Gaza:
New Flotilla against the Blockade

April 20, 2026

This article is translated and excerpted from the April 17 issue, #3011 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.

A new flotilla of several dozen boats left the port of Barcelona, Spain, bound for Gaza on April 12.…

This time again, doctors, humanitarians, and Palestinian rights activists are on board to alert public opinion to the plight of the nearly two million Gazans, whose terrible situation no longer makes the headlines—especially since the start of the American-Israeli offensive against Iran.

The situation in Gaza is terrible and cannot be summed up in a few figures. But the figures are damning: more than 72,300 dead in the last two and a half years, more than 172,000 wounded, and 10,000 Gazans missing, likely still buried under the rubble. Since the Trump ceasefire plan on October 10, massive Israeli army bombings have stopped, but “surgical strikes” continue to kill.…

For Gazans who refuse to flee or simply have nowhere else to go, it’s a matter of surviving in tents and makeshift shelters amidst ruins and on the rooftops of crumbling buildings. Eighty to ninety percent of what was built is now destroyed. According to a U.N. agency, by the end of 2025, more than three-quarters of the population were expected to face “high levels of acute food insecurity.” And while the October ceasefire allowed some food to enter, leading to a drop in prices, the offensive against Iran has triggered new restrictions and renewed inflation. Nothing that is needed is getting through the one crossing point authorized by the Israeli government: no generators, no spare parts, no medical equipment, no medicine. More than 1,700 healthcare workers have lost their lives in two years of war. As a doctor on the flotilla reports, “People are dying from diseases that could have been prevented. There’s a shortage of everything, especially anesthesia.” At least 18,000 critically ill patients hope to be evacuated to Egyptian hospitals. Gazans, almost entirely dependent on humanitarian aid, still face the threat of expulsion of 37 NGOs, as Netanyahu threatens.…