Gaza

Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says US has ‘no alternative but to accept’ Tehran’s 14-point proposal to end war.

A BAFTA winner broke the fourth wall during the awards’ ceremony to ask BBC bosses if they would cut footage of Gaza: Doctors Under Attack winning the prize for best film about current affairs

A BAFTA winner took aim at the BBC during the ceremony after a documentary about Gaza triumphed at the prestigious television awards ceremony.

The current affairs film Gaza: Doctors Under Attack picked up a major prize at the BAFTA Television Awards tonight (Sunday, 10 May). But the moment quickly turned political when executive producer Ben De Pear used his acceptance speech to question the broadcaster that originally commissioned the programme.

The one-off documentary, which features testimonies from Palestinian healthcare workers and documents attacks on medical facilities in Gaza, was initially commissioned by the BBC before being shelved over impartiality concerns. It was later broadcast by Channel 4 instead.

When he took to the stage after the film won in the current affairs category, Ben thanked the journalists involved in making the documentary before addressing the BBC directly.

He fired his parting shot, asking: “Finally, just a question for the BBC: given you dropped our film, will you drop us from the Bafta screening later tonight?”

BBC One was responsible for the TV coverage of the BAFTA Awards night, but did not air the ceremony live. The reception of each award was broadcast to the public around two hours after the actual events took place.

Ben was joined on stage by journalist Ramita Navia, who delivered a powerful speech about the findings of the investigation featured in the film.

He shared: ” Israel has killed over 47,000 children and women in Gaza. So far, Israel has bombed and targeted every single one of Gaza’s hospitals.

“It’s killed over 1,700 Palestinian doctors and health care workers. It has imprisoned over 400 in what the UN now calls the medicide. These are the findings of our investigation that the BBC paid for but refused to show.

“But we refuse to be silenced and censored. We thank Channel 4 for showing this film. Right now, there are over 80 Palestinian doctors and healthcare workers being held in detention centres that Israeli human rights groups describe as torture camps. We dedicate this award to them.”

The documentary was originally commissioned over a year ago by the BBC via their independent production company Basement Films.

However, the broadcaster delayed its release while an internal review into a separate Gaza-related programme was carried out. After that review process, the corporation ultimately decided not to air the film.

At the time, the BBC said it had concerns the programme could create “a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect”.

The corporation also confirmed that production on the documentary had been paused while the review was was being conducted. Despite dropping the programme, the BBC said it remained committed to reporting on the conflict.

In a statement previously issued by the BBC, the broadcaster said it was “committed to covering the conflict in Gaza and has produced powerful coverage”.

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The same tiny tungsten cubes that spray out of Israeli bombs, causing devastating internal injuries to people in Gaza are being found in wounded civilians in Lebanon, war surgeon Dr Tahir Mohammed says. He draws parallels between what Israel is doing in both places and describes the weapons as “indiscriminate”.

May 10 (UPI) — Israel deported two activists who were part of the Global Sumud Flotilla attempting to deliver aid to Gaza more than a week ago.

Saif Abu Keshek and Thiago Avila were deported on Sunday after Israel’s foreign ministry said it concluded an investigation into the two. It had suspected Abu Keshek, a dual citizen of Spain and Sweden who is of Palestinian origin, of being affiliated with a terrorist organization and suspected Avila of being involved in criminal activity.

The foreign ministry confirmed on social media that Abu Keshek and Avila were deported on Sunday.

Abu Keshek and Avila were part of the flotilla of 22 boats and nearly 175 activists that was intercepted off the Greek island Crete more than a week ago. Armed Israeli naval troops boarded the vessels, destroyed their engines and blocked communications, preventing the flotilla from reaching Gaza, more than 700 miles away.

Hadeel Abu Salih, an attorney who represented Abu Keshek and Avila during their detention, called the detention of them and other activists unlawful and a “sham proceeding with no legal basis, intended to punish them for attempting to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade on Gaza.”

Abu Salih is part of the rights group Adalah. It alleges that they were subject to “psychological abuse” during their detainment.

The Global Sumud Flotilla released a statement on Saturday calling for sanctions against Israel for the detainment of activists.

“We demand explanations from the European Union, and specifically, Greece, after days of silence and complicity, and we call for immediate sanctions against Israel for this illegal abduction and for the constant violations of international law and human rights of the Palestinian people,” the Global Sumud Flotilla said in a statement.

More than 30 Global Sumud Flotilla vessels have reached Marmaris on Turkiye’s coast, preparing for the final leg of their mission to break Israel’s siege of Gaza. At the end of April, Israel intercepted 22 boats off Greece and detained activists.

May 9 (UPI) — Two activists being held in Israel after the country intercepted its Gaza-bound aid flotilla are scheduled to be released Saturday, an aid organization said.

Human rights organization Adalah said that Brazilian Thiago Ávila and Spanish-Swedish citizen Saif Abukeshek were set to be released on Saturday.

The organization said on Instagram it had been told “that the two Global Sumud Flotilla leaders will be transferred to immigration authorities later today, pending deportation back to their home countries.

“Adalah is closely monitoring to ensure their release. Adalah and FIDH stress that Ávila and Abukeshek were abducted by the Israeli navy from international waters near Greece, held in total isolation under punitive conditions, and subjected to ill-treatment and torture, despite their mission being entirely civilian.

“Both have been on hunger strike since their detention began. Abukeshek escalated to refusing water on the evening of May 5. Their detention was unlawful from the start,” Adalah said.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday, signed by 18 other representatives, demanding that they be released.

“We are outraged that instead of speaking out and taking action to ensure the safety and immediate release of the at least 14 U.S. citizens illegally abducted by the Israeli military, the Department of State went out of its way to issue a formal condemnation of their humanitarian efforts,” it said.

The activists arrived via the Global Sumud Flotilla, which originated in Spain on April 12 bound for Gaza. It was intercepted by the Israelis in the Mediterranean Sea.

The flotilla alleged Israeli forces held people at gunpoint, smashed engines and destroyed navigation equipment on its ships.

“Intentionally leaving hundreds of civilians stranded on powerless, broken vessels directly in the path of a massive approaching storm. Furthermore, communications with multiple vessels have been jammed, severing their ability to coordinate or signal for help,” the group said.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition announced that Ávila’s mother, Teresa Regina de Ávila e Silva, died while he was detained by Israel.

“[Avila’s and Abukeshek’s] continued imprisonment is not only arbitrary and illegal, but also an act of profound cruelty that has denied Thiago the most basic human right: to say farewell to his mother,” the Coalition said in a statement.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports from Al-Shati Refugee Camp, where families search through the rubble after overnight Israeli airstrikes despite a ceasefire. Residents described the attacks as a breach of the truce, saying they lost shelter, belongings and the only places they had left to stay.

I am a journalist; storytelling is my craft.

Words are the tools I turn to, again and again, to make sense of events and shape them into narratives that do them justice. And yet, when it comes to the genocide in Gaza, my birthplace, language feels wholly inadequate.

There is a limit to what words can say. At a certain point, the instinct to describe, to explain and to make sense of what has unfolded begins to break down under the sheer scale of devastation and pain.

One scene from the start of the war has lingered in my mind: A bulldozer burying 111 unidentified bodies, wrapped in bright blue bags, in a mass grave. It appeared briefly in the endless scroll of social media before it disappeared again, replaced by yet another shocking scene. And another.

A hundred and eleven souls about whom we knew nothing; not their names, not their dreams or what their final moments were. A New York Times headline read: More Than 100 Bodies Are Delivered to a Mass Grave in Southern Gaza. Omission of the perpetrator aside, could that possibly capture the magnitude of such an event?

Every attempt to describe in words what Israel has inflicted on Gaza and its people has felt reductive, compressing something vast, ongoing and staggeringly lethal into language that cannot possibly hold it. What remains is a tension at the heart of the act of telling itself; knowing no account will ever be enough, how do you tell stories of such unspeakable horrors?

This tension lies at the heart of the Gaza Genocide Tapestry, which I am co-curating and which will be displayed at this year’s Venice Biennale. It is an art project that brings together Palestinian women in occupied Palestine and refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan to document Gaza’s destruction in real time. They tell these stories in the way they know best: Needle and thread.

Through 100 embroidered panels, each composed of 55,000 stitches, these women have created a testimonial that refuses to let the world forget what has been done and to whom.

Each panel tells a fragment of what has happened: A journalist weeping over his child’s dead body; young girls with empty pots being crushed at a soup kitchen; a child crying as her world crumbles around her.

Some of these images forced themselves into the public consciousness, if only for a moment; Khalid Nabhan hugging his dead granddaughter, the “soul of his soul”, for the last time before joining her a year later, or Dr Hussam Abu Safia walking towards a tank on the orders of Israeli soldiers, to then never be seen again.

But most images from Gaza are not granted that pause. They pass without names, context or farewell.

The tapestry defies this. To embroider is to decide something is worth the effort – hours, days and weeks of labour. This is to insist it is not lost to the sheer volume of images that pass briefly before our eyes.

A national archive in thread

The Gaza Genocide Tapestry is a new chapter of the award-winning Palestine History Tapestry Project, which I co-chair alongside Gaza-born designer Ibrahim Muhtadi. Following in the tradition of the famous Bayeux Tapestry and the Great Tapestry of Scotland, it is the largest body of Palestinian embroidery narrating the history of Palestine and its people.

The tapestry was started in 2011 in Oxford by Jan Chalmers, a British nurse who lived and worked in Gaza for two years in the 1960s. An avid embroiderer, Jan was previously involved with the Keiskamma History Tapestry, which chronicles the history of South Africa’s Xhosa people and now hangs in the South African parliament.

Recognising the centuries-old embroidery tradition of Palestinians, tatreez, Jan believed a Palestinian history tapestry was in order. I met Jan in 2013 in Oxford during my postgraduate studies. That is when I first joined this invaluable effort.

Tatreez, recognised by UNESCO in 2021, has long expressed Palestinian heritage and belonging. Its motifs encoded identity, place and social status. After the 1948 Nakba, it became a means of preserving Palestinian culture in the face of attempted erasure. Today it is something else again: Testimony.

Not long after Israel unleashed its devastating military assault on Gaza in 2023, the tapestry found new momentum by merging with the Palestine Museum US, an independent institution founded and led by Palestinian American entrepreneur Faisal Saleh. The tapestry is now housed at the museum in Woodbridge, Connecticut, and travels from there for exhibits worldwide.

It was within this expanded framework that the Gaza Genocide Tapestry took shape. Jan, Ibrahim, Faisal, and I came together to discuss how best to document the genocide. We initially created two panels to mark this dark moment in Palestinian history – Gaza on Fire and The Palestinian Phoenix. Faisal then proposed we do 100 panels focused solely on Gaza.

The challenge of producing in a single year what had previously taken a decade was formidable, but it was an urgency dictated by an unfolding genocide and made possible by the scale, visibility and global reach the museum provided.

United in pain

Women in Gaza were initially among the most active contributors to the Palestine History Tapestry. Their work was vibrant and meticulous, and offered them a means of support. But as bombardment intensified, most became unreachable, often displaced multiple times. Materials could not enter Gaza, and finished panels could not leave.

Gaza’s women became the subjects of the story, rather than its narrators.

But the tapestry, at its core, is a kind of “lam shamel” (Arabic for family reunion), as one embroiderer put it. Despite borders and forced displacement, the labour of Palestinian women everywhere converges into a single visual record of the Palestinian experience.

For Iman Shehabi, Basma Natour and the dozen women in Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp, embroidery is how they make a living. But the tapestry project, they said, “restored” a part of their “dignity”.

“It was a space where heritage pulsed, and where our needles stitched both our pains and our hopes,” they wrote to us in a letter upon completion of their panels.

And it is not only the embroiderers who contributed. One of the panels in the Gaza Genocide Tapestry, embroidered by Shahla Mahareeq in Ramallah, was based on an image of Hind Rajab illustrated by London-based artist Khadija Said.

A panel of blindfolded men, arbitrarily detained by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, was painted by Haifa-based lawyer and rights activist Janan Abdu, a Palestinian citizen of Israel. It was embroidered by Bothaina Youssef in Lebanon’s Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp.

Another artwork by Gaza-based artist Mohammed Alhaj, depicting displacement in Gaza, was also embroidered in Lebanon by Kifah Kurdieh, before a million people in southern Lebanon were themselves displaced.

The process of putting together the Gaza Genocide Tapestry has been painstaking. For more than a year, Faisal, Jan, Ibrahim and I held weekly meetings to research and select representative panels across various themes and coordinate the work. Each panel had to be translated by Ibrahim into a format that could be embroidered, then sent to a woman to stitch through field coordinators in each location.

There were constant questions, both ethical and practical. What do we choose to include, and what is left out? What does it mean to translate suffering into a stitched pattern?

At the Venice Biennale

Starting May 9, the Gaza Genocide Tapestry will be exhibited publicly at Palazzo Mora under the title:
“- – – – – – – – – – -” *
*Gaza – No Words – See The Exhibit

It will be available for viewing through November.

When we were informed in November last year that our biennale submission was selected, I felt a complicated kind of recognition. On one hand, it is an honour and a chance for this work, and the women behind it, to be seen on one of the world’s most prominent cultural stages.

On the other hand, it captured the paradox of a world increasingly willing to name what is happening in Gaza, to look it in the eye, call it a genocide, and yet remain unable or unwilling to stop it. What does it say about humanity when art becomes a primary site of real-time testimony because political systems have failed?

I have no simple answer. What I know is this: Palestinian women continue to tell these stories and demand accountability. Theirs is a collective response to my late mentor Refaat Alareer’s final instruction before he was killed: “If I must die, you must live to tell my story.”

Israeli attacks killed at least 31 people in southern Lebanon on Friday, including a rescue worker, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said.

A Palestinian boy mourns his father, one of three people killed in an Israeli strike on a security post in Gaza. The attack is part of ongoing Israeli violence, despite a fragile ceasefire, which has killed at least 846 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – With a weary expression, Saja arranges her few belongings inside the tent her fiance, Mohammed, has prepared for their wedding in just a few days.

There are two thin mattresses instead of a proper bed, a small cooking corner fashioned from wood and tarpaulin, and a makeshift bathroom that Mohammed also built from scraps of wood and plastic sheets.

The couple, Saja al-Masri, 22, and Mohammed Ahliwat, 27, got engaged a year ago while their families were displaced. They are still living in a camp in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, forced into displacement by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Saja agreed to a modest dowry, but even that will only be paid by Mohammed in instalments.

Yet even this “simple beginning” has become unbearably expensive for Mohammed and many young men in Gaza, who are expected to shoulder the majority of the costs in Palestinian culture when they get married.

“I bought the tent for 1,500 shekels [about $509], the wood cost me around 2,500 [about $850], the tarpaulins exceeded 2,000 [about $679], and a simple bathroom cost another 3,000 [about $1,019],” Mohammed tells Al Jazeera. Before the war, apartments had previously been available for rent for between $250 and $300 a month.

“It’s not enough that I’m starting my life in a tent under harsh conditions, even this is unbearably expensive,” adds Mohammed, who works odd jobs like selling bread and canned goods or repairing bicycles.

“Everything I earn barely covers food and water. I tried to save a little for the wedding, but prices are so high, as if I were preparing a luxurious event.”

Before the war, Mohammed lived in a large seven-storey house in Bureij in central Gaza, and owned a fully furnished 170-square-metre apartment.

“When I remember my apartment in our home that was destroyed in the war, I feel deep sorrow … My brothers and I each had fully prepared apartments before marriage.”

“We had stability, and we owned poultry farms that supplied several areas in Gaza,” he says bitterly. “Today, I’m getting married in a tent.”

As for the wedding venue, Mohammed rented a small space that had been used as a cafe, unable to afford a wedding hall.

“A friend helped me rent this small place … for 1,500 shekels [$509],” he says. “It’s not a small amount considering how simple the place is. Wedding halls cost more than 8,000 shekels [$2,717].”

Mohammed’s situation is not exceptional in Gaza. Many weddings are now held in tents, with only the most basic preparations, amid soaring prices and a collapse of basic living conditions brought on by the war and the accompanying economic crisis.

Unemployment in Gaza has reached 80 percent, according to the Gaza Ministry of Labour, and poverty rates have risen to 93 percent.

Incomplete preparations

Saja holds back her tears as she listens to her fiance.

What should have been the happiest moment of her life feels incomplete, and she has nothing to offer to ease Mohammed’s burden.

She understands the situation can’t be helped, and has tried to remain calm. But the difficulty in finding an affordable wedding dress broke her.

Dress shops have quoted her incredibly high prices to rent one – more than 2,000 shekels ($679) for one night.

“Everyone says crossings, goods, and coordination are expensive, so everything is overpriced,” Saja explains.

In an attempt to solve this, Mohammed brought a modest dress from an acquaintance “just to make the wedding happen”, placing her in what she describes as “a painful choice”.

“When I tried the dress yesterday, I felt so sad … I burst into tears. It was worn out, torn at the edges, and outdated,” Saja says, her voice breaking.

“I slept last night with tears on my cheeks … but there’s nothing we can do. This is what’s available.”

She points to the yearlong wait to have the wedding, after postponing it repeatedly because preparations were incomplete.

“The situation doesn’t improve … it only gets worse. Every time we say let’s wait, nothing changes. So we decided to get married next week,” says Saja, who studied graphic design for one year before the war forced her to stop.

Since then, she has been displaced with her family on a long journey that began in Beit Hanoon, in northern Gaza, passed through Gaza City, and ended in Deir el-Balah.

It’s not just the dress that worries her. Beauty salons charge nearly 700 shekels ($238) to prepare a bride.

“They tell us cosmetics are very expensive and unavailable, electricity and generators cost a lot, fuel is expensive … everything is expensive, and people like us are the ones who pay.”

“What did we do to deserve this?” she says.

No taste of joy

Saja’s mother, Samira al-Masri, 49, interrupts gently, trying to console her, saying the conditions are the same for everyone in Gaza, where the majority of Palestinians have been displaced from homes destroyed by Israel, and more than 72,000 have been killed since October 2023.

“I married off four of my daughters: Ilham, Doaa, Ameerah, and now Saja, during the war, without joy,” Samira says, her voice trembling.

“Each wedding felt like a tragedy to me.”

“They all started their married lives the same way … in tents, with almost nothing.”

Samira describes her deep sadness at being unable to celebrate her daughters properly or give them the wedding they dreamed of.

“As you can see, there aren’t enough clothes, no proper items for a bride … no suitable dress, not even a wardrobe or a bed,” she says, while helping Saja arrange her few belongings.

Mohammed adds that bedroom furniture now costs between 12,000 and 20,000 shekels ($4,076 and $6,793) – before the war, the sets had cost around 5,000 shekels.

“Unbelievable prices, and there’s barely any goods in the market. We settled for mattresses on the ground.”

No signs of improvement

In Gaza, weddings are no longer joyful occasions; they are painful experiences repeated over and over.

Despite her natural desire as a mother to celebrate her daughter and give her a dignified start, Samira finds herself powerless, unable even to ask more from the groom.

“The situation is not normal … I can’t pressure him or ask what he did or didn’t bring. Everyone knows the situation … we’re all living it.”

Her worries extend beyond her daughters to her 26-year-old son, who is approaching marriage.

“I put myself and my son in the groom’s place: What does he have? Nothing. The same situation. Every time I see the costs, I step back from arranging his marriage.”

Amid this reality, Samira expresses deep sorrow for young men and women trying to marry today.

“I pray God helps them … our days were much easier … even the simplest costs have become unaffordable.

As her marriage shifts from a moment of joy into a heavy confrontation with reality, Saja tries to hold herself together despite having no real options.

She admits it is not easy, but Mohammed’s presence next to her gives her strength.

“Sometimes, I feel it’s a miserable beginning … but when I see Mohammed with me, I overcome my sadness,” she says with a faint smile as she looks at her future husband.

There are few signs that circumstances will improve anytime soon for the couple. Still, they try to achieve a balance between harsh reality and fragile hope.

“I feel things will stay the same, as is written for us,” Saja says, “moving from one tent to another.”

A 15-year-old boy, Mahmoud Sahweil, was killed when Israel struck a Gaza police station.

His aunt says he was out selling bread to support his 15-member family. Israel has killed at least 830 Palestinians in Gaza since the October 2025 “ceasefire”.

Video from Gaza City shows flames rising after an Israeli strike targeted a group of civilians near Al-Jalaa Roundabout in the Al-Oyoun area in northern Gaza City.

Two activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla arrived in the Netherlands after being released from Israeli custody. The flotilla was intercepted in international waters while carrying aid to the Gaza Strip. Two of their fellow activists remain in Israel for questioning.

Palestinian journalists in Gaza marked World Press Freedom Day by honouring colleagues killed and targeted by Israel, as the territory becomes the deadliest place ever recorded for media workers. Pope Leo XIV called for greater protection of reporters ‘pursuing the truth’, especially in war zones.

Social media is full of posts showing off photos and videos of fancy-looking cafes and restaurants in Gaza. Pro-Israeli accounts often use these images to claim that life is back to normal in Gaza, that people are not suffering and that no genocide ever took place.

These cafes and restaurants do exist. I have seen them myself.

In late March, I went on my first visit to Gaza City since the war started. I was shocked to see the destruction wrought on the city. There were piles of rubble at every corner. Unable to recognise the streets, I felt as if I were strolling through a maze. I soon arrived at an area nearby that shocked me even more. It was full of new cafes that did not exist before the war.

These were not makeshift or temporary places as one might expect; they were built with expensive materials, carefully painted, furnished with tables, sofas, and elegant chairs, with glass facades and shining lights. A luxury feel emanated from them. They looked so out of place amid the rubble and the half-collapsed buildings that it felt almost surreal to see them.

These new establishments do not prove that normality is coming back to Gaza. They are a testament to its continuing genocidal abnormality.

The war made some people in Gaza rich, especially those who engaged in illicit activities like smuggling, looting, and hoarding during acute shortages. This wealth is now coming out in various forms, including luxury cafes and restaurants.

In parallel, the vast majority of Gaza’s population has been thrown into abject poverty. While before the war, the average person was able to afford to sit at a cafe and have a drink and a bite to eat, today this is no longer the case.

Most people cannot even look at these new places, let alone enter them and order something. The vast majority of Gaza’s population lives in tents, has no electricity or potable water, and suffers from the loss of livelihoods. They are surviving on what little aid Israel is allowing through.

I am one of them. My family and I live in a tent pitched near the rubble of our home in the Nuseirat camp. We have lost our family livelihood. The comfortable life we used to have is now just a distant memory.

The expensive new establishments reflect the deeply unjust social order that has emerged in Gaza – one where war profiteering has elevated a new privileged class and collapsed the vast majority into misery with no access to proper education, healthcare and even food. The genocide did not just kill and maim people and destroy homes and schools; it eliminated the prospect of a normal life for most people in Gaza.

I could not afford the fancy cafes, so I continued down the street till I reached a more modest restaurant, which used to go to with friends before the war. Entering it felt like stepping back in time to the days before the war; the place was the same, with the same chairs and tables, and the familiar smells that filled the space.

I sat and observed, dwelling on fond memories of spending time there after university lectures. I ordered what I used to order: a chicken wrap, a soda and a small salad plate. The bill was 60 shekels ($20) – more than three times what I would pay before the war, when my family actually had a normal income.

The restaurant bill, together with the fare I paid for a shared ride to get to Gaza City (15 shekels or $5 one way), cost me a fortune. I felt guilty spending all this money to enjoy a glimpse of normalcy.

The few who are fortunate enough to be able to afford going to cafes and restaurants in Gaza may enjoy short moments of relief, a temporary escape from the horrors of reality. Yet these moments are limited, often accompanied by anxiety about returning to the destroyed streets, the bombed-out landscape and the trauma.

As I sat at Al-Taboon, I thought of the friends with whom I used to spend time: Rama, who was martyred and Ranan, who escaped to Belgium. I sat there alone, holding on to these memories amid the greyness of Gaza’s rubble and the lights of the generator-powered cafés.

The genocide has devasted everyone – even those who have profiteered from it. No amount of time spent in shiny cafes and restaurants will ever erase this reality.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

White House officially tells Congress that hostilities with Iran have ‘terminated’ despite continued presence of US troops in Middle East.

Israel’s military reportedly seized 22 vessels sailing among the Global Sumud Flotilla.

More than ‌160 activists on board aid ships forming a flotilla bound for Gaza have been taken to the Greek ⁠island of Crete ⁠after Israeli forces seized their vessels in international waters near Greece earlier this week, Freedom Flotilla organisers have said.

The organisers told the Reuters news agency on Friday that 168 members of the flotilla crew had been taken to Crete while two activists remained with Israeli authorities.

According to the group’s tracker, 22 boats have been intercepted so far by Israel, while 47 others are still sailing.

On Wednesday, Israeli military forces intercepted the boats travelling with the Global Sumud Flotilla from Barcelona in Spain, using drones, communications jamming technology, and armed raiding parties to halt the humanitarian fleet in the middle of the Mediterranean as it headed to Gaza, according to organisers and Israeli media.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the activists on the intercepted boats would be taken to Greece.

On Friday, an Israeli army ship transferred 168 members of the flotilla crew to Greek boats, which then took them to Crete, where buses and an ambulance car waited for them, organisers said and Reuters footage showed.

A source who asked not to be identified also told Reuters that the remaining 47 boats at sea were still sailing off southern Crete and planned to anchor there at some point before continuing onwards to Gaza.

Each ship is carrying about a tonne of food, medical supplies and other equipment, the source added.

‘A straight-up attack’

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Gur Tsabar, a spokesperson for the Global Sumud Flotilla, described Israel’s boarding of its vessels as “a straight-up attack on unarmed civilian boats in international waters”.

“This is illegal under international law. Israel has no jurisdiction in these waters. Boarding these boats amounts to illegal detention, potentially kidnapping on the high seas,” Tsabar added.

Officials around the globe have condemned the interception of the boats bound for Gaza as a violation of international law, with Turkiye calling it 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,” Turkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Spain called the interception “illegal”, while Germany and Italy expressed “great concern” and called for the release of detainees.

But in a statement on Thursday, the US Department of State threatened “to impose consequences” against those who support the flotilla, which it cast as “pro-Hamas”.

Pro-Palestinian activists say Israel and the United States wrongly conflate their advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for Hamas fighters.

Last October, Israel’s military intercepted about 40 boats from the first Global Sumud Flotilla as they tried to carry aid to besieged Gaza, arresting more than 450 participants, including the grandson of South African leader Nelson Mandela, Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg and Member of European Parliament Rima Hassan.

Detained and taken to Israel, several of the flotilla activists claimed they were subjected to physical and psychological abuse while in Israeli custody.

Israel later expelled the arrested crew members and activists.

April 30 (UPI) — Israeli forces intercepted and boarded the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters off Greece on Thursday, preventing it from delivering aid to Gaza and drawing international condemnation.

The Israeli military, using drones and armed personnel, blocked the fleet of ships in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the Greek island of Crete. Twenty-two of 58 vessels were seized, with passengers held at gunpoint.

“Our boats were approached by military speedboats, self-identified as ‘Israel’, pointing lasers and semi-automatic assault weapons, ordering participants to the front of the boats and to get on their hands and knees,” the Global Sumud Flotilla aid mission said in a statement.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a social media statement on Thursday that it detained about 175 activists from the more than 20 boats of the flotilla.

“Well done to our Navy!” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement following the operation, stating he had directed the military to intercept the boats before they reached Gaza.

“No ship and no Hamas supporter reached our territory, and not even our territorial waters. They were turned back and will return to their countries of origin.”

The flotilla was sailing from Barcelona, Spain, to Gaza when its ships were intercepted. Crete is more than 700 miles from the Palestinian enclave.

The Global Sumud Flotilla social media page posted that Israeli forces smashed engines and destroyed navigation arrays on its ships before retreating.

“Intentionally leaving hundreds of civilians stranded on powerless, broken vessels directly in the path of a massive approaching storm,” the social media post reads. “Furthermore, communications with multiple vessels have been jammed, severing their ability to coordinate or signal for help.”

Israel has maintained a maritime blockade of Gaza since 2009. It has said the blockade is meant to block weapons smuggling to Gaza.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry called the aid flotilla a “PR stunt.”

“As international media have exposed, these are professional provocateurs on pleasure cruises, addicted to self-promotion,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry wrote on social media.

Numerous countries, politicians and human rights organizations voiced condemnation of the Israeli operation, with a dozen-country bloc, including Brazil, Pakistan, Spain, Malaysia and South Africa, describing the interception as an “Israeli assault” on a peaceful civilian humanitarian initiative.

“The Israeli attacks against the vessels and the unlawful detention of humanitarian activists in international waters constitute flagrant violations of international humanitarian law,” the bloc said in a statement.

Italian President Giorgia Meloni separately condemned the seizure, while Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called upon the international community “to adopt a unified stance against this unlawful act by Israel.”

The U.S. State Department, meanwhile, issued a statement condemning the flotilla.

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.

UN experts said Wednesday that reconstruction in the Gaza Strip cannot succeed without ending Israel’s occupation and ensuring rebuilding efforts are rooted in human rights and Palestinian self-determination, Anadolu reports.

“The occupation must end, and the dispossession and discrimination against Palestinians must stop if rebuilding is to have any real chance of success,” the experts said in a statement.

Citing the Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, they said more than 371,000 housing units have been destroyed or damaged, 1.9 million people displaced, and over 60% of the population remains homeless, with reconstruction needs estimated at more than $71 billion.

“The data confirms a pattern of structural discrimination that reconstruction efforts must urgently correct rather than reproduce,” they said, warning that women, persons with disabilities and older people face disproportionate hardship.

The experts said reconstruction must be inclusive, participatory, transparent and accountable, with Palestinians shaping decisions in line with their right to self-determination under international law.

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They raised questions about governance of the process, saying the assessment does not address who would oversee reconstruction or whether the proposed “Board of Peace” by US President Donald Trump is consistent with international law.

The experts are also concerned that the assessment does not sufficiently embed human rights principles, warning that an emphasis on financial needs and infrastructure could reduce housing to mere shelter provision rather than ensuring dignity, security and long-term sustainability.

They said reconstruction could become “a race for profits” without safeguards protecting vulnerable groups.

“Reconstruction is not only about rebuilding structures – it is about restoring rights, dignity and equality,” they said.

They urged states and donors to place human rights at the center of Gaza’s reconstruction, warning failure to do so “risks entrenching injustice and prolonging the suffering of Palestinians for generations.”

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