Canadians plan to sail again to Gaza as part of a flotilla aimed at bringing aid and ending a nearly 20-year naval blockade after six months of Canadian detention by Israel for attempting a similar operation.
Safa Chebbi, spokesperson for Canada’s Global Sumud Flotilla, said more than 100 boats and 3,000 participants from around the world will leave Spanish and Italian ports on April 12, heading for Gaza.
Chebbi said health workers, journalists and builders hoping to provide aid and assistance to Gaza’s reconstruction efforts will travel by ship, along with medicines and other life-saving supplies.
Hanging over the planned sailing trip is the possibility that the boats will be intercepted by the Israeli army and the passengers detained, as has happened to many boats over the past two decades, which have not reached Gaza since 2008.
Last fall, Israel took more than 400 activists, including Greta Thunberg and the grandson of Nelson Mandela, into custody during the first Global Sumud Flotilla trip. Shortly thereafter, six Canadians aboard the Freedom Flotilla, which has been trying to stop ships in Gaza since 2010, were also arrested before being returned to Canada.
This year, the Freedom Flotilla joined the Global Sumud Flotilla with a joint ship, said Ehad Lotayef, one of the founders of the Canadian branch of the Freedom Flotilla.
Lotayef spoke of the arrest as the imminent end of the spring tour. The Montreal poet said he saw it for himself in 2011, when he and other activists were detained in Israel for a week after trying to go to Gaza.
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“We are not trying to be martyrs, but we are also not ignorant of the facts,” he said, noting that the participants receive training to prepare them for possible violence if they are detained.
Dr. Suzanne Shoush, a black and Indigenous family doctor in Toronto who hopes to travel with the flotilla again after participating last year, said she and many others are willing to put their safety on the line for the chance to deliver help.
“People are willing to take risks,” he said. “There is great hope that the flotilla will break the siege.”
“Yes, people expect that arrest will be the result but it shouldn’t be,” he continued. “Gaza has the right to invite people … to its shores. The Palestinian people have the right to receive aid.”
Fida Alburini, a Palestinian-Canadian organizer, also hopes to sail to Gaza despite security concerns.
“We are human, so we definitely feel fear,” she said. “But … there should be no danger because we are sailing under international law in international waters. We have humanitarian aid. We have baby milk. We have medicine. We have doctors.”
“The danger is there because (Israel) decides to attack us illegally,” he added.
There is debate over the legality of Israel enforcing its blockade of ships in international waters, but some experts say international law protects the delivery of aid, regardless.
Israel says its naval blockade is necessary to stop Hamas from importing weapons, and critics see it as collective punishment.
Aid is flowing into Gaza, although not at the level promised under the October 2025 ceasefire agreement, aid agencies say. While the US-imposed ceasefire has halted major military operations, Israel has also continued to attack what it says are terrorists, often killing civilians.
A daily average of 225 trucks delivered goods to the Gaza Strip in January, the UN World Food Program said in its latest food security assessment, far below the promised 600 trucks per day.
Famine is still raging in the area where it is reported that the price of food has been rising since the start of the Iran war.
Lotayef said the purpose of the flotilla is not to solve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but to establish a sea corridor in the region to allow more aid to flow, bypassing the choked land crossings.
“The assets we carry are symbolic,” he said, adding that the ships in the flotilla are too small and too few to deliver enough aid needed to make a meaningful impact.
“But the aim is to open the way to Gaza and open the world’s eyes to what is happening there.”
Shoush, a member of the Leqʼá꞉mel First Nation, said that the Aborigines see themselves in the plight of the Palestinian people, as people who have experienced human settlement and colonialism.
He says he has a responsibility to take action, even if it means putting himself at risk.
“At some point you cross this line where you sit and watch, you know, and you actually do nothing that’s worse for you than anything else.”
© 2026 The Canadian Press
