humanitarian aid to Gaza had been completely choked off by Israel which controls all border crossings and exit points. The results have been catastrophic: a famine for hundreds of thousands that experts have deemed preventable and politically manufactured.

After mounting international pressure, Israel announced a new U.S.-backed humanitarian plan: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). But where once stood over 400 distribution centers, the GHF planned 4 centralized hubs to feed over 2 million starving people, with 3 of them located in areas Israel had previously told residents to evacuate.

Aid recipients are therefore forced to walk miles in searing heat with no water, and once they arrive, they are corralled like cattle into tightly fenced corridors and monitored by armed watchtowers and security cameras. Amid dangerous overcrowding and desperation, food is never a guarantee.

The limited rations some receive of flour, rice, and pasta are essentially useless after Israel cut electricity to the region. Crucially missing from aid baskets are water bottles and baby formula.

The flotilla aims to address these blatant oversights, carrying baby formula, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, medical supplies, crutches, and children’s prosthetics.

“We cannot sit by and allow this to happen. We are watching… a genocide, following decades and decades of systematic oppression, ethnic cleansing, occupation,” said Thunberg aboard the Flotilla.

In May, another vessel organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the Conscience, was struck down by two drones and unable to complete its mission. “There is, of course, a big risk of being stopped on the way there,” the 22-year-old admits. “But we are trying to get to Gaza and planning for that.”

“We are peaceful activists and volunteers, and we do not carry weapons. We are sailing peacefully on international waters, which is our right,” she added.

The vessel, which is being tracked live on the FFC’s website for “safety, accountability, and solidarity”, is expected to reach Gaza in around seven days.

Amid the flurry of social media posts commending Thunberg’s bravery, several commentators have mocked and threatened the group. Most notably, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham posted on X: “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!”

Thunberg, who has not yet seen the comments but anticipates the hate, has replied that “it is very absurd that in times of genocide, policymakers who are complicit in the genocide are using this opportunity to…mock people who are at least trying to do something.”

Middle East Eye/ Maghrebi