The night of April 29 to 30, the Israeli navy stormed the Global Sumud Flotillathe Israeli navy boarded the Global Sumud FlotillaApril 29, 5 p.m.

The auditorium of the University of Barcelona was too small this Friday to host the event “Law and Genocide,” with the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, Palestinian lawyer Raji Sourani, and jurist Elisenda Calvet. Organized by the European Office for Judicial Resistance (BERJ) and the Coalition Stop Complicity with Israel, the event was a vindication of international law at a time when it seems like a dead letter. Both have called for an end to the "colonial mentality" towards Palestine.

The Italian Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has called this Friday from Barcelona for an investigation into the role of the Greek authorities in the Israeli assault on the Global Sumud Flotilla last week. "How is it possible that the Greek authorities, instead of intervening to prevent Israel from committing a crime, participated in the operation? They picked up all participants except two," she said, referring to Palestinian-Catalan Saif Abukeshek and Brazilian Thiago Ávila, who are detained and prosecuted in Israel and who have reported torture through their lawyers.

Palestinian journalist and researcher Mariam Barghouti, an international reference in journalism in occupied West Bank, will spend the coming months in Barcelona as part of the resident program at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània (CCCB).

An Israeli court has extended until Sunday the detention of the two leaders of the Global Flotilla Sumud, the Catalan-Palestinian Saif Abukeshek and the Brazilian Thiago Ávila, who have been in a prison facility since they were captured in international waters in Wednesday's assault on the civilian humanitarian mission against the Gaza blockade. The court in the coastal city of Ashkelon, where they are being held, ruled on Sunday that the prosecution had two more days to present the formal indictment. The Israeli government accuses them of terrorism, and they are detained in Shikma prison, on a hunger strike for the seventh day.

Israel released most of the participants of the Flotilla this Friday that the army detained in Wednesday's assault,but is holding two spokespeople for the movement: the Palestinian-Catalan Saif Abukeshek and the Brazilian Thiago Ávila. Around 170 sailors, including about twenty Catalans, have been handed over to Greek authorities and have disembarked on the island of Crete, but the two spokespeople remain detained on the Israeli frigate where they were transferred after the assault. Benjamin Netanyahu's government has said they will be transferred to Israel for processing.

Jean-Pierre Filiu is one of the foremost experts on the Arab world in Europe. A former French diplomat, Arabist and historian, and professor at Sciences Po, he visited Barcelona at the invitation of the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed). He was one of the few European analysts to enter Gaza since October 7, 2023, and recounts his experience in A Historian in Gaza, which the publishing house La Cebra has just released in Spanish.

The United States and Iran are squeezing the last days of the ceasefire, which expires on Tuesday night to Wednesday, in a race against time negotiation. Neither wants to return to an open war that would have unpredictable consequences, but no significant approximation of positions is seen either. The truce is affected by the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, which remains closed. Iran announced on Friday that it would allow commercial vessels to pass through a route under its control, but, after Washington said it maintained its blockade on the passage of Iranian vessels, the Revolutionary Guard said the strait "returned to the previous situation," and attacked several vessels. Trump considered it a violation of the ceasefire, and this Sunday he announced that his representatives will arrive in Islamabad on Monday night. He also stated that the US military had captured an Iranian ship attempting to cross the naval blockade. Vice President J.D. Vance will once again lead the US delegation, along with envoy Steve Witkoff and President's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Iranian authorities, on the other hand, have not confirmed the second round of talks and have accused Washington of "excessive demands, unrealistic expectations, constant changes of stance, repeated contradictions" and consider the US naval blockade a violation of the ceasefire.

About twenty governments and more than 6,000 representatives of parties and progressive organizations from around the world met yesterday at Fira Barcelona with one goal: to restore the credibility of social democracy on a planet battered by war and climate crisis, where the far-right is gaining ground. They denounce that the reactionary wave feeds on a malaise rooted in inequality and that it uses manipulation and lies to stir up hatred against immigrants, women and dissidences. Aware that action is needed, they wave the flags of “No to war”, the defense of human rights and the fight for equality. And they say that now is the time. An anti-Trump front that admits that defending oneself is not enough, but that does not go as far as formulating a tangible positive proposal.

Donald Trump is a millionaire, a real estate magnate, has direct interests in technology companies and... is Donald Trump. The President of the United States embodies in himself all the characteristics of the "enemy" that this weekend has been pointed out by the left gathered in Barcelona, with Pedro Sánchez as host, who has established himself as the reference of the international progressive movement. "When we socialists govern, states do not bow to elites, we put them in their place," he exclaimed to close the weekend summits before the 6,500 people who filled pavilion 8 of Fira de Barcelona. The commitment of the Spanish leader, but also of the heads of state and government who have met, is to "resist" the push of the far-right, but also to "build" together a new multilateral world. "We will twist the arm of those who believe themselves untouchable. Of the millionaires who exploit people and play with greed; of the speculators who play with people's savings and homes, and of the technologists who line their pockets at the expense of the health of democracies and the mental health of our youth," Sánchez ratified, intoning from the stage the "No to war" that the entire auditorium followed.

The use of robots in war is no longer science fiction: machines that replace soldiers are already operating on today's fronts. And Ukraine – like Gaza – is one of the major testing grounds for military technological development. President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced that the Ukrainian army has driven back Russian troops from a position using only drones and robots, without exposing any humans: "For the first time in the history of this war, we have recaptured an enemy position using only unmanned equipment: ground systems and drones. The occupants surrendered and the operation was carried out without infantry and without losses on our part," he assures.

The Brazilian Thiago Ávila (1986) is one of the coordinators of the Global Sumud Flotilla, the new international flotilla that seeks to break the blockade of Gaza and the largest yet. Ávila, an activist and political analyst, was part of a previous flotilla, which was intercepted last year. The mission plans to mobilize more than eighty vessels and more than 1,000 participants from about a hundred countries. It sets sail from Barcelona in an even more dangerous context of regional war and will be accompanied, up to the exclusion zone imposed by Israel, by the ships of Open Arms and Greenpeace. Its objective: to reactivate international mobilization in support of the Palestinian people. After the farewell events this weekend at Moll de la Fusta, 41 vessels will set sail from Barcelona in the coming days bound for Gaza, when weather conditions permit. In Sicily, more boats from France and Italy will join, and more vessels will be added along the rest of the route through the Mediterranean.

One of the key points of the fragile ceasefire established between the United States and Iran on Wednesday is the free movement of maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. A key passage for tankers, fertilizers, and dry goods, the strangulation generated as a result of the war threatens the entire world economy. The volume of ship passage has fallen from between 150 and 200 daily on February 27 to less than ten in the last forty-eight hours.

This Saturday, representatives from the United States and Iran will meet in Islamabad, if things don't go wrong before then, to negotiate an agreement to end six weeks of a war that has accumulated thousands of deaths, has transformed the Middle East, and has shaken the global economy. The Pakistani capital is already experiencing strict security restrictions and the participation of two high-level delegations is expected. But the 15-day ceasefire agreed upon on Wednesday is the result of the high cost of the conflict for both sides and the prospect that a military solution will not be quick. It is not currently foreseen that there is a basis for a lasting pact. The negotiation starts from distant positions, with major obstacles to overcome.

The world breathes a sigh of relief. Trump has ended up retracting his apocalyptic threat to “kill the Persian civilization in one night” if Tehran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz and has accepted a 15-day truce to negotiate with Iran. This negotiation will be carried out with two premises: Iran continues to control the strait and discussions will be based on the 10-point plan presented by Tehran. In the next two weeks, we will know if the White House has today found the clue it imperatively needed to get out of a war in which it had not calculated Iran's capacity to resist and to strangle the world economy. 

Donald Trump has starred in another TACO moment. This is how the US political and media jargon refers to the president's tendency to back down at the last minute: Trump Always Chikens Out. But, although there have been quite a few TACO moments, the one from this past dawn has been of epic proportions. On Tuesday, Trump had announced that a civilization could die that night if Iran did not immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He had even set a time: eight in the evening in the United States, two in the morning in Catalonia. But, just as he had launched the threat, Trump also backed down with a post and surprisingly announced a 15-day truce to negotiate with Tehran under the auspices of Pakistan.

Iran's regime is defending itself from the joint attack by the United States and Israel with a weapon that is not military, but economic: choking the transit of oil in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's gas and oil transit passed. But it is a selective closure: instead of mining the strait to block the passage of all ships, Tehran allows the passage of its own vessels and those it considers "non-hostile," while blocking those from countries it considers "enemies." It has established a selective toll with a physical corridor in the sea, through which it forces ships it is interested in to pass. Those that do not do so risk being attacked with drones, missiles, or speedboats.

Yemen's Houthis have taken a month to come out in defense of their ally, Iran, in a key week of the United States and Israel war. The Shiite militia has entered the war cautiously: it has attacked Israel, but not US bases, nor Saudi refineries, nor the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, which gives access to the Red Sea. A closure of this passage, while Iran blocks the passage of commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz in the Arabian Sea, would further strangle the global economy. The Houthis have warned that, if necessary, they are willing to play this card, and just the threat has already caused many ships to turn back. 

The war of the United States and Israel against Iran has been going on for a month. Trump has twice backed down from his ultimatum in which he threatened to bomb Iranian energy plants, and now there are talks between Washington and Tehran. But in reality this does not mean much, beyond the fact that the war is not going according to the plans of Trump and Netanyahu. The ayatollah regime is resisting and does not seem willing to surrender, because it knows that it holds the key to a global energy crisis. No one knows if the ongoing negotiations represent a US backtrack, another TACO ("Trump Always Chickens Out) moment to find a way out. Or perhaps it is just buying time to accumulate more troops in the region and return to escalation, with attacks on infrastructure, with a ground operation to force the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, or with control of Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export hub. It would be the third time the United States has attacked Iran during negotiations. Whatever happens in the coming weeks, this war that has disrupted the global economy already leaves us with some lessons. 

Víctor Jiménez (Algesires, 1976), a professional merchant mariner, is the president of the council of the International Maritime Organization, the UN's executive body responsible for the global regulation of maritime traffic. He is one of the people who best knows the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz, the bottleneck for world trade in hydrocarbons and other products that Iran has closed in retaliation for the attack by the United States and Israel. A blockade that is shaking the global economy. His mandate is not precisely peaceful: he took office in 2022, shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which also impacted transport in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.