The flotilla, organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, stopped at several European ports to participate in activities supporting the Palestinian “March of Return” before its scheduled arrival in Gaza in mid-July. The March of Return kicked off along the Gaza-Israel border on March 30th as a series of protests demanding that Palestinian refugees and their descendants be allowed to return to territories they left during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
Activists from Italy, Spain, Turkey, South Africa, Norway, Sweden and other nations joined the flotilla, all seeking to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza and force the international community to take action. “It is a non-violent mission; we do not carry any weapons. All we want to do is to give Gazans in particular and Palestinians in general a ray of hope,” insisted Zohar Chamberlain-Regev, a Spanish-Israeli activist on board the Al-Awda, translated from Arabic as “The Return.”
Zohar, who lived in Israel for many years, said she witnessed the injustices inflicted on Palestinians by her government and felt compelled to take action. “It happened after Operation Cast...
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