Israel released the two detainees from the Gaza Flotilla this Sunday, Catalan-Palestinian Saif Abukeshek and Brazilian Thiago Ávila, after "six brutal days," according to activists, detained in a prison in the south of the country. Abukeshek arrived this afternoon at El Prat airport, where he was received by family, friends, and fellow activists, and Ávila will fly from Egypt to Brazil. The Israeli navy arrested the two members of the civilian humanitarian mission last week, when the Israeli army stormed about twenty boats of the initiative in international waters.

After nine days detained by Israel, the Catalan-Palestinian Saif Abukeshek and the Brazilian Thiago Ávila, activists from the Flotilla heading to Gaza, will be released and expelled from the country. The Israeli army intercepted both of them in international waters while participating in a mission aimed at breaking the blockade in the Strip.

The Gaza Flotilla sails again. Several boats set sail this Friday from Crete after a week ago about twenty ships were assaulted by Israel in international waters. The civil humanitarian mission thus resumes its course to Gaza. The next stop will be Turkey, where it will make a technical stop and more boats will join. It is expected that a total of more than 30 ships will sail.

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.

An Israeli court has approved a two-day extension to the detention of the two international activists who were on the Flotilla bound for Gaza and were intercepted in international waters on April 30. According to the legal center for the rights of the Arab minority in Israel, Adalah, which represents the detainees, the decision extends their custody until Tuesday.The affected activists are the Brazilian Thiago Ávila and the Hispano-Palestinian Saif Abukeshek, who were part of a group of over 170 people detained when the Israeli navy intercepted the Flotilla off the coast of Greece. The rest of the activists were released last Friday. After a few days without images, this Sunday the two activists were seen in court dressed in prison uniforms.During the judicial hearing in the coastal city of Ashkelon, the Israeli prosecution had originally requested to extend the detention for four more days, presenting a list of serious accusations, including aiding the enemy in wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership in a terrorist organization, and transferring assets in its favor.“The prosecution has cited a list of serious security suspicions to justify the extension of detention. However, it is key to highlight that no formal charges have been filed. At this stage, the court has only granted a two-day extension based solely on "reasonable suspicion," and no substantial evidence has been presented to the court,” Hadeel Abu Salih, one of the defense lawyers, explained to ARA. “The State is using these extreme labels to circumvent usual legal safeguards and justify an interrogation process without solid evidence or jurisdiction,” she adds.This lawyer and Lubna Tuma, who is also handling the case, reject the accusations and denounce that the entire process is “deeply flawed and illegal.” According to the defense, Israel has no legal basis to apply these laws to foreign citizens intercepted in international waters and considers it to be retaliation against humanitarian activists. Therefore, they have demanded their immediate and unconditional release.Accusation of links with Hamas

Israel asserts that Abukeshek and Ávila are linked to the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), an entity that, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, allegedly acted covertly on behalf of Hamas. Although it is still too early to determine the evolution of the case, in similar situations Israel can again request an extension using the same legal framework of “reasonable suspicion” while trying to build a case; if it does not obtain solid evidence, the detainees could be released.“These procedures are extraordinary in many ways and it is very difficult to predict their outcome, but within the Israeli legal system it is relatively common for detainees to remain for several days under "reasonable suspicion" while the State tries to build a case. Often, these first few days are used to conduct intense interrogations before filing a formal charge or being forced to release them,” concludes Abu Salih.The organization defending them has also reported that the two activists have suffered severe mistreatment during their detention, including physical assault, prolonged isolation, and periods with their eyes covered while being held at sea. In this regard, they have asked the court to open an investigation into the conduct of the military officials who guarded them. “Formally, there are internal mechanisms to investigate these allegations, but, according to Adalah's experience in cases of serious human rights violations, they are widely considered ineffective and lacking independence. In practice, they rarely lead to real accountability,” they state from the organization.Meanwhile, the two activists remain in the Shikma detention center in Ashkelon, where they continue in isolation and are on a hunger strike in protest of their situation.

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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.

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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.

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The Global Sumud Flotilla is organizing a new mission to the Gaza Strip this spring. As announced this Thursday at a press conference in South Africa, the mission will consist of 3,000 participants from approximately 100 different nationalities and 100 ships, which will carry humanitarian aid and specialized personnel—medical workers, war crimes investigators, and engineers—to the Palestinians in an attempt to break the Israeli siege. They anticipate the flotilla will depart from the port of Barcelona on March 29th, with additional vessels joining along the way. In parallel, they have also announced a land convoy, carrying equipment and specialists, which will attempt to reach the Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border.

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Last week, the arrest of the crew of the flotilla arriving in Gaza with humanitarian aid from the Israeli government was the spark that lit all the fires. All over Europe, where there had been demonstrations of rejection of the genocide committed by the Netanyahu government for weeks, people took to the streets following the impulse that arises within each of them, and this is how large collective demonstrations usually arise.

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The Israeli government deported another 171 activists from the Global Summit Flotilla on Monday, including Swedish youth Greta Thunberg, on planes to Greece and Slovakia. It denied that they had suffered any abuse in custody, as some of the prisoners had alleged. "This genocide is being fueled by our governments and our institutions. It is our responsibility to end this complicity. We are not heroes; what we have done is the bare minimum," Thunberg said from Athens airport. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has stated that this group of "provocateurs" includes citizens of Greece, Italy, France, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Austria, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom. The Swedish activist, one of the Flotilla's most well-known faces, arrived at Athens airport on Monday afternoon surrounded by displays of support.

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Former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau and Barcelona councilor Jordi Coronas are now home. After spending more than a month aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla. and being detained by IsraelBoth arrived at Barcelona airport on Sunday night, where friends, family, and party colleagues greeted them with applause and hugs. Wearing white T-shirts and gray sweatpants, the same set of clothes they were forced to wear when they entered prison, they both explained to the media what they experienced from the moment they were arrested at gunpoint on the ship and, hours later, arrived at the port. "They made us kneel for hours, with our heads on the ground, and they booed, insulted, and humiliated us," Colau explained. Coronas denounced the "psychological torture" to which they were subjected, with deprivation of water, food, medicine, and sleep—they weren't allowed more than two hours at a time. "They told us that doctors were for people, and that we were animals," she explained.

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Demonstration yesterday afternoon in Barcelona, in support of those detained by the Israeli army during the Flotilla. And as in Barcelona, ​​the protests spread to other Catalan cities and dozens of European cities.

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Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, one of the most radical members of Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, has called the Global Sumud Flotilla activists "terrorists" and "defenders of murderers." In a video posted on social media, Ben Gvir is seen booing the activists, who are sitting on the ground, and pointing his finger at them. "Here are the terrorists of the Flotilla, they are terrorists," the minister says.

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Thousands of people—15,000 according to the Guardia Urbana (Urban Guard)—protested this Thursday afternoon in Barcelona, but each did so in their own way. While a group of protesters clashed with riot police blocking their way to the Ronda Litoral and others did the same at the entrance to Terminal S of the port, a few meters away, a group of people stretched a white cloth that stretched about ten meters. "I don't know what it's for, but they asked me for help," said one of them. Behind them, four tents were beginning to operate as a welcome point for a camp that the organizers aim to maintain at least until the demonstration called for Saturday morning begins.

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The Israeli military assault on the peaceful and humanitarian flotilla that set sail from Barcelona to denounce the plight of Gaza is not a final point. It is a continuation. As long as the genocide in the Strip continues unabated, citizen pressure cannot cease, no matter how far the distance between the indignation and shame in the streets and the harsh global geopolitical reality remains. If it were still possible, the flotilla has made even more evident the collapse of multilateral diplomacy and, more specifically, the impotence of the UN and the lukewarmness of Europe. Instead of a civilian flotilla, a military force—Blue Helmets—should have been sent to Gaza long ago to make a ceasefire possible, to guarantee minimum survival conditions for the Palestinian population, and to facilitate negotiations for the release of the Israeli hostages and the disarmament of Hamas.

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Of the more than 500 activists from 44 countries that make up the Global Sumud Flotilla, intercepted by Israel as it approached GazaThere are up to fifty who have Spanish nationality. And of these, fifteen are Catalan. Most confirmed that they were traveling aboard ships attacked in international waters by Israeli soldiers and are currently detained incommunicado.

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The detention of the Global Sumud Flotilla in the waters of what the Israeli government calls the exclusion zone is, on the one hand, confirmation of what everyone knew was going to happen, as Eugeni Garcia Gascón's article in this newspaper explains well. But at the same time, it is an important episode that reveals, highlights, and underscores a series of facts: one, the Israeli government continues to block the arrival of humanitarian aid, even from a peaceful initiative (the Flotilla has rightly emphasized that it is completely unarmed) of civil society. Two, the Israeli government continues to resort to the use and abuse of force against anyone who dares to disagree with its war of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and Palestine. Three, as a result of the above, it is indisputable that the Israeli government continues to violate human rights and international law. Four, given this situation, the silence and passivity of the international community, genuflecting before the threats and arbitrary actions of Donald Trump's government, is alarming and even dangerous (and in this context, and although paradoxical, the withdrawal of Italian and Spanish military support vessels makes sense, as a way to avoid harm).

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Parliament has been split in two following the Israeli army's detention of the flotilla heading toward Gaza to break the humanitarian blockade. The PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), ERC (Republican Workers' Party), Comuns (Comuns), and CUP (Cup) have forced the suspension of the plenary session scheduled for this Thursday in protest, while Junts (Junts), PP (People's Party), Vox (Vox), and Aliança (Aliança) have voted against calling it off. The left argues that the suspension is justified because Israel's actions have been in international waters and because a member of the chamber, Pilar Castillejo (Cup member), is traveling, but the right criticizes it. Junts (Junts) criticizes the fact that no plenary session has been suspended so far due to the conflict and is being held in favor of the flotilla, and the PP considers the initiative to be "media theater." President Salvador Illa, speaking from Rome, has already explained that the government has provided "legal support" to the flotilla members, although they are currently being held incommunicado, according to the initiative's organizers. Meanwhile, Isabel Díaz Ayuso has accused the Flotilla activists of "not wanting peace."

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The Flotilla has confirmed this morning that The Italian Navy has intercepted 19 of the 44 ships that made up the fleet..

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HeThe Israeli army has finally managed to intercept the 44 ships that formed the Global Sumud Flotilla, the solidarity initiative attempting to open a humanitarian corridor in Gaza. It took nearly 18 hours to complete their assault and deactivate the humanitarian mission, ever since the first Israeli military ships stormed the flotilla at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening when it was 80 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, in international waters. Just after midday on Thursday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement assuring that the flotilla's "provocation" "has ended," implying that all the boats had been stopped. Minutes earlier, flotilla sources said that only four boats were still sailing towards Gaza, but it was finally confirmed that they had been intercepted by Israel. Only one small boat remained, the Marinette, which had been delayed and which Israel warned would also be intercepted if it continued to approach. This Friday morning, Marinette, with six people on board, was already 43 nautical miles from the coast and still moving forward.

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