The Arab Organization for Human Rights condemned in a report issued today the new piracy crime committed by the Israeli occupation naval forces, intercepting more than 40 boats belonging to the Global Steadfastness Flotilla, which sailed from Tunisia and several other international ports towards the shores of the Gaza Strip in mid-September 2025, carrying about 500 civilian activists and humanitarian workers from approximately 44 countries loaded with food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies.

Last Wednesday night, the Israeli navy attacked the flotilla and demanded the participating ships to head to the Ashdod port. Upon the flotilla activists’ refusal to change course, the occupation navy attacked and intercepted the flotilla boats in international waters, arrested the activists, and forcibly transferred them to Ashdod port, giving them the choice between voluntary deportation or undergoing judicial procedures for forced deportation.

This new terrorist crime came while the Israeli occupation army continues its systematic genocide war, including starvation, thirst, and denial of medical treatment, ongoing for two years in the Gaza Strip, resulting so far in the death of about 66,000 people, including more than 400 who died from hunger and thirst, in addition to 165,000 injured and 13,000 missing. It also includes the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the elimination of all the necessary elements for the survival of the population, as part of the Israeli pressure to force civilians to leave the Strip and seize it.

Coinciding with this heinous crime, the Israeli Knesset approved on September 28, 2025, a bill to execute Palestinian detainees, in addition to the continued confiscation of lands and properties in the West Bank, rapid and unprecedented settlement expansion, ongoing Judaization of East Jerusalem, and threats to annex the West Bank.

The organization confirmed in its report that the piracy crime committed by the Israeli occupation, despite international warnings against targeting the Global Steadfastness Flotilla, represents a new link in a series of Israeli violations that blatantly disregard international law, which would not have dared without decades of unconditional and unlimited American support that undermined any UN attempt to condemn Israel, especially in the Security Council, as well as the international community’s failure to assume its responsibilities.

The organization renewed its condemnation of all Israeli crimes, holding the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for the lives of the civilian activists, demanding their immediate release, and reiterated its call for urgent international action to end the genocide war in Gaza and activate mechanisms for international prosecution and accountability for the genocide crimes committed against civilians in the Strip, in line with states fulfilling their obligations under international law.