Fifteen years ago, Palestinian American human rights lawyer Huwaida Arraf was sailing with a flotilla carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid to Gaza when Israeli forces intercepted the ships, killing 10 activists.
It was not her first attempt to help civilians suffering under Israel's blockade of the Palestinian territory, which it tightened after Hamas seized control in 2007, nor would it be her last.
Since then, Ms Arraf has attempted to make that trip several times, each time with different difficulties. The most recent was aboard the Handala, which was intercepted by Israel on Sunday and all 21 people on board detained.
Israel said it was stopping the ship from “illegally entering the maritime zone of the coast of Gaza”, which is under a blockade by Israeli forces that is illegal under international law.
“To stop a small boat carrying baby formula and teddy bears for kids in Gaza, they sent their elite commando forces,” Ms Arraf said. “We couldn’t see in the dark but could see on the radar eight military warships.”
That is when Ms Arraf sent her now famous radio message statement to the Israeli army, demanding that they stand down as they had no authority to enforce a blockade over Gaza.
Men in Israeli military fatigues carrying weapons and cameras boarded the ship as the volunteers sat on the deck with life jackets on and their hands raised.
“They were filming themselves saying that we're safe, that they had doctors and giving us water. We rejected all of it and told them we're not taking anything from an entity that's deliberately starving children, and that our lives are not more valuable than theirs.”
Ms Arraf, who also has an Israeli passport, was not deported and remains in Israel. Six other US nationals who were aboard the Handala are being held in an Israeli prison along with two Spanish citizens, a Tunisian and a Norwegian. The rest of those aboard the Handala were either released or deported.
Lawyers for those detained issued a statement saying that their clients were being held in poor conditions in Israel's Givon prison in Ramlah – in unventilated cells infested with bed bugs, and with no time outdoors.
The National contacted the Israeli Prison Services for comment.
Ms Arraf's latest attempt to break the blockade on Gaza comes as the territory's population experiences famine after months of Israeli restrictions on the entry of food as part of its war against Hamas since October 2023.
Israeli tactics
Ms Arraf was part of the very first flotilla to attempt to break the Israeli blockade in 2008, under a coalition of rights and pro-Palestinian groups called the Free Gaza Movement.
A total of 44 people from 17 countries set sail for Gaza from Cyprus in two small fishing boats.
“We were not a threat. We had parliamentarians, journalists and all kinds of people. They would have to attack us to stop us – so people can see that Israel's policy has nothing to do with security but punishing the Palestinian people as a form of collective punishment, which is a war crime,” she said.
Although Israel threatened to stop the ships, and jammed their communications at sea, they did not intercept them.
But everything changed after the first Israel-Gaza war broke out in December that year, as Israel launch an aerial and ground assault it called Operation Cast Lead.
By the summer of 2009, activists had made three attempts to reach Gaza by sea and came under Israeli attack every time.
“At that point, we had a choice – either say that this isn't working any more and we stop or, we had to escalate. But we didn't want to give in to the notion that Israel is stronger than the rights we were seeking,” Ms Arraf said.
But things only became worse. In May 2010, a flotilla carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid and 700 people from 36 countries were subjected to lethal force by Israeli forces. Nine activists on the Turkish ship MV Mavi Marmara were killed when boarders opened fire, with a tenth dying after four years in a coma.
Ms Arraf laments how little has changed in terms of global silence and complicity with Israel's actions in Gaza.
“In what legal moral order do you allow a state under trial for genocide to control what aid is getting to the people it's exterminating?”
But she says she is determined to keep going.
“They want us to accept a world in which there are no human rights protections or respect of international law and where might is right. But this is a world no one should accept.”
