Global Sumud Flotilla approaching Gaza

According to media reports, an international aid flotilla is approaching the Gaza Strip in a bid to break an Israeli blockade on the Palestinian enclave.

“We are 570 kilometers (307.7 nautical miles) away from reaching Gaza,” the International Committee for Breaking the Siege on Gaza said on X.

Tony La Piccirella, an Italian activist from the Global Sumud Flotilla, said in a video statement that they will reach on Tuesday the point that Madleen and Handala aid ships had been intercepted by Israeli naval forces in previous attempts to lift the Israeli siege and deliver humanitarian aid.

On July 26, Israeli naval forces intercepted the Handala aid ship as it neared Gaza’s shores and escorted it to Ashdod Port. The vessel had reached about 70 nautical miles from Gaza, surpassing the distance covered by the Madleen, which made it 110 miles before it had been stopped.

A group of activists joined the Global Sumud Flotilla from the Mediterranean on Monday, and two more boats are joining from the Greek Cypriot Administration and Turkey. The biggest ship of the flotilla will set sail on Tuesday with 100 on board, the activist said.

La Piccirella said in addition to Italian and Spanish navy vessels that provide protection for the flotilla, three more countries are considering sending more military vessels, without revealing the names of these countries.

“So, it's getting bigger. And it's not about us, about the Global Sumud Flotilla. It's like a movement with hundreds of people at sea and millions of people on land, and it's not stoppable until the siege is broken,” he said.

The Global Sumud Flotilla, made up of about 50 ships, set sail earlier this month to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, particularly medical supplies, to the war-ravaged enclave.

Since March 02, Israel has fully closed Gaza’s crossings, blocking food and aid convoys and deepening famine conditions in the enclave.

The Israeli army has killed over 66,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.

 

 

US military repairs Gaza pier

A top US military official said humanitarian aid would begin flowing again in the coming days through the maritime corridor. The pier has been attached back to the Gaza beach after the causeway, the part that connects to the shore, was broken apart during high winds and heavy seas on May 25.

Vice Admiral, Brad Cooper, deputy commander of US Central Command, said the US military was moving with a sense of urgency to re-open the pier to deliver critical humanitarian aid to Gaza.

"We want to seize this opportunity and get the aid to the people as quickly as possible," he said. 

The pier is just one point of access for humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, but in its roughly weeklong operation before it broke apart, more than two million pounds of aid entered the territory. 

Cooper said he expects one million pounds of aid to be delivered over every two-day period once operations resume.

The Gaza pier has cost the US about US$230 million, which includes the cost of repairing it. Still, that figure is down US$90 million from an initial estimate.

Sen. Roger Wicker, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said continuing operations with the pier was a bad idea. "It continues to put US troops in harm's way without any plan for ensuring that aid is delivered successfully to Gazans in need," said Wicker, calling it an "irresponsible" and "expensive experiment."

Cooper acknowledged concerns that the pier could face more trouble from bad weather but stressed the US military had backup plans.

"We do have a series of contingency plans to adjust and adapt to the weather,” he said. 

Israel controls all of the crossings into Gaza, where Palestinians are struggling to access food and water as Israeli forces wage war against militant group Hamas, and says it is doing everything possible to get aid into the strip.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an update that 9 out of 10 children are experiencing severe food poverty in Gaza.

The office also said that recent Israeli military activities, including in the southern city of Rafah, "have significantly destabilized humanitarian aid flows, forcing UN and partners to reorganize the entire operation."

 

Gaza beekeepers and struggle for survival

According to a report by Reuters, more than 15 years of Israeli blockade has not quite killed off beekeeping in Gaza, but beekeepers say climate change just might.

This time, it wasn't the bulldozers or the bullets, but the rain and the wind. Weather kept the bees confined to their hives in the spring, when they should have been out foraging for nectar.

"This year was the worst for beekeepers in Gaza," said Waleed Abu Daqqa, who tends hives in the eastern section of the Palestinian coastal enclave. "Lots of bees have died."

Temperatures have been rising for half a century in the territory, where 2 million Palestinians live under an economically devastating blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt since Hamas Islamists took control in 2007.

Over recent years, the number of hives has almost been halved and the production of honey went down to 180 tons from 400 tons a few years ago, said Adham Al-Basyouni, an official from the agriculture ministry.

Beekeepers and their bees have lost access to prime agricultural land, bulldozed near the borders of the strip. The blockade and six wars between militants and Israel have made it difficult and expensive to import supplies.

And now, the "prime factor" causing a bee crisis is climate change caused by global warming, Baysouni said. This year, in Gaza, that unpredictable climate brought an unseasonable cold spell. Few Gazans had the right sort of hives to withstand it.

"We witnessed repeated rain storms that forced the bees to stay inside the hives and they fed on what was inside and that led to poor production," he said.

Bees and other pollinators are vital to agriculture and wildlife around the world, and the impact of climate change is a global problem.

"Radical shifts in temperature, droughts, and floods are disrupting native ranges for pollinators, making ecosystems unsuitable for the processes needed to sustain populations, such as overwinter hibernation, spring nest establishment, and reproduction," wrote bee researchers Diana Cox-Foster and Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman of the US Department of Agriculture.

Ratib Sammour, a Gazan agricultural engineer and beekeeper, has built a successful business selling health products from bees and treating patients with bee stings, known as apitherapy. Now it is at risk.

Not only has honey production fallen, but with it the quantity of other products such as royal jelly, bee pollen, bee venom and bee glue known as propolis.

"When the quantity of bees started to decline it reflected on us," he said.