Aid

Israel has provoked international condemnation for its interception of Gaza-bound aid boats in international waters and detention of hundreds onboard, including Al Jazeera journalists. World leaders, rights groups and media advocates are demanding Israel release the Global Sumud Flotilla detainees.

World leaders condemn the interception of the boats bound for Gaza as violating international law.

Israel has intercepted 22 out of the 58 aid ships travelling through international waters and bound for the besieged Gaza Strip.

The ships make up part of a second Global Sumud Flotilla to try in recent months to break an Israeli blockade by carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. They sailed from the Spanish port of Barcelona on April 12.

The vessels were seized by Israel late on Wednesday in international waters off Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula, hundreds of miles from Gaza, the flotilla’s organisers said on Thursday.

Israel “kidnapped” 211 of the 400 activists taking part in the flotilla, including a Paris city councillor, according to the flotilla’s organisers. Israel’s Foreign Ministry had earlier put the number of those detained at 175.

Here’s how world leaders have reacted to the news:

Italy

Italy called for the immediate release of Italian nationals on board the flotilla.

Italy “condemns the seizure of the Global Sumud Flotilla vessels… and calls on Israel to immediately release all the unlawfully detained Italians”, the government said in a statement.

Italy’s ANSA news agency cited sources among the organisers saying 24 Italians had been detained.

In its statement, the government also called for the “full respect of international law and guarantees on the physical safety of the people on board”.

It said it was “committed to continue supplying humanitarian aid to Gaza in the framework of our cooperation and in respect of international law”.

Germany

In a joint statement with Italy, Germany said it was following developments regarding the flotilla with “great concern” and called for international law to be respected and for “restraint from irresponsible actions.”

Spain

Spain’s Foreign Ministry said it “energetically condemns” Israel’s seizure of the flotilla, which is carrying Spanish nationals.

Madrid has summoned Israel’s charge d’affaires to convey its protest over the detention of the vessels, the ministry added in a statement.

Turkiye

Turkiye’s Foreign Ministry condemned Israel’s seizure of the boats in the flotilla as “an act of piracy.”

“By targeting the Global Sumud Flotilla, whose mission is to draw attention to the humanitarian catastrophe faced by the innocent people of Gaza, Israel has also violated humanitarian principles and international law,” the ministry said in a statement.

Hamas

In a post on Telegram, the Palestinian group Hamas condemned the interception, accusing Israel of committing a crime without accountability and calling for the release of those detained.

Global Sumud Flotilla organisers

The flotilla’s organisers condemned Israel’s seizure of its vessels.

“This is piracy,” they said in a statement. “This is the unlawful seizure of human beings on the open sea near Crete, an assertion that Israel can operate with total impunity, far beyond its own borders, with no consequences.”

“No state has the right to claim, police, or occupy international waters, but Israel has done that, extending its control outward to occupy the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Europe,” the statement said.

Israel

Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the flotilla organisers “professional provocateurs” and said that its forces acted lawfully.

“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.

Organisers of a Gaza-bound aid mission say their vessels are being intercepted by Israeli military speedboats in Greek waters west of Crete, more than 1,000km from Israel. Crew members of the Global Sumud Flotilla say communications have been jammed and an SOS issued.

Washington, DC – Requests for legal support related to pro-Palestine advocacy remained high in the United States last year, as President Donald Trump threatened activists and universities with penalties.

In an annual report released on Tuesday, Palestine Legal, an organisation that “supports the movement for Palestinian freedom in the US”, said it received 1,131 queries for legal support in 2025.

The figure is below the record 2,184 requests the group received in 2024, when pro-Palestine protests swept US campuses — and were regularly met with crackdowns from both school administrators and law enforcement.

Despite universities enacting new restrictions on protests across the country, the figures from 2025 show that pro-Palestine advocacy has persisted, according to Dima Khalidi, the executive director of Palestine Legal.

“Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” Khalidi said.

“Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the US to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us.”

Palestine Legal said that the “overwhelming majority of requests” for legal support came from university students and faculty in 2025, but a growing number, 122, were categorised as “immigration and border-related”.

The group received 851 requests from people or organisations targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy, as well as 280 more asking for legal guidance on conducting advocacy.

Despite the drop from 2024, the rate of complaints last year remained 300 percent higher than in 2022, the year before Israel began its genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Since then, at least 72,560 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

Pressure campaigns

In 2024, Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House in part on a pledge to crack down on the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which sought to shine a light on the human rights abuses unfolding during the war.

He has framed such protests as anti-Semitic, and since his inauguration in 2025, he has led a campaign to penalise schools that played host to pro-Palestinian activism.

To date, five universities have struck deals with Trump after he threatened to withhold billions in federal funding. They include Columbia University, where a pro-Palestine encampment and resulting police crackdown drew international attention.

Columbia eventually reached a $200m settlement with the Trump administration and moved to make several policy changes it said were aimed at combatting anti-Semitism.

Rights groups have condemned such policies as conflating pro-Palestine advocacy with anti-Jewish sentiment. They also warn that Trump’s actions risk dampening free speech, a protected right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

All told, nearly 80 of the students who took part in Columbia’s protests faced serious academic discipline, including expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations, as of July 2025.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration used immigration enforcement to target pro-Palestine protesters and advocates, including scholars like Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Mahmoud Khalil.

To date, the deportation proceedings against Ozturk, who was in the US on a student visa, and Mahdawi, a US permanent resident detained at his citizenship hearing, have been abandoned.

Ozturk has since voluntarily returned to her native Turkiye after completing her doctoral studies at Tufts University.

The government is still proceeding with deportation efforts against Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and permanent US resident.

Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided five homes connected to pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan in April 2025, sparking outrage. Federal authorities seized properties, but no arrests were made.

Legal victories

Despite the restrictive climate across the country, Palestine Legal hailed a string of legal victories in 2025 that upheld the right to pro-Palestinian protest.

Last August, for instance, a federal court dismissed a complaint that sought to penalise UNRWA USA, a non-profit that supports the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990.

A separate lawsuit launched by Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) charged that the University of Maryland had tread on the free speech rights of students by banning Students for Justice in Palestine (UMD SJP). That case resulted in a $100,000 settlement.

Meanwhile, federal judges have sided with Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in their challenges to the Trump administration’s defunding efforts.

“The fights that Palestine Legal and our partners have waged affirm that the Trump administration, universities, and Israel advocacy groups cannot, without consequence, run roughshod over growing demands to respect and protect Palestinian rights,” Palestine Legal said at the conclusion of its report.

“The developments throughout 2025 made crystal clear that if we allow our right to stand for Palestinian freedom to be trampled, all of our fundamental rights will be in jeopardy in the face of an authoritarian slide.”

After talks in Switzerland, the two sides also made progress on a protocol for ceasefire oversight.

The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and rival M23 rebels have agreed to ease aid deliveries and release prisoners, as mediators push to resolve a years-long conflict that has persisted despite multiple peace deals.

The two sides announced the measures in a joint statement shared by the US Department of State on Saturday, following five days of talks in Switzerland.

“The parties agreed to refrain from any action that would undermine the principled delivery of humanitarian assistance within the territories impacted by the conflict,” said the statement.

Both sides also pledged not to target civilians and to facilitate medical care for the wounded and sick as they noted progress on a protocol for humanitarian access and judicial protections.

They agreed to release prisoners within 10 days as part of efforts “to continue building confidence”.

In addition, the parties signed a memorandum of understanding for a ceasefire monitoring mechanism that will “begin conducting surveillance, monitoring, verification, and reporting on the implementation of the permanent ceasefire between the parties”.

Since 2021, the M23, backed by Rwanda, has seized territory in eastern DRC, a region ravaged by more than 30 years of conflict.

While the two sides signed a United States-brokered peace agreement in December, fighting has continued, most recently reaching the highland areas of South Kivu, according to media reports.

In a statement last week, Human Rights Watch accused the parties of blocking aid deliveries and stopping civilians from fleeing the South Kivu highlands.

“Civilians in South Kivu’s highlands are facing a dire humanitarian crisis and live in fear of abuses by all parties,” said Clementine de Montjoye, senior Great Lakes researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The latest round of talks, held in the Swiss Riviera town of Montreux, included representatives from Qatar, the US, Switzerland, the African Union (AU) Commission, and Togo serving as the AU mediator.

April 17 (Asia Today) — South Korea will provide 462.2 billion won ($308 million) in emergency support for small businesses and exporters affected by the prolonged Middle East war, the government said Thursday.

Han Seong-sook, minister of SMEs and Startups, visited South Gyeongsang Province to inspect local business conditions and pledged swift policy support for small businesses, exporters and young entrepreneurs.

Han first toured a “glocal” commercial district in Tongyeong, where officials highlighted a local revitalization model that has helped boost sales in the area. The ministry said it plans to expand support for local entrepreneurs and foreign tourism infrastructure beginning in 2026.

Han then visited the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency in Jinju and emphasized special extensions of policy loan maturities and expanded emergency financing. The ministry is pushing to disburse more than 90% of the supplementary budget for logistics support by June to help exporters cope with rising shipping costs.

At Gyeongsang National University, Han discussed expanding the government’s “Startup for All” project with aspiring young entrepreneurs before heading to K-Tech, a defense exporter, for the final stop of the trip.

Companies at the meeting cited soaring raw material costs and higher logistics expenses caused by shipping delays as major difficulties. Han said it could take considerable time for logistics to normalize and for Middle East energy facilities to be fully restored.

“This is a critical moment for a closely woven support safety net to prepare for the fallout from the war,” Han said, pledging to relay companies’ concerns through an inter-ministerial emergency economic response system and to mobilize all available policy tools.

The ministry said the emergency support is part of a broader 1.69 trillion won ($1.13 billion) supplementary budget approved this month, with 462.2 billion won ($308 million) earmarked to minimize damage to export-oriented small and medium-sized firms from the Middle East conflict.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260417010005540

Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council that South Sudan is at risk of slipping into ‘full-scale famine and collapse’ as fighting intensifies and the UN peacekeeping mission is cut back.