Author: RIPESS Europe
We are pleased to share two statements of support for the Global Sumud Flotilla.
RIPESS stands in solidarity through the lens of the social and solidarity economy, while La Vía Campesina upholds the principles of food sovereignty and the rights of grassroots producers. Together, these messages reaffirm our shared commitment to justice, dignity, and global solidarity.
La Vía Campesina Stand with the Global Sumud Flotilla Sailing to Gaza
Posted on 1 October 2025
We, La Vía Campesina – the international peasant movement representing over 200 million farmers and rural workers worldwide – affirm that the Global Sumud Flotilla, the Freedom Flotilla, and the Thousand Madeleine Flotilla are historic acts of global conscience. They embody peoples’ right to life and dignity and stand as a collective challenge to the logic of starvation and siege.
Today, the flotilla consists of 48 civilian vessels, with the number expected to rise to 59 as additional international ships join. On board are more than 500 activists from 45 countries, doctors, journalists, peasants, workers ,artists ,human rights defenders and parliamentarians. Departing from several Mediterranean countries, the flotilla is sailing 700–800 kilometers from Gaza, with its arrival projected between 30 September and 1 October 2025, weather permitting. It carries urgent humanitarian supplies, infant formula, medicines, dry food, and school materials.
La Vía Campesina is proudly represented on board the flotilla by delegates from Europe through the Confederation Paysanne, as well as from the Arab Region and North Africa (ArNA), including the Million Rural Women and the Landless. Our presence symbolizes the deep-rooted solidarity of peasant movements worldwide and represents all our member organizations globally, standing with the people of Palestine who continue to face relentless genocide, siege, and starvation. By participating in this historic mission, we reaffirm our commitment to justice, human dignity, and the fundamental rights of Palestinians living under occupation.
We hold the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the repeated drone attacks launched against several vessels on 23–24 September, including the use of irritant chemical agents that disabled equipment and forced temporary halts. These actions constitute grave breaches of international humanitarian law, aimed at intimidating activists and obstructing the safe delivery of life-saving aid. We also consider the recent direct Israeli threats against some members of the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla to be serious and condemnable. Any attack on this flotilla would constitute a deliberate crime against humanity under international law. All countries bear legal and moral responsibilities to ensure the protection of all flotilla members, prevent any Israeli attack on this peaceful humanitarian mission, and guarantee safe passage.
We salute the unprecedented steps taken by Italy and Spain in dispatching naval vessels for humanitarian escort, and we recognize the protective role of Greece during the flotilla’s passage through its waters. We further welcome the joint statement by 16 states that explicitly called for respect for international law and warned that any aggression against the flotilla would trigger international accountability. The growing presence of international monitoring, maritime and aerial, signals a qualitative shift, a gradual erosion of the occupation’s monopoly of violence at sea and an expansion of collective guarantees around civilian solidarity missions. We call on all states to reinforce this protective framework and ensure the establishment of permanent humanitarian maritime corridors to Gaza, beyond one-off convoys.
We acknowledge with cautious optimism the recent wave of recognitions of the State of Palestine by major Western capitals, including the UK, Canada, Australia, Portugal, and later France and others. Yet we stress that these recognitions remain symbolic and legally insufficient if not immediately translated into concrete measures,ending genocide, lifting the blockade, prohibiting arms transfers used in war crimes, and imposing economic and legal sanctions on the machinery of settlement and annexation. A “state” on paper, while Palestinian land continues to be fragmented and annexed, is nothing more than a diplomatic stamp over an unfolding apartheid reality.
We fully support the call for the application of the Uniting for Peace resolution to respond to the famine and genocide in Gaza. This resolution will provide protection for the Palestinian population from further violence, genocide, starvation, and displacement; guarantee access to food and medical supplies; establish a humanitarian emergency corridor; break the siege on Gaza; and enable the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. It offers a legally recognized mechanism to safeguard the Palestinian people enduring inhumane conditions and to end their suffering, allowing the international community to act decisively in the face of threats to peace and security.
In contrast, we view with deep concern the Paris–Riyadh initiative to revive the “two-state solution.” Such frameworks, tested for decades, have produced only more walls, checkpoints, settlements, and land confiscations. Without an enforceable timetable to dismantle occupation infrastructure and end annexation, these conferences remain empty exercises designed to manage, not resolve, the crisis.
Most dangerously, the plan announced by Trump seeks to re-engineer the Palestinian question into a technocratic humanitarian file managed by an international “peace council” with figures such as Tony Blair. Beyond stripping Palestinians of political agency, this scheme risks cementing the separation of Gaza from the West Bank and reproducing the failures of Oslo in an even harsher form authority without sovereignty and governance without accountability. It must be understood as an attempt to break the growing isolation of Israeli occupation and rescue it in its final moments of legitimacy.
In this context, the Global Sumud Flotilla, the Freedom Flotilla, and the Thousand Madeleine Flotilla becomes a practical rupture with the politics of blockade, a living declaration that peoples of the world will not allow Gaza to be starved into submission. Its ships carry food, medicine, and books, but above all they carry the shared will of humanity to confront genocide with solidarity.
We therefore call on the United Nations Secretary-General, the 16 states that issued the joint protection statement, and all governments committed to the rule of law to take immediate action: deploy a maritime monitoring mission, open nearby ports for resupply and medical support, establish rapid accountability mechanisms for any attack, and prohibit the export of technology used in drone strikes against civilian vessels.
We further call on unions, social movements, and peasant organizations across the globe to transform solidarity into direct action: occupations of ports, pressure on supply chains that fuel the war, and urgent fundraising to sustain the flotilla until it reaches Gaza.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, the Freedom Flotilla, and the Thousand Madeleine Flotilla are not a substitute for a just political solution, but they are proof that dignity can be defended here and now. They affirm that when peoples’ hands join together, they are stronger than any wall of siege. We urge the world to stand with these ships as the opening of a new chapter of international solidarity that breaks the blockade and restores to the Palestinian people their full, inalienable rights: to their land, their return, and their sovereignty.
This post is also available in Español and Français.
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Ripess Europe
Posted on 8 September 2025
We, as the RIPESS network promoting Social Solidarity Economy worldwide, warmly support the new “Freedom Flotilla,” which set sail this week toward besieged Gaza. This mission stands in continuity with the courageous voyages that began in 2008, when two Greek fishing boats—the Free Gaza and the Liberty—successfully broke the naval blockade for the first time in 41 years. On board were 44 people of 17 nationalities. That historic breakthrough inspired further flotillas of a global solidarity movement by sea.
In standing with the Global Sumud (steadfast perseverance, in arabic) Flotilla, we reaffirm our request to break the siege on Gaza, to oppose the ongoing war crimes and collective punishment against its people, and to uphold international law. Our solidarity is a concrete stand for justice, dignity, and the right of Palestinians to live in freedom and peace.
Carrying forward this legacy 17 years later, participants from the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the Global Movement to Gaza, and Sumud Nusantara have come together under one banner: to break the illegal siege of Gaza, to open a humanitarian corridor, and to help end the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. On 31/08/2025, dozens of boats, large and small, departed from Barcelona and Genova and the first week of September more boats will depart from Tunisia and Greece and converge on Gaza in what will be the largest coordinated civilian flotilla in history.“We are not governments, armies, or institutions. We are ordinary people, organizers, doctors, humanitarians, clergy, artists, lawyers, and seafarers, united by the belief in human dignity and the transformative power of nonviolent action”.
This movement builds on decades of Palestinian resistance and international solidarity. Civilian vessels carrying aid and engaging in peaceful protests in international waters are protected under maritime law. With preparation, training, and global visibility, they aim to make clear: the siege must end, and the world will no longer look away.
RIPESS global network stands firmly with the Global Sumud Flotilla for one more reason: the mission reflects the very heart of the social solidarity economy; people acting together to resist oppression, defend life in dignity and self- determination. We call on the whole international community, from civil society to governments, to act decisively to uphold human rights, protect civilians, and put an immediate end to the blockade and ongoing atrocities.
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