The Significance of the Free People of the World Riding the Wave of the Sea

Author: عوض عبد الفتاح

The steadfast fleet seeking to break the siege on Gaza represents another face of the world; a face where humanity has not yet died, despite the systematic efforts made by the forces of domination and criminality to shatter what remains of the values of mercy and solidarity. Hundreds of free people from around the world risk their lives, cutting through the waves of the sea towards one of the most dangerous and targeted areas, in confrontation with the most savage of states, a colonial state where genocide has become one of its governing tools. These individuals have no personal interests or material gains; only a deep moral and humanitarian motivation: to rescue the threatened human from death, starvation, and extermination. The symbolic importance of these convoys lies in their aim to elevate the victim's voice over the sounds of war and killing machines, which relentlessly continue to destroy lives.

Every trip endured by these journeys faces intimidation, obstruction, and mistreatment from the genocidal apartheid regime, despite the participants clearly announcing their peaceful struggle. According to testimonies from previous participants, the journey itself is arduous and fraught with risks, amidst a rough sea and small or medium-sized boats. Nevertheless, the convoys continue.

Palestinians in the diaspora, who play a central role in organizing these fleets, deserve special recognition. They, alongside their allies, dedicate their time, money, and professional stability to a collective cause, in an integrative model that unites the Palestinian people and the free people of the world aspiring for a less violent world, free from colonialism, racism, and wars.

Just imagining the organizational effort required to launch trip after trip is enough to comprehend the meaning of commitment and perseverance, and the meaning of moral duty. These initiatives are not based on massive funding or official institutions, but rather on will, persistence, and voluntary organization. They express a noble humanity that refuses to surrender before the killing machine and human death.

These journeys gain additional meaning at a moment when not only the brutality of the Zionist project is revealed, but also the extent of regional and international complicity with it. Many Arab regimes do not only remain silent but also prevent any effective Arab popular action in support of Palestine, and they suppress protests against the Israeli-American aggression in Palestine and the region, silencing voices of conscience and pursuing their owners.

However, the more important question is not only: What are the free people of the world doing? But what do we, Palestinians, learn from this?

In the West Bank, the colonial project advances at an unprecedented pace, in the context of an attempt to close the horizon before any Palestinian liberation project. Settlement, land confiscation, creeping cleansing, and political community dismantling, all of this did not begin after October 7, 2023, but accelerated under its shadow. The most painful thing is that all this happens while the official Palestinian leadership, specifically the leadership of Fatah, is preoccupied with redistributing quotas within a decaying political structure that still sees "security coordination" as a strategic option.

In the midst of this leadership and moral vacuum, the colonial project not only continues but also deepens the habituation to defeat and impotence. The greatest danger here is not only the loss of land but also the draining of the Palestinian collective spirit, and the detachment of the political dimension from the cause, to replace it with narrow humanitarian and administrative agendas. The Palestinian becomes merely a "crisis community," no longer a people engaged in a liberation struggle.

Meanwhile, inside the Green Line, the crisis takes another form. Organized crime is no longer just a social phenomenon, but has become part of the structure of colonial control, an entry point for understanding a form of social extermination. The bloodbath continues, and the sense of security erodes, while popular anger grows against the incapacity of political and civil leadership to build actual pressure on the apartheid system to end its direct or indirect support for criminal gangs.

However, the dilemma here is dual: the incapacity of leadership to innovate, and the weakness of popular readiness to engage in a long and costly struggle.

Herein lies the lesson presented by the steadfast fleet. Effective struggle is not based on seasonal reactions or short bursts of anger, but on perseverance, organization, and accumulation. The activists who ride the sea know they may not succeed in reaching their destination, yet they try again. The solidarity movements in the West supporting Palestine rely on long sit-ins, continuous pressure, and disrupting the normal life of complicit institutions.

When and how does this prevailing thinking transform into practical action?

Why is there a delay in adopting or implementing a long-term popular struggle program in the West Bank and inside? Open sit-ins before government centers, symbolic and repeated closures of central junctions, internal economic boycott campaigns, and popular protection committees for villages targeted by settlements? There is a need to train oneself on endurance and long-term resistance through new mechanisms, and all this will not happen without self-review and working to liberate the mentality from complacency and the malady of individualism.

And why is there no revival of gradual civil disobedience tools? Not as a romantic slogan, but as a work plan: continuous protest days, organized disruption, refusal to normalize with the reality of oppression, and expanding local initiative circles away from waiting for official decisions.

Some will say that people are exhausted and scared. This is true. But are the people of the West less tired and busy than we are? And do the activists sailing towards Gaza have better conditions? The fundamental difference is not in the capacity for sacrifice, but in the existence of a horizon, organization, and leadership that genuinely believes in cumulative actions.

There is no magic formula. But what seems certain is that the continued habituation to blood, whether in the West Bank or inside, is more dangerous than the risk of collective action. The question is no longer whether popular resistance is possible, but: Can we continue without it?

It is time to restore the will to propose popular resistance, its conditions, and its tools systematically and seriously. Not as a substitute for the national project, but as a lever to rebuild it, restore collective trust, and break the deadening sense of impotence. The steadfast fleet does not carry aid only; it carries a political and moral lesson: the peoples who refuse to surrender innovate their tools, even when the sea seems closed.