It was nearly 1 a.m. on Friday when Gabriel Korty, sitting on the deck of a 30-foot sailboat moored off Crete, felt the hypervigilance of the previous days begin to ebb. His boat rocked gently in the dark, and around him were anchored dozens of other vessels festooned with Palestinian flags that flapped gently in the wind.
The placid sea was a stark contrast to the scene two nights earlier, when Mr. Korty and hundreds of other activists scattered through international waters as Israeli military ships closed in.
“It reminded me why I was doing this,” he said. “Israel is trying to erase Palestine, and here I was with people of all ages, from all over the world, people with such moral clarity and conviction and personal courage in joining this mission and assuming these risks.”
Mr. Korty, a 36-year-old artist from Point Reyes Station, joined an 80-boat convoy that set out this spring to breach Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian aid. The fleet, known as the Global Sumud Flotilla—“sumud” is Arabic for steadfastness—set sail from Barcelona in April.
Mr. Korty learned to sail as a child at the Inverness Yacht Club, and he knew how to build and repair things. These practical skills made him useful for a mission with an “extremely D.I.Y.” ethos, he said.
Late on the night of April 29, the flotilla was more than 600 nautical miles from Gaza, near Greece, when Israeli forces intercepted at least 22 boats and detained their crews.
The interception itself was not unprecedented. Of the dozens of humanitarian-aid ships that have attempted to reach Gaza over the nearly two decades of Israel’s blockade, Israeli forces have intercepted or attacked all but a few. But organizers said the operation was remarkable for how far from Gaza it occurred. Last fall, a flotilla was stopped about 70 nautical miles from the Strip, in what organizers call the “orange zone,” where vessels have historically been intercepted.
The convoy is among the largest ever to attempt the voyage. It’s a ragtag armada of aging motor cruisers and secondhand sailboats crewed by teachers, nurses, lawyers, students and veteran direct-action activists. Organizers hoped their sheer numbers would make it harder for the Israeli Navy to stop them all.
For days before the interception, Mr. Korty said, the flotilla had been shadowed by drones. Then, around 10 p.m. last Wednesday, a message flashed across a Signal group chat: one of the boats had been stopped and boarded.
Soon, he said, the rest of the convoy was being pincered by naval ships. The Israel Defense Forces jammed signals and swept spotlights across the hulls, and speedboats carrying soldiers in body armor began circling. Mr. Korty said he saw soldiers train green laser sights onto activists’ torsos.
“You’re required to change your course,” a voice blared over the radio. “Any further attempts to sail toward Gaza places your safety at risk and leaves the I.D.F. with no choice but to take all necessary measures at its disposal to enforce the lawful maritime security blockade.”
Over the next several hours, Israeli forces spread across the water, disabling boats one by one as others fled.
Mr. Korty’s boat narrowly evaded interception. But he watched soldiers remove passengers from other vessels, then board the boats again and disable their engines, electrical systems and rigging. Some vessels, he said, were damaged so badly that later attempts at towing sank them.
Crews had prepared for the near certainty of being boarded. At night, they ran emergency drills. They took shifts keeping watch so others could sleep. So when the ships approached, activists followed protocol. They gathered their passports, put on life jackets and threw cooking knives, phones and computers overboard—both to prevent the military from claiming they had weapons and to keep it from accessing their data.
In statements on social media, the Israeli foreign ministry dismissed the flotilla as “a PR stunt” and “a provocation without humanitarian aid.” “Due to the large numbers of vessels participating in the flotilla and the risk of escalation, and the need to prevent the breach of a lawful blockade, an early action was required in accordance with international law,” the ministry said in a statement. Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, has previously described flotilla participants as terrorists and Hamas collaborators, warning they would face “a firm and unyielding response from Israel.”
The ministry said about 180 activists were detained at sea before being released in Greece. According to activists, 34 people required hospital care after their release, including three who were taken by ambulance. Mr. Korty said seeing images of his friends with black eyes and broken noses had “radicalized” him.
Two members of the flotilla, Saif Abukeshek, a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin, and Thiago Ávila, a Brazilian national, are being held in Israel.
After their detention became public, Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement condemning what they described as the “abduction of two of their citizens in international waters by the government of Israel.” They demanded an immediate return, adding: “This flagrantly illegal action by the Israeli authorities outside their jurisdiction constitutes a violation of international law, which could be brought before international courts, and may constitute a crime under our respective national laws.”
Several European governments condemned Israel’s interception, as did the foreign ministers of Turkey, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia, the Maldives, Pakistan and South Africa. The United States, by contrast, condemned the flotilla, calling it “a pro-Hamas initiative” and a “meaningless political stunt.”
Humanitarian-aid ships organized by activists have tried to reach Gaza dozens of times since 2008. Only the first five missions succeeded. Israel imposed a maritime blockade on Gaza in 2009 during a military offensive against Hamas. The militant group had seized control of Gaza two years earlier, ousting the Western-backed Palestinian Authority a year after winning elections.
Israeli officials say the blockade prevents weapons from being smuggled and militants from moving freely, while critics argue it violates international law by collectively punishing Palestinian civilians, restricting their movement, limiting the import of food, fuel and medicine, and constraining even their ability to fish.
In 2010, Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American lawyer, was part of a flotilla that included the ship Mavi Marmara, where 10 people were killed by Israeli forces. An investigation by the International Criminal Court said the killings constituted a war crime, and Israel agreed to pay $20 million in restitution to the families of the victims.
Ms. Arraf believes the blockade is unlawful and violates the norms governing state behavior. “Since 2009, Israel has been kidnapping civilians from international waters but, in this instance, it was really on the doorstep of Europe,” she said. “It represents an expansion of Israel’s piracy. It thinks it owns the Mediterranean and owns the world. It is really disturbing to see the extent to which countries will subjugate their own interests and the rights of their citizens to support Israel’s violent expansionist policies.”
Flotillas have drawn criticism over the years from some who say such missions amount to a vainglorious exercise in celebrity activism. “I have a lot of admiration for the people who do it, but it’s just a little bit of a cartoon at this point,” said Jim Emmott, who is part of a group that protests Israel’s actions in Gaza every Sunday in Point Reyes Station. “Obviously they’re trying to bring attention to what’s happening, but sailing across the Mediterranean from west to east for six weeks seems like a lot of time to ultimately have all their aid confiscated and destroyed.”
Organizers say the spectacle of a flotilla is part of its power. Even if ships don’t reach land, participants hope that broadcasting their high-risk voyage with nonstop social-media posts will draw attention to the cruelty of the blockade. They also know that sailing anywhere near Gaza all but guarantees a confrontation with Israeli forces, and they want the world to watch it.
“We were never just about delivering humanitarian aid,” Ms. Arraf said. “We are about challenging the policies that leave Palestinians in need of aid. It’s not that we believe flotillas alone are going to break the siege or free Palestine, but they are intended to ignite, help mobilize and help highlight that Israel’s policies have nothing to do with security. It’s part of a decades-long policy of oppressing and now genociding the Palestinian people.”
Given the scale of need, the supplies carried by flotillas—rice, lentils, school supplies, baby formula, basic medicine—are largely symbolic. But activists say symbolism matters, particularly as humanitarian access has become a central battleground. Last year, Israel imposed a complete halt on aid to Gaza for months, causing mass starvation. Then, after U.S. and Israeli contractors opened some aid-distribution sites around the territory, the Gaza Health Ministry said troops fired on and killed more than 2,500 Palestinians seeking food there—attacks that Israel has denied.
After a fragile cease-fire took effect in Gaza in October, restrictions on aid eased somewhat, according to the United Nations. But for Tariq Ra’ouf, a 35-year-old Palestinian American writer who grew up in the Bay Area, a flotilla’s power lies less in the amount of aid it carries than in the personal risk its participants are willing to assume.
“Any activist worth their salt is going to be facing real threat when it comes to fighting systems of oppression,” Mr. Ra’ouf said. “Sure, there are marches, there are protests, there are boycotts, but at the end of the day, what really matters for creating material change is showing up in ways that say we’re not willing to step down.”
Mr. Korty said the interception had sharpened his understanding of direct action. Before the flotilla departed from Barcelona, he had been sitting in a hookah bar near the port when he met a Palestinian couple, Nor and Ahmed, who had been in exile since Oct. 7. Over the course of a single conversation, he said, the abstraction of the mission fell away.
“I realized I’ve never gotten to speak to someone who is from Gaza, who had spent their whole life in Gaza, and had personally lost so much,” he said. “Talking with them reminded me why I’m here. It recentered Palestinian liberation.”