Israel’s interception of the Madleen and Egypt’s crackdown on thousands marching to Rafah will not stop resistance to systematic starvation
~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~
During last week more than 4,000 people gathered in Cairo to march together by foot to Gaza, demanding the immediate entry of the trucks of humanitarian aid waiting at the border in Rafah for permission from the Israeli government. Some came by plane from Europe, Asia and the Americas, and a thousand more travelled with the Sumud Convoy from Algeria, across Libya and Egypt.
“We are all going to be accountable,” said Saif Abukeshek, one of the organisers of the Global March to Gaza. “There is nothing going to be left of us if we are going to just continue to be silent.”
On the first day of the march at two checkpoints on the Sinai Peninsular, activists were detained and stopped from moving forwards, particularly at Al-Ismailia checkpoint on June 13th. 1,000 people were stopped and some were rounded up on buses by the police, who used force against those who wanted to remain. At nightfall, the police sent in plainclothes agent provocateurs, who attacked those sitting on the ground outside the checkpoint.
Videos shared by participants clearly show a group of men dressed in white, followed by the police, throwing garbage and what seems to be water at the activists. Egyptian authorities seized the passports of those trying to pass the checkpoint and the security services were ordered to use violence in case the protesters tried to force their way across it.
Photo: Jaber Jehad Badwan
Before the march had even begun, plain clothes police officers arrived at Cairo’s hotels with a list of the names of those to be questioned, detained or deported. Hundreds of people were detained at airports in Egypt, despite the authorities giving no legal reason. No criminal charges have been brought against any of those at the checkpoint, yet it is clear that Egypt has submitted to the threats of military intervention by the Israeli defense minister.
“We came to stand with Gaza,” said Global March spokesperson Melanie Johanna Schweizer, “and we are still standing. We will regroup, we will care for one another and we will continue to carry this message forward. What we face here is nothing compared to what Palestinians in Gaza face every day.”
Systematic starvation
At the beginning of 2025, the criminalization of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in the near east (UNRWA) came into effect at the Knesset, prohibiting the UN agency from operating within the state of Israel and the government from communicating with UNRWA. This was the time of the ceasefire, when around 500-600 trucks of humanitarian aid were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip.
Around a month later, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was established in both Delaware, USA and Geneva, Switzerland. Comprised of various shell companies and informally advised by Tony Blair, the US-Israeli initiative replaced a 75-year humanitarian distribution network with a group of armed mercenaries.
Despite UNRWA having the personnel and community relationships for the effective and safe administration of aid to a starving population from over 400 sites, the GHF has instead set up four ‘mega-sites’ where humans are corralled into pens and cages. There is not the supply for the demand, and more than 220 Palestinians have died while attempting to seek aid, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Anwar Hamad is a 38 year old mother from the Jabalya Refugee Camp, and tells a field researcher for B’Tselem in April of the conditions of her life and the struggles for food.
“I am a clerk with UNRWA, but I can’t withdraw my salary from the bank because there is no cash… the hunger we’re experiencing now is the worst we have faced since the war began. It’s destroying us,” she says, “we all wonder around weak and thin.”
“How long will this go on? I am just one of two million people trapped in the Gaza Strip. We are facing bombings and killings, hunger and thirst… they have turned us into people who dream only of food,” Anwer said.
A week before this interview, Israeli defense minister Israel Katz declared that aid would continue to be blocked into Gaza, an admission of the use of starvation as a weapon. Nine days later, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced that all of it’s warehouses in Gaza were empty. Clearly starvation was becoming a critical concern, so why did Israel ban the only effective aid distribution system in Gaza?
“UNRWA,” said MK Edelstein at a committee hearing for the Knesset laws on the UN agency, “beyond being a generator and active participant of terrorism, is also an organisation for perpetuation of refugeehood.” The debates are classified, although Edelstein allowed Kobi Samerano, father of the deceased Israeli hostage Yonathan Samerano, to speak to the public.
“UNRWA had and still has the ability to return my son, but it chooses not to do so. UNRWA is a terrorist organisation, whose workers took part in October 7,” Kobi claims.
“I lost a lot of weight and my mental health was very bad,” Hala Sha’sha’ah tells B’Tselem in Gaza City. “I didn’t have enough money to buy food and other necessities. I borrowed some money from friends and relatives just to survive. Sometimes we got food and sometimes we didn’t. But when the war resumed and the crossing were closed again… the situation deteriorated in every sense.”
By the end of May, a group of Israelis lead by a member of the Knesset, accompanied by the media and watched by the police – entered UNRWA’s compound in East Jerusalem and declared the United Nations site in occupied Palestinian territory a new Israeli neighborhood.
Fruit of a lifetime
Three years ago, Madelyn Culab looked out across the Mediterranean sea from the fishing ports of Gaza City. Madelyn was pregnant and her hand rested on her belly as she watched for her husband Khadr to return from fishing. The blockade on Gaza has been imposed by Israel for almost two decades, including a ban on fishing off the coast of the strip.
Madelyn has been fishing with her father since she was a child. “I would go out to sea in the row boat and my father would wait for me on the beach. Then he got sick and couldn’t walk anymore, so I started fishing alone to support my family,” Madelyn tells Maram Humaid for Al-Jazeera.
After the 2014 massacre of 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza, many of the fishing boats were damaged from Israeli airstrikes, including the engine of Khadr Bakr’s boat. Without a vessel, he could not fish. This is when he met Madelyn, who said he could use a ship that she had, and after they would go out fishing together, watching each other’s back from the threat of interception by the Israeli navy. Madelyn and Khadr fell in love.
“Fishing is beautiful, but it is so difficult in a place like the Gaza Strip’s sea,” said Madelyn in 2022. Each time a vessel is damaged by Israel, they have to borrow $10,000 to replace it. Yet the boat is vital for his source of income and food. “It’s bad in Gaza,” she said, “and it’s getting worse.”
In November 2023, Madelyn’s family were forced to evacuate from Gaza City to Khan Younis, following instructions from the Israeli army that guaranteed their safety. Humanitarian corridors were set up, and then bombed. Madelyn lived with forty people in a small apartment when she went into labour.
“It was a difficult, brutal birth,” Madelyn recalls. “No pain relief, no medical care. I was forced to leave the hospital right after giving birth. There were no beds available because of the overwhelming number of wounded.”
From Khan Younis, Madelyn’s family escaped to Rafah, Deir el-Balah, Nuseirat and then returned to Gaza City, where they now live in the remains of their partially destroyed home. Israel has destroyed both their boats and a storage room for fishing equipment. “We’ve lost everything,” Madelyn says, “the fruit of a lifetime… now fish is too expensive if you can find it at all.”
“Only a few fishermen still have any gear left, and they risk their lives just to catch a little, everything has changed. We now crave fish in the middle of the famine we’re living through,” she says.
Madelyn would become the inspiration for the naming of the alternatively spelled ‘Madleen’ – a UK-flagged vessel that travelled across the Mediterranean Sea from Palermo, Sicily to the coast of the Gaza Strip. Onboard were 12 people from France, Germany, Netherlands, Brazil, Spain and Turkey, including the journalist Yanis Mhamdi, carrying with them symbolic aid to be brought to the two million starving in Gaza.
The symbolism was the act of breaking a siege on humanitarian aid. Yanis writes from his prison cell in Israel about the events that unfolded. “At around 2am on Monday June 9, the Israeli army stormed the boat, which was in international waters. The attack came without warning after sending us drones, the soldiers boarded the boat.”
The quadcopter drones were reported to spray an unknown white chemical irritant across the whole ship, as they were surrounded by sea by the Israeli navy. “One of (the soldiers) pointed his gun at me and threatened to shoot if I didn’t lower the camera,” Yanis recalls. They were held out at sea for a number of hours in the cold, and then “once the sun was at it’s peak” they were held in the heat of the cabins.
After being transferred to Ashdod port, they were searched and taken into custody. “Luckily, I was in the cell with the other members of the sailboat… luckily we’re all together. It keeps us from cracking. On Wednesday June 11, the guards took Tiago (Ávila)… to solitary confinement because he refused to eat.”
Hostage taking
Eight of the twelve passengers onboard the Madleen were immediately detained following their refusal to ‘confess’ to attempting to enter Israel illegally. Four were deported.
French citizen Rima Hassan was placed in solitary confinement after writing ‘free Palestine’ on the walls on the prison. Brazilian Citizen Thiago Ávila was placed in solitary after going on hunger strike. All were threatened with the denial of legal council, and were kept incommunicado from their friends and loved ones while incarcerated.
Despite this, Thiago managed to send a letter to his 1 year old daughter from prison. “I’m sorry I’m not around with you these days but daddy has been trying to bring food to other children as beautiful as you, who unfortunately are being starved by people who don’t understand that every single human being has the right to live free,” he wrote in a letter read publicly by his wife Lara.
“Your father is one of the millions of people who are now doing something to stop the biggest violation of our generation… doing demonstrations, disrupting around factories, breaking the media blockades, and boycotts, and especially every Palestinian who has been living eight decades of genocide,” Thiago wrote.
After the deportation of nine activists, only three remain in prison including Yanis. “According to my lawyer,” he said, “I’m the last to go home, so that it will serve as an example to the next journalists.” He was supposed to leave on the 13th, but the military escalation with Iran and temporarily shutting Israeli airports served as a reason for more than a month longer in detention. As proven in recent events, they could travel by land, or by sea, to leave Israel.
“This is not detention,” write the Freedom Flotilla Coalition in a statement, “this is hostage taking.”
After intense pressure, the Israeli government quietly released three of the last flotilla prisoners across the border to Jordan. The Global March to Gaza has been prevented from entering the Sinai, as the Egyptian authorities too hold a responsibility for the genocide on their borders. “These are people who refused to stand by as international law is continuously violated and a genocide is carried out against the
Palestinian people,” said Schweizer.
“They chose to act, peacefully and within the law, to uphold the principles the world claims to stand
for,” she added. “The actions taken by both march organizess and Egyptian authorities brought global embassies face-to-face with the political and moral imperative their citizens see in ending the Palestinian genocide.”
“We’re once again living in fear and panic, with no security,” Hala Sha’sha’ah told B’Tselem. “The markets are now empty again and we’re suffering from hunger.”
“Our suffering is immense. Our lives have been reduced to survival,” Hala says, “every day is a struggle to figure out how we’ll get food and water, what we’ll burn for a cooking fire, how we’ll get cash. Everything is so difficult. Now, 100 shekels is worth what 10 shekels used to be before the war. You can’t buy almost anything here now with 100 shekels.”
“If the crossings stay closed and the war continues, we will die”
Top photo: Global March to Gaza