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Fatih Varol, attorney and Member of the Board of Directors of the Global Sumud Flotilla, is seen during an exclusive interview, where she evaluates the preparations of the Global Sumud Flotilla’s “2026 Spring Mission”, in Sicily, Italy, on April 24, 2026. [Barış Seçkin – Anadolu Agency]
Turkish activists participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla’s Spring 2026 Mission have reaffirmed their determination to break the blockade on Gaza and deliver humanitarian assistance, Anadolu reports.
Fatih Varol, a board member of the Global Sumud Flotilla, told Anadolu that the Turkish delegation is among the initiative’s most significant components.
“Turkiye has deep-rooted historical ties with Palestine. As a people, we feel the tragedy unfolding in Gaza much more profoundly. In this regard, both public support in Turkiye and the backing of Turkish civil society organizations are very strong,” he said.
Varol said the Turkish delegation has contributed not only to the fleet’s administration and coordination, but also to vessel preparations at Mediterranean ports through financial support.
He also noted that more than 10 lawmakers from both governing and opposition parties in Turkiye attended the Global Sumud Parliamentarians Congress in Brussels on April 22, forming the diplomatic arm of the mission.
According to Varol, lawmakers from around the world agreed during the meeting to raise calls in their respective parliaments to end the genocide in Gaza, lift the blockade on Palestine, ensure Israel complies with international law, and activate international criminal justice mechanisms.
He said the initiative would help increase international political pressure on Israel and grow through coordinated efforts aimed at paving the way for a freer world.
Gorkem Duru, another Turkish activist, said participants are preparing to sail toward Gaza as part of the 2026 mission, stressing that a “fake ceasefire” has not ended occupation, blockade, or violence.
“Last year, the Global Sumud Flotilla set sail. This year, despite the ceasefire, the blockade and occupation continue, so we are setting out again, stronger and more numerous, to break the blockade,” he said.
Duru added that final preparations are underway at Italy’s Augusta Port, while vessels departing from Barcelona have already arrived.
Activist Omer Aslan, known as the “Local John Wick” due to his resemblance to the character portrayed by Keanu Reeves, said he joined the mission out of humanitarian responsibility.
“While innocent babies and civilians in Gaza suffer oppression and violence, I could not live comfortably in my own country. I joined this peaceful humanitarian action to raise awareness both among my followers and globally,” he said.
Aslan said activists from across the world have joined the flotilla regardless of language, religion, or nationality, united by a common cause.
Flotilla’s Spring 2026 Mission
The Global Sumud Flotilla was created to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, deliver humanitarian aid, and draw international attention to the situation in the enclave.
Created in 2025 by NGO representatives, activists and volunteers from various countries, the flotilla launched its second mission to Gaza.
Its Spring 2026 Mission departed from Barcelona on April 12 with around 70 vessels and nearly 1,000 participants from 70 countries, significantly larger than a previous mission in September 2025, which included 42 boats and 462 participants.
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Nigel Farage objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
A Palestinian family walks near a large yellow concrete block symbolizing the beginning of Israel’s post-ceasefire occupation zone in Gaza on November 21, 2025. (Photo by Saeed MMT Jaras/Anadolu via Getty Images)
One Palestinian American researcher warned that Israel is seeking “annexation without legal burden.”
Israel’s gradual advancement of its “yellow line” to occupy more territory in the Gaza Strip is fueling concerns that it is seeking to effectively annex and colonize the majority of the territory without any formal agreement.
The Guardian reported on Wednesday that Israel has been steadily pushing the truce line to take control of more Palestinian territory in the six months since a “ceasefire” was reached in October.
The yellow line drawn on the ceasefire maps had Israeli troops in control of about 53% of Gaza’s territory, cramming nearly 2 million displaced Palestinians into a territory less than half the size of the one they inhabited before.
But an analysis by Forensic Architecture shows Israel has unilaterally shifted the line westward over the past six months to the point where it controlled about 58% of the strip by December in an occupation zone that continues to grow.
(Graphic by The Guardian. Source: Planet Labs PBC, March 6, 2026.)
Palestinians living in Gaza reportedly woke up to learn that large yellow concrete blocks denoting the ceasefire line had suddenly moved and that they were now living in a free-fire area, where the Israeli military considers any Palestinian person or vehicle a legitimate target.
The Associated Press found in January that at least 77 Palestinians have been shot on sight when they’ve found themselves on the wrong side of the yellow line or even just near it, even though the line’s boundaries are ill-defined and fluid.
They are among more than 730 Palestinians who have been killed since the “ceasefire” began in October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which has accused Israel of thousands of violations.
According to The Guardian, some displaced people, such as those who lived near the Salah al-Din road, which spans the length of Gaza from north to south, suddenly found themselves targeted by Israeli forces, who also began demolishing homes and other buildings and constructing new ones.
Though the yellow line was supposed to be set up as a temporary measure under US President Donald Trump’s “peace plan” for Gaza before control of the strip is transferred back to Palestinians, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Eyal Zamir described it as a “new border” with Gaza back in December, around the time it reportedly began to move.
Eyal Weizman, an Israeli architect and the head of Forensic Architecture’s research agency, recently wrote that the IDF appears to be turning this portion of Gaza into a permanent occupation zone.
The group found that seven new military outposts have been built along the yellow line, including one on what was once a cemetery.
While these areas began as “piles of earth and rubble” organized into crude enclosures, Weizman said that in recent months the roads leading to them have been asphalted, electricity poles have been erected, and buildings and communications towers have gone up inside the bases.
“The bases no longer appear to be the provisional arrangements that Trump’s ceasefire plan claims them to be, but permanent instruments of occupation,” he wrote. “The newly paved roads connect the bases to a matrix of control that is linked to Israel’s road network and communications grid.”
He noted that Israel’s illegal settler movement, which has several powerful representatives in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been “lobbying hard for the Israeli government to start constructing settlements within the vastly expanded buffer zone.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz said in December that Israel would “never leave Gaza” and spoke of plans to turn IDF military outposts into civilian settlements similar to those that have gradually taken over the West Bankthrough theviolentdisplacement of Palestinian residents.
Ahmad Ibsais, Palestinian American law student and author of the newsletter State of Siege, wrote for the Al-Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network that by drawing a yellow line, Israel is seeking to consolidate its control over Palestinian land without formally annexing it—in other words, “annexation without legal burden.”
“Borders are typically established through bilateral agreements, adjudication, or mutual recognition under international law,” he wrote. “By contrast, the so-called Yellow Line in Gaza functions as a de facto military demarcation associated with ceasefire arrangements and enforced through Israeli operational control.”
“It shapes civilian movement and territorial control without constituting a formally delimited boundary,” he continued. “In effect, it constitutes territorial theft with better branding, operationalizing US President Donald Trump’s plan for the continued colonization of Gaza.”
Mapped the IDF's newly declared "Forward Defense Zone" in south Lebanon. Its maritime boundary fully absorbs Lebanon's Qana gas field, whose exploration rights were explicitly guaranteed under the 2022 US-brokered maritime border agreement.
Israel declared a similar yellow line about 5-10 kilometers into Lebanese territory, giving the IDF effective control over around 55 towns and villages. The military has reduced many homes and entire villages south of this line to rubble in what Katz has described as a “Gaza model” being applied to Lebanon.
Assistant editor Maya Rosen recently wrote for Jewish Currents that the policy of conquering and settling Lebanon has become “mainstream” in Israeli politics and enjoys broad public support.
Ahmad Baydoun, an architect and open-source intelligence researcher at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, has warned that with this land grab, Israel was seeking to take control of the valuable Qana Gas Field, which is estimated to be capable of producing between $20 billion-$40 billion worth of natural gas exports for Israel. In 2022, a maritime agreement brokered by the US established that control of the field belonged to Lebanon.
Like in Gaza, the Israeli military has forbidden the more than 600,000 Lebanese inhabitants of villages below the line or within a newly established “buffer zone” from returning indefinitely. Katz has said they’ll be allowed to return once the “safety and security of the residents of the north [of Israel] is ensured.”
Given that Israeli settler groups have already begun mapping out new settlements and advertising plots of land for sale in southern Lebanon, Weizman said Katz was making what is by design “an impossible demand” meant to entrench the land grab.
“This exemplifies the circular logic of Zionist settler-colonialism: settlements are built to mark and protect the state’s border, but that makes them vulnerable to attack, and so a buffer zone is established to protect them,” he said. “Afterward, this buffer zone is itself settled to mark and protect the newly expanded borders, at which point another buffer zone becomes necessary.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone …
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Ambulances belonging to Egypt’s Ministry of Health stand ready on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing for the transfer of Palestinian patients from Gaza and possible emergency needs, in Rafah, Egypt, on February 8, 2026. [Ahmed Sayed – Anadolu Agency]
Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said Israel is continuing to tighten its blockade on the Gaza Strip by closing crossings and controlling the entry of aid and the number of travellers through the Rafah crossing.
In a video statement on Monday, Qassem said the Rafah crossing had been closed while severe restrictions on aid deliveries remain in place. He added that Israel had not met the agreed number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza, with fewer than half entering, alongside continued limits on the number of travellers.
Qassem said Israel is pursuing a policy of “engineering starvation” in Gaza, pointing to rising prices of basic goods as hunger deepens, as well as ongoing violations including shelling and killings, such as those reported early on Monday.
He added that what is happening reflects a systematic Israeli policy of violations, calling for a “genuine stance” from mediators and guarantor states, as well as what he described as the “Board of Peace”, to put an end to these actions and lift the blockade on Gaza after two years of what he described as genocide.
Meanwhile, Ismail Al-Thawabta, Director General of the Government Media Office, said the humanitarian crisis in the enclave has reached unprecedented levels amid the continued closure of crossings, particularly the Rafah crossing.
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Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
Donald Trump warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog, says that it’s easy atm, she only needs to report war crimes supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion.
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Protesters march through downtown Chicago during an “Emergency Protest” on April 8, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. [Jacek Boczarski – Anadolu Agency]
In the Middle East, the perception of ordinary Americans has long followed a familiar script: detached, uninformed, inward-looking, and politically shallow— a society of ‘gas guzzlers’, with little grasp of global realities beyond their immediate geography.
This perception did not emerge from thin air. It was cultivated—reinforced, even—by American political and media institutions themselves. Politicians claimed to speak on behalf of ‘the American people’, while mainstream media shaped what those people knew, and, crucially, what they did not know.
For decades, Americans overwhelmingly aligned with Israel. This was not merely ideological; it was instructional.
The public was told—repeatedly—that Israel reflected ‘American values’: democracy, civility, modernity. Palestinians and Arabs, by contrast, were framed as perpetual antagonists, initiators of violence, and ‘obstacles to peace’.
Some Americans embraced this framing on religious or ideological grounds. But for the majority, the pro-Israel position became a default—an inherited conclusion rooted in limited access to alternative information. Israel was ‘good’, Arabs were ‘bad’. The narrative was simple, binary, and rarely challenged.
With mainstream media as the primary source of information, this perception hardened over time. Support for Palestine, and for broader Arab causes, remained confined to academic spaces and activist circles—often informed by anti-colonial and anti-imperialist frameworks, but numerically marginal and politically contained.
The mainstream remained locked in place. But that lock has been broken.
The shift did not happen overnight. Among Democrats, cracks began to appear as early as the mid-2010s. In 2016, Gallup data still showed Democrats sympathizing more with Israelis than Palestinians. By 2018, that gap had narrowed. Significantly. By 2021, parity had nearly been reached. And by 2024–2025, Democrats—especially younger voters—were expressing majority sympathy for Palestinians, with some polls showing support exceeding 50 percent among those under 35.
This transformation was driven in part by grassroots activism, particularly within progressive circles, where Palestine became a central moral and political issue. But it was also driven by something far more consequential: the collapse of narrative control.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza accelerated this shift dramatically. Not only because of the scale of violence in the besieged Strip, but because, for the first time, the reality of war was not mediated solely through the filters of corporate media. Independent journalism, social media, and direct visual evidence disrupted decades of curated narratives.
The informational balance—long skewed—began to tip.
At the same time, American trust in mainstream media reached historic lows. According to Gallup, by 2025, only about 31 percent of Americans expressed trust in mass media to report news “fully, accurately, and fairly,” with trust among younger Americans even lower.
Up to this point, one could still argue that the shift remained politically contained: Democrats moving toward Palestine, Republicans remaining firmly aligned with Israel. But then came a rupture.
On February 27, 2026, Gallup released a poll showing that, for the first time in modern polling history, more Americans sympathized with Palestinians than with Israelis—41 percent to 36 percent. This was not a marginal fluctuation. It was a structural break.
That moment should have been seismic. Yet, it was not treated as such. Mainstream media largely buried the story. And within days, the political conversation shifted to a new crisis: the war with Iran.
In the weeks that followed, polling attention moved rapidly to American attitudes toward military escalation. Across multiple surveys, the outcome was consistent: Americans rejected war, and an even greater number rejected the idea of a prolonged military entanglement.
Yet mainstream commentary refused to connect the dots. Palestine was treated as one issue. Iran as another. Venezuela, interventionism, and global militarism as separate, disconnected phenomena. Each was analyzed in isolation, stripped of its broader political and moral context.
Instead of recognizing a pattern, commentators fragmented the evidence. Opposition to war was framed as ‘war fatigue’, or economic anxiety, or partisan resistance to President Donald Trump. The focus was placed on gas prices, electoral calculations, and political polarization—not on the possibility that Americans were making moral judgments independent of elite narratives.
But the pattern is there. And it is unmistakable.
True, Americans are still told what matters—Israel, Iran, energy security, the Strait of Hormuz, etc. The agenda remains largely intact. But the conclusions no longer follow automatically. The chain between attention and consent has been broken.
This is not simply a political shift. It is a cognitive and moral one. Economic concerns and partisan affiliations still shape public opinion, as they always have. But they no longer fully determine it.
Increasingly, Americans are evaluating global events through a moral lens—one that prioritizes civilian suffering, questions power asymmetries, and challenges the legitimacy of endless war.
This is not speculation. It is confirmed by data—most clearly in the case of Palestine, which has emerged as a moral compass for a wider transformation in American public consciousness. The shift in sympathy toward Palestinians is not an isolated anomaly, but a signal of a deeper rethinking of power, justice, and resistance. And it is likely irreversible.
Mainstream media will continue to set the agenda for the foreseeable future. But it has lost something far more important: its ability to manufacture consensus at scale.
That signals possibility. And perhaps, for the first time in generations, a reason for cautious—yet unmistakable—optimism: that ordinary Americans are no longer passive recipients of power, but active participants in shaping a more morally conscious political reality.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
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Special police units on the roof to remove the demonstrators from Peacefully Against Genocide staging a protest at the Berlin premises of Rheinmetall, a major German defense and automotive technology company specializing in military vehicles, weapons systems, and ammunition on March 25, 2026. [İlkin Eskipehlivan – Anadolu Agency]
Spain was recently targeted by Israel’s antisemitism narrative after an effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blown up in El Burgo, during the Burning of Judas festival. “The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of the @sanchezcastejon government’s systematic incitement,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated on X, while noting that the Spanish ambassador to Israel was summoned for a reprimand.
However, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s statement illustrates that the problem is not the burning of Netanyahu’s effigy, but rather the Spanish government’s current stance against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its wars in Lebanon and Iran.
After decades of European blind adherence to Israel’s ethnic cleansing and colonial expansion, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has illustrated that stepping away from diplomatic normalisation of colonialism and genocide is possible. At least temporarily, Israel’s European safety net has been fractured.
The seven metre effigy of Netanyahu was filled with 14 kilogrammes of gunpowder. Burning it represented opposition to war and genocide, El Burgo’s Mayor Maria Dolores Narvaez stated.
There is nothing antisemitic about opposition to war and genocide. The truth is that Israel exploits the Holocaust narrative to justify Zionist colonial expansion and genocide, but it can no longer do so completely unchallenged. Netanyahu represents genocide and is wanted by the International Criminal Court. That is not an antisemitic narrative; it is based on facts.
Politically, Spain’s stance is also impacting the prior cohesion over Israel’s colonial violence and genocide, to the point that Netanyahu barred the country from participating in the Civil Military Coordination Centre in Kiryat Gat that oversees the ceasefire. Spain, according to Netanyahu, has defamed Israel and the IDF. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described Spain as having an “obsessive anti-Israel bias under Sanchez’s leadership”.
An anti-Israel stance, however, is not an obsession. It is a reality that opposes colonialism and genocide. At the very least, it opposes military occupation and genocide. What Spain has achieved so far in its stance sets an example for the rest of Europe to emulate. It is politically viable to take a stance against Israeli colonialism, military occupation and genocide.
In other unexpected turns, less powerful that Spain but nonetheless worth noting, Germany criticised Israel’s death penalty bill for Palestinians. “The government is also concerned that such a law would likely apply exclusively to Palestinians in the Palestinian territories,” Stefan Kornelius, spokesperson to the German government, declared. “It therefore regrets the Knesset’s decision and cannot endorse it.”
Also, following German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s criticism over Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich reverted to Holocaust history to obfuscate the present colonial settlement expansion, warning that Germany cannot dictate where Jews should live. The comments prompted Israel’s ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor to oppose Smotrich, reminding that Germany is “our number one friend” in Europe.
Spain has certainly ignited an alternative way, and one that is exposing rifts even within Israeli politics. Whining about antisemitism over the burning of Netanyahu’s effigy may be temporarily amplified, but Spain’s stance is not about a symbolic effigy. A single, constant opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza had the power to expose the instability of Israel’s political reasoning, as well as the threats directed at any country opposing its actions.
If Spain can manage that stance on its own, and if Germany can coherently oppose the death penalty for Palestinians, a political stance towards decolonisation as Israel escalates its aggression against anyone opposing it is more than possible. It is imperative.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
