Tunis, Tunisia – At 61 Station Street, downtown Tunis, volunteers are busy receiving and documenting donations for the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla – one of four organising groups of the Global Sumud Flotilla, aiming to break Israel’s siege on Gaza.
The initial plan was for the boats to set sail from Tunis on Thursday. But the Tunisian boats will have to wait until the Spanish flotilla – led by, among others, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg – that sets off from Barcelona on Monday arrives, having been delayed as a result of a storm.
Another flotilla leaving from Sicily is expected to join the Tunisian one on Sunday, with all the vessels then departing together towards the eastern Mediterranean.
On board the vessels will be doctors, activists, convoy organisers, lawyers and social media influencers. Inside the holds: cardboard boxes full of medicine and infant milk – and some touching messages and gifts from Tunisian children to their counterparts in Gaza.
All seven flotillas that have set sail to Gaza since 2010 have been either intercepted or attacked by the Israeli army before even reaching Gaza’s territorial waters. On May 2, the ship Conscience was struck twice by Israeli armed drones when it was just 25 kilometres (16 miles) away from the shores of Malta.
Raring to go
Thorough preparations for the flotilla are ongoing in many Tunisian cities, including Tunis, Bizerte, Beja, Sousse, Sfax and Gabes. For many of the volunteers at work in Tunisia’s donation centres, their ties to Gaza run deep, and many have felt helpless having watched almost two years of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, killing more than 62,000 Palestinians.
Many here remember local political activist Hatem Laayouni’s joining efforts to break the Israeli siege of Gaza on board the Handala mission in July, as well as the Tunisian-led Sumud convoy that attempted to get through the previous month.
Both attempts seem to have made Gaza feel within reach for many now volunteering to supply and sail within the latest flotilla. “Tunisians no longer think Palestine is far away. Palestine is close. It’s definitely not far away,” says a volunteer who goes by the name Sahraoui.
Volunteers from across Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States are taking part, and know that they have no time to waste, particularly as Gaza is now officially in a famine.
The team behind the Maghreb flotilla have worked quickly. On August 22, the organising committee of the flotilla launched a fundraising campaign and a call for in-kind donations. Ten days later, the vessels were bought.
“I can’t share the number of boats because it’s confidential information, but we’re good when it comes to boats,” Ghassan Boughdiri, a member of the organising committee, told Al Jazeera, adding, “We have the exact number we need.”
Boughdiri also confirmed that the names and number of participants would be communicated once the flotilla is ready to sail.
Donations
Large amounts of donations, such as medicine and infant milk, have already been collected and packed into cardboard boxes, with organisers ready to provide more once Israel lifts its blockade.
With most of the preparation work done, only the finishing touches remain: equipping the vessels with wi-fi, cameras, life jackets and other safety tools.
And for this, Tunisians continue to join long queues at Station Street to donate money and whatever other gifts they can.
“The special thing about this campaign is the number of people who showed up to give donations,” said Boughdiri. “We’ve had people bringing five and 10 dinars [$1.70 to $3.40]. If your day’s pay is 20 dinars [$6.80], those five dinars are so precious for us. It shows we’ve managed to act collectively to help our people in Gaza.”
With support for the flotilla gathering steam around the world, and more vessels announcing their participation, there is hope that the world will be forced to act if Israel attempts to violently stop the boats.
But even though sending humanitarian aid on flotillas to crisis zones is approved by international law, it is still more likely that Israel will resort to violence.
“This is the largest aid flotilla to Gaza ever,” said Sahraoui. “No similar mission has been launched before. So we don’t really know how they’ll respond. I hope we do reach Gaza eventually.”
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