Recent weeks have seen renewed attention on the blockade of
Gaza as international activists’ efforts to break Israel’s blockade with a
flotilla come to a head.

The Israeli government has begun to ramp up its propaganda
efforts, claiming the flotilla has ties to terrorism. The United States
government has warned activists working against the blockade, with a State
Department spokesman telling reporters earlier this month that “groups and
individuals who seek to break Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza are taking
irresponsible and provocative actions.” (State Department press briefing,
1 June 2011).

But while the flotilla is only beginning to make headlines
now, it’s been a long time in the works.

The organizing for an American boat to join the flotilla
began a year ago. Ten days after Israeli forces killed nine activists aboard
the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza on 31
May 2010, hundreds of people streamed into a Manhattan church basement for a
report on the attack. The one question on everyone’s minds was: “What
could we do next?”

The event featured Ann Wright, a former U.S. army colonel
who resigned from her State Department post in 2003 to protest the Iraq war,
and Adam Shapiro, a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement.
Wright, who had just described her experience on board the U.S.-flagged
Challenger boat that was part of the international Gaza Freedom Flotilla, gave
the answer: organize a boat filled with American passengers and join the next
flotilla to break the blockade.

Wright’s idea was met with thunderous applause, and activist
Laurie Arbeiter proposed two names for the boat: The Audacity of Hope and
Dreams From My (Palestinian) Father, based on U.S. President Barack Obama’s
memoirs. The former name was chosen.

Nearly a year later, final preparations are underway for the
next big flotilla to Gaza, which is scheduled to occur in late June. The U.S.
Boat to Gaza will take part in the largest planned fleet yet, with an estimated
1,000 passengers from an array of countries collaborating to break Israel’s
blockade.

Solidarity activists say that because the U.S. is Israel’s
chief economic, military and diplomatic backer, it’s crucial to have U.S.
citizens challenge the blockade.

“It’s precisely because of the horrendous role that the
U.S. government has played literally for decades now that people inside this
country need to have strong voices” against the blockade, said Leslie
Cagan, coordinator for The Audacity of Hope and longtime anti-war activist.

Critical organizing effort

Although the U.S.-flagged Challenger had American
passengers, this year’s effort will be the first time a large-scale campaign
with national involvement for an American boat participates in a flotilla to
Gaza. Thousands of people around the U.S. are contributing to the initiative in
the form of donations and volunteer labor. The U.S. Boat to Gaza group says
they have raised more than $400,000 since they started last year. There’s only
one paid coordinator for the enormous effort, and most of the core activists
based in New York volunteer.

“It’s a critical organizing effort. I’m getting phone
calls from all over the country from places where you would think there is not
a single Palestine solidarity activist. It’s about American citizens trying to
change America,” said Felice Gelman, an organizer for the U.S. Boat to
Gaza who was a member of the Gaza Freedom March Coordinating Committee.

“We’ve made so much incredible progress on the issue of
Palestinian rights and justice, but we have a government that absolutely
refuses to cede an inch … It seems to me obvious that the U.S. would
participate in this international flotilla and force the government to choose
between the interests and lives of U.S. citizens and their attachment to
Israel,” Gelman added.

An estimated fifty passengers, including Wright, will sail
with The Audacity of Hope, which will join at least ten other ships to sail to
Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade. “It’s the role of
those not in danger to help those in danger, and the Palestinians are in
danger,” Wright told The Electronic Intifada. “We can’t let
[Israel’s] violence stop us from being with the people of Palestine.”

Other passengers on the boat besides Wright include Alice
Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author; Hedy Epstein, an 87-year-old
Holocaust survivor; Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK; and former CIA analyst Ray
McGovern.

Defying Israel’s siege

Two ships from Europe will be carrying infrastructural and
medical supplies. And in a unique move, the U.S. boat will carry letters of
solidarity from Americans to Palestinians in Gaza.

Although the flotilla will carry some aid for Gaza,
activists say that is not the main point of sailing. Instead, as Leslie Cagan
put it, “we’re certainly not opposed to aid getting through to the people,
but the whole effort is not about just making sure a little bit more aid gets
in. It’s about respecting the fact that Gazans should control their own
borders.”

The international flotilla, like past boats, will be aiming
to break Israel’s naval blockade, which has strangled Gaza’s fishing industry.
The Israeli navy enforces a harsh “buffer zone” around Gaza’s
territorial waters, only allowing Palestinians to venture out three miles
before being shot at or detained — contrary to the twenty miles Gazans were
promised under the Oslo accords signed in 1993.

Despite the much-heralded “easing” of the siege of
Gaza following the Israeli attack on the May 2010 Freedom Flotilla, a November
2010 report from a coalition of human rights groups found that there had been
“no change” in Israel’s “buffer zone” policies.

“Access to around 35 percent of Gaza’s farmland and 85
percent of maritime areas for fishing remains restricted by the Israeli
“buffer zone,” with devastating impact on the economy and people’s
rights and livelihoods. An estimated 178,000 people are directly affected.
Boundaries of the restricted areas are highly arbitrary and enforced by live fire,”
the report reads (“Dashed Hopes: Continuation of the Gaza Blockade, Joint
Agency report,” 30 November 2010).

The second flotilla, named Stay Human in honor of the late
Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni, will be facing down an Israeli government
and military willing to do whatever it takes to enforce the brutal and illegal
blockade.

Bodies on the line

“We’re directly challenging the blockade with our
bodies,” Robert Naiman, the policy director of Just Foreign Policy, said
as he stood near New York’s East River, where a fundraiser and celebration for
the U.S. boat were being held on a ship with music and Middle Eastern food.
Naiman will also be on board The Audacity of Hope.

The passengers on last year’s flotilla paid a dear price for
challenging the blockade with their bodies. At about 4 am on 31 May 2010,
Israeli naval commandos rappelled onto the Mavi Marmara from helicopters above,
opening fire and killing nine persons and injuring more than fifty.

A UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission later found
that Israeli forces violated international law in attacking the flotilla and
used “unnecessary, disproportionate, excessive and inappropriate”
force. The mission also found that the deaths of six passengers can be
“characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions” —
including the killing of Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen of Turkish
origin.

The report also reiterated what other UN reports and
individuals have called an illegal blockade that amounts to collective
punishment (“Report of the international fact-finding mission to
investigate violations of international law, including international
humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the Israeli attacks on the
flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance,” Human Rights Council,
27 September 2010 [PDF]).

Organizers of the flotilla are well aware of the dangers
that lie ahead, but they remain unbowed.

“After that flotilla was hit, we decided to make an
even bigger one, basically not to back down,” Huwaida Arraf, the
chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement, the organization that sits on the
international coordinating committee for the flotilla, said in a phone
interview from Amman, Jordan. “We’re not going to back down to Israel’s
violence. That’s why they hit us — to try to break this movement. But we’re
showing them that we’re coming back with larger force.”

The Israeli government has already made it clear that they
are prepared to use deadly force again on the flotilla’s passengers. In
testimony to the Turkel Commission, the Israeli government-created board that
was tasked with looking into the raid on the flotilla, then chief-of-staff for
the Israeli army, Gabi Ashkenazi, said that snipers would be used on future
flotillas (“Ashkenazi: Next time, IDF will use snipers to halt Gaza-bound
flotillas,” Haaretz, 12 August 2010).

Other media reports indicate that “attack dogs”
may be used (“IDF will use attack dogs in future flotilla
interceptions,” The Jerusalem Post, 7 October 2010).

Despite the threats of violence from Israel — which eerily
echo the warnings sounded before the Mavi Marmara raid — there have been big
changes: the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt, formerly the chief
Arab partner to Israel’s blockade, and the Arab revolts rocking the Middle
East. Palestine solidarity activists see the flotilla as part of the Arab
movements for freedom and democracy.

“As a nonviolent movement, we are following in the
footsteps of the Freedom Riders, and following in the footsteps of the Arab
Spring,” said Jane Hirschmann, an organizer with the U.S. Boat to Gaza and
a member of the New York City-based group Jews Say No!

Egypt’s recent decision to open the Rafah border — a result
of the overthrow of Mubarak’s regime and the reconciliation agreement between
Hamas and Fatah — was praised by activists, but they insist that the flotilla
will still sail. Gelman said that while the opening of Rafah was
“great,” the “U.S. and Israel are conspiring to keep Gaza
blockaded. Egyptians should not have to bear the entire burden of confronting
U.S./Israeli policy.”

U.S. support for the Israeli blockade isn’t likely to
change, and the flotilla will sail ahead in the face of opposition expressed by
members of U.S. Congress, the UN Secretary General and Susan Rice, the Obama
administration’s ambassador to the UN.

As Paki Wieland, an activist who will be sailing to Gaza on
The Audacity of Hope, put it, “We will not stand for it. The people can
make the difference.”