Global Sumud Flotilla
The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) is a coordinated, independent, non-violent fleet of mostly small vessels sailing from ports across the Mediterranean, carrying humanitarian aid including lifesaving supplies for the Palestinian population and challenging Israel’s 18-year illegal blockade on Gaza. The civilian-led initiative, which has organisers, coordinators and participants from Maghreb Sumud Flotilla, Freedom Flotilla Coalition, Sumud Nusantara, and Global Movement to Gaza and more than 500 volunteers including doctors, lawyers, parliamentarians, unionists, human rights defenders, brings together a diverse coalition of international participants seeking to open a humanitarian corridor and bring an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Human rights defenders in the OPT are subjected to acts of harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, stigmatisation, abductions, long periods of arbitrary detention usually under administrative detention orders, illegal searches of their homes and offices and killings. Many of the violations are state-sanctioned, or if not sanctioned at the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, then condoned by the ongoing policy of impunity which permeates the military and judicial system in relation to the OPT. In some instances Israeli settlers have also been the perpetrators of violence against human rights defenders.
