By Hayfa HazelPublished On 6 Sep 20256 Sep 2025Tunis, Tunisia – At 61 Station Street, downtown Tunis, volunteers are busy receiving and documenting donations for the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla – one of four organising groups of the Global Sumud Flotilla, aiming to break Israel’s siege on Gaza.The initial plan was for the boats to set sail from Tunis on Thursday. But the Tunisian boats will have to wait until the Spanish flotilla – led by, among others, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg – that sets off from Barcelona on Monday arrives, having been delayed as a result of a storm.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listAnother flotilla leaving from Sicily is expected to join the Tunisian one on Sunday, with all the vessels then departing together towards the eastern Mediterranean.On board the vessels will be doctors, activists, convoy organisers, lawyers and social media influencers. Inside the holds: cardboard boxes full of medicine and infant milk – and some touching messages and gifts from Tunisian children to their counterparts in Gaza.All seven flotillas that have set sail to Gaza since 2010 have been either intercepted or attacked by the Israeli army before even reaching Gaza’s territorial waters. On May 2, the ship Conscience was struck twice by Israeli armed drones when it was just 25 kilometres (16 miles) away from the shores of Malta.Raring to goThorough preparations for the flotilla are ongoing in many Tunisian cities, including Tunis, Bizerte, Beja, Sousse, Sfax and Gabes. For many of the volunteers at work in Tunisia’s donation centres, their ties to Gaza run deep, and many have felt helpless having watched almost two years of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, killing more than 62,000 Palestinians. Advertisement Many here remember local political activist Hatem Laayouni’s joining efforts to break the Israeli siege of Gaza on board the Handala mission in July, as well as the Tunisian-led Sumud convoy that attempted to get through the previous month.Both attempts seem to have ma …
