“The first boats started from Barcelona, while on 31 those from Genoa start, and on September 4 from Sicily – or 5, it depends on time – to sail all together towards Gaza”. Maria Elena Delia, 55, teaching Torinese physics and mathematics and voluntary activist for Palestine has always been, is the national contact person of the Global Sumud Flotilla, The pacifist company of simple citizens who want to bring food and medicine to the Gaza Strip, challenging the Israeli government that has blocked any access. From Genoa, where it is now before departure with about 260 tons of aid, tells its emotion, then For Vanity Fair will hold a “on-board video-diary” . “I feel that there are many people who will look at our backs, I feel the closeness of everyone: the energy is maximum, and also gratitude”.
How many boats and how many people are leaving?
«Let’s say there are many tens, about fifty. We are talking about sailing boats, tourism boats, so you don’t have to think of cruise ships. They bring each 12, maybe 20, maybe 8 people. This choice was made to put even more in evidence, even from a physical point of view, which it really comes to peaceful, non -violent boats, which only try to open a humanitarian corridor, who want to bring help. We must not even think of the NGO ships who help migrants in the Mediterranean, ours are smaller ».
Who will start from Italy?
“From Sicily several tens of boats, so there will be several people on board, arrived a few days earlier to be formed – there is a mandatory training, not to stay on the boat, but to know how to behave in the event of interception by the Israeli Navy. An important thing to underline is that there will be no boats that will have people of the same nationality on board. There will not be the Italian boat, the Tunisian boat, the German one, Algerian or Canadian, because we have chosen to make a mix of nationality for each boat: there are stronger passports and less strong passports, so we wanted to guarantee everyone a more homogeneous treatment in the Very Very Very case stopped. Having made this premise, Italy will have about twenty people on board excluding crews, captains, skippers, etc. Among these people there are representatives of the third sector, some parliamentarian, still Greta Thunberg, some journalists, and any citizens ».
When do you plan to arrive in front of Gaza?
“We will travel very slowly, also to give visibility to the initiative. We will communicate with the world thanks to Starlink, installed on all boats. However, if they make us skip all the communications or arrest us, my diary will also stop ».
Do you plan to be stopped?
«The Israeli protocol is this. At least that’s what has happened so far, and also with the last ship in June. The story of the attempts to break the siege of Gaza from the sea began in 2008 with the two boats of the Free Gaza Movement: it was since 1967 that an international ship had not broken through the Israeli block. My friend Vittorio Arrigoni was there with about forty activists from all over the world and I still get goosebumps when I remember that he called me to tell me that they had landed – I had remained in Italy to coordinate. It was since 2006, since the strip was closed, that we said: “Since we can no longer get to the ground, why don’t we try to get away at sea?”. Then the Freedom Flotilla was born, which since 2008 sends boats, but has always been one of the boat at a time, maximum two or three, or seven in 2010 – the episode that cost the life of ten activists. All boats have been stopped. That first time it went well because there was the surprise effect, on board there were many journalists, and the Israeli government eventually passed them. This time the situation is still different: there have never been so many boats, although it is likely that they will try to stop us already in international waters ».
What are the possible scenarios?
«They make us pass, difficult. They lift their ships and stop us, they ask us to go back and if we don’t do it they arrest us – for them – because for us it is a kidnapping: we are in international waters so it is as if they were pirates. Humanitarian aid seizes us, and therefore they will never make them come where they owe … ».
What hope do you have?
“We expect support, we also hope from our institutions, in our governments, because in the end we are all citizens who are making a legal act against genocide and we try to open a humanitarian corridor, we bring medicines, we come from almost 80 countries around the world, so Mgari will recreate what was created in 2008. There are many international TVs on board. If we hadn’t even a little bit of hope we would be crazy. At the level of strategy we are analyzing all possible reactions and our answers ».
How did you start to take an interest in these themes, and how did you enter this group?
«I have always dealt with, since I was at university, and even before in high school, politics, specializing in the defense of the rights of those peoples who in some way were not as privileged as us. In 2003 for the first time I found myself in a one -month project in the West Bank, Bethlehem, in a refugee camp, and there I met the other activists of the Internazional Solidarity Movement, such as Vittorio Arrigoni, and I realized that of many countries I had known, that was a very particular situation, I call her “the mother of all the injustices”, since 1948 and even before, No? From from the English domination, in short, and from there onwards. I entered various groups and finally in the Global Movement to Gaza, which has 44 delegations in the world. The Fleet of the Global Sumud Flotilia is also made up of all the Pro Palestine associations of Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, more different Asian delegations – Malaysia, Thailand, Filippine, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldive “.
How did you get to think of going en masse to Gaza?
“From that 2008 the situation in Gaza has become so an inferno that we are beyond our worst expectations, so for us it is a categorical imperative to show that women, the men of the world, that is, they no longer do it, they no longer make it to be there to see the children who die of hunger on the mobile phone and people who are moved from point a to point b just to hit them better with the bombs”.
Source: Vanity Fair
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