It was November 1973, and the "Australe" departed from the Port of Genoa, a Northern Italian city looking out onto the Mediterranean Sea, built upon decades of maritime trade. The ship carried essential goods of every kind: medicines, small rice tractors, textile machines, a brick kiln and even twenty fully equipped schools.
In January 1974, it arrived at the Port of Haiphong, Vietnam – a country ravaged by 20 years of war. It had been the Genoese dockworkers who collected the aid and loaded the Australe, and even blocked American ships from loading weapons.
Today, the dockworkers of Genoa are once again mobilising, threatening to go on strike if the Global Sumud Flotilla is stopped — the civilian-organised fleet that aims to provide 500 tons of aid to Gaza amidst the humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s genocidal military campaign.
This is happening alongside grassroots maritime boycott campaigns and a decade-long effort to militarise the Mediterranean by the same states supplying arms to Israel.
The sea — and the struggle over who may cross it — has become the newest arena of confrontation between Israel and the popular movements rallying for Gaza.
“People are mobilising across Italy and beyond, with events, protests, and donations,” Maria Elena Delia, the Italian spokesperson for the Global Sumud Flotilla, told The New Arab.
“I’ve never seen this kind of mobilisation – even the media is surprised," the 55-year-old mathematics teacher added.
Ports throughout the Mediterranean Sea housed the activists, doctors, journalists, and other civilians from at least 44 countries taking part in the operation – their boats charting the paths of thousands of years of history.
"Until the modern age, the Mediterranean was more a sea of connections than of barriers: a ‘common waterway’ that fostered exchanges, migrations, and cultural cross-pollination,” said Luca Lo Basso, a professor at the University of Genoa and expert on maritime history.
“Italy’s geographic position, stretching into the heart of the Mediterranean, has always made it a natural landing point for fleets, merchants, and armies. In particular, the Sicilian ports were obligatory stopovers for routes linking the West to the Levant,” he explained.
Collective action on open waters
Oruba Abu-Hammam, a 27-year-old activist, travelled from Sweden to Sicily to board the “observer” boat, carrying legal specialists who will flag any infractions of international law.
The vessel is named “Shireen” after the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killed by Israeli forces while on the job, wearing her press vest.
“I’m following in the footsteps of my parents,” Oruba told The New Arab. “I’m Palestinian — it’s my duty to explore every avenue to break the siege on Gaza.”
With a tight braid and a keffiyeh around her neck, Oruba said that for her, sunny Sicily — with remnants of Arab influence still in its food, architecture, and local dialect — felt like “home,” Palestine.
“Sicily has always been at the centre of a layered maritime history,” Luca continued. “The Phoenicians and Greeks used it as a base for trade and landings; Arabs and Normans left profound marks on its material culture and its maritime outlook; the Spanish integrated it into the Atlantic circuits.
“Together with Malta, the island marked the natural boundary between the western and eastern Mediterranean. Today this long legacy remains: Sicily continues to experience the sea as both a border and a meeting space, suspended between the memory of a plural past and the tensions of the present.”
So it is within this context that the activists are embarking on their mission, one which seeks to hone the sea as a space for collective action.
“We say that everyone is welcome in the sea,” said Tony La Piccirella, 35, who is from Bari, a port city in the heel of the country, Puglia.
“I am neurodivergent, and the sea helps me to return with my feet on the ground… ironically. There are fewer stimulants, so my brain works better than in big cities.”
He is currently navigating the Mediterranean's blue waters on the “Family” boat alongside high-profile organisers like Greta Thunberg.
Freedom at sea
Over the past two years, Tony has participated in numerous search and rescue operations, saving people who risked drowning while crossing the sea.
“The law of the sea is much more human than that of courts on land. The sea imposes on one to help. In ports, sailors and dockworkers work all together – it's very communitarian rather than individualistic as the rest of society,” he said.
“Once you leave the coast, you touch a freedom that on the ground is not possible, because there is no authority, just that of the sea.”
He also sees that this freedom is slowly shrinking. In the last decade, European nation-states have been increasingly surveilling and militarising the Mediterranean’s waters as a response to people attempting to cross into Europe.
The European Union has spent millions on naval missions aimed at disrupting human smuggling networks. Italy is paying for tens of thousands of people to be intercepted and returned to Libya, which the UN slammed as a potential crime against humanity. The central route, connecting Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria to Italy and Malta, has been the backdrop to at least 31,000 deaths and disappearances since 2014.
“All of this is linked to the sea, which has become a cemetery,” Tony adds.
He sailed with a previous Freedom Flotilla mission and was eventually detained by the Israeli authorities. Before reaching Gaza’s waters, he said he saw "surveillance like never before”, seeing “more drones than stars.”
Such drones — many of which are built using Israeli technology — have been increasingly used by EU states to police the sea.
Drones have also been used to survey the flotilla’s missions, and even ended up attacking two of its boats docked at a port in Tunisia. It seems that the battle for the sea is now in part controlled from the sky.
This is especially true in Palestine, where the sea remains the most heavily surveilled and controlled in the Mediterranean. Naval blockades limit how far local fishermen can travel, using constant patrolling by naval vessels, drones, and radar systems. Punishment can even result in live-fire and shelling, sometimes carried out by the Israeli Air Force.
The UN reported that “fishers were targeted generally without warning, while fishing using paddling boats posing no discernible threats.”
“In the last ten years, we have seen [the Mediterranean] transformed into a militarised frontier,” Professor Luca said.
“The flotilla seeks to overturn this logic, reaffirming the vision of an open Mediterranean: a space of solidarity, not of blockades.”
'You are not alone, and we will never leave you alone'
Activists like Tony and the rest of the 600+ crew on board are likely to be apprehended by Israeli authorities upon their arrival, which will serve to expose the extent of this maritime occupation.
Regardless, they are hoping to reach Palestinian soil.
“With the flotilla, I personally noticed that navigating international waters, there is a freedom that we still hadn't used as an organising method,” Tony added.
“On land, there is a push for people to go to the sea for social justice, and in turn, these acts in the sea are reflecting on land,” he says, recalling the thousands of people ready to greet him and his crew on the shores of Tunisia, and the countless others protesting across the world.
At Catania, a port city in Sicily, Paola D’Alessandra, 28, whose friend is a doctor aboard the flotilla, says she feels emotional: “Seeing people so close to me departing on the boat… it has moved our community. It gives us a sense of power, instead of falling for the overwhelming sense of being impotent.”
She has been to protests in London, Vancouver, and Kenya, but she always dreamed of seeing one in her hometown. “Seeing people from all over the world here and the news talking about this… It’s a historical moment, so I’m really proud to be here,” Paola told The New Arab.
During the protest, people chant “From the river, to the sea… Palestine will be free.” It represents the centrality of geography and water in the Palestinian struggle for freedom; the sea represents access to resources, exchange with the rest of the world, and the freedom to navigate it.
Following the lead of the dockworkers, the Italian union USB — with about a quarter of a million members — has called a nationwide strike for September 22, warning that if Israel blocks the flotilla, the strike could be brought forward.
Dock workers from Greece, France and Morocco have also mobilised, while in Sweden, the deputy chair of the Dockworkers’ Union was fired after they blockaded Israeli military cargo.
The grassroots Palestinian Youth Movement also led a campaign calling out shipping giant Maersk for carrying military cargo to Israel, prompting them to say it will cut ties with companies linked to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
“Maritime workers have often embodied the tension between state power and popular demands,” said Luca.
“The presence of the flotilla, and the solidarity shown by local workers, should therefore be understood as part of a long tradition of the politicisation of ports.”
For Maria, the spokesperson of the fleet, the flotilla’s mission has “released a social consciousness” that she believes will remain active well beyond the mission itself.
This action inherently connects ancient civilisations from every shore, and reminds us of the universality of the fight for a free Palestine. It has culminated in the making of history – it is the largest coordinated civilian flotilla ever attempted.
As she braces for the voyage to join the other boats departing from Tunisia and Greece, her message to Palestinians is simple and direct: “You are not alone, and we will never leave you alone.”
Gaia Caramazzi is a journalist and filmmaker based between NYC and Italy
Follow her on Instagram: @gaia.r.c