Barcelona – Saturday, August 30, 2025
The organizing committee of the Global Sumud Flotilla, the largest maritime fleet aiming to break the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip, announced that participants have completed comprehensive training to prepare for all scenarios and continue their readiness to set sail from Spain tomorrow, Sunday, in a historic step to confront the siege of starvation and genocide that has continued for nearly two years. The committee also confirmed that activists from 44 countries will take part in the flotilla heading toward the coast of Gaza.
Among the participants in the Global Sumud Flotilla is the Palestinian Jaldia Abubakra, originally from the occupied lands of Bir al-Saba, from a family that took refuge in the Gaza Strip after the Nakba in 1948. Abubakra now lives in Spain, where she is active in defending the rights of the Palestinian people, especially concerning women, prisoners, and refugees.
Abubakra said in a statement before the departure of the journey: “This is my journey to Palestine. I am returning with the Freedom Flotilla, together with all the free people who have decided to break the siege, support the steadfastness of our people, and expose the crimes of the occupation before the world.”
Jaldia Abubakra founded the “Palestinian Women’s Movement – Alkarama” in Spain in 2017, a women’s movement working to amplify the voice of Palestinian women in the struggle for liberation and return. She has also participated in boycott campaigns and in organizing the first attempts to break the siege with the Freedom Flotilla in 2016, and previously ran as a candidate in the Spanish Senate elections. She is the coordinator of the Samidoun Prisoner Solidarity Network in Madrid, and in 2021 she took part in establishing the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement.
Abubakra said: “We must assume our responsibility in the diaspora toward our people in Gaza, the West Bank, and all of occupied Palestine, which I see as one land from the river to the sea. After all, we are one people, with one cause and one destiny, and our rights are indivisible,” emphasizing her firm conviction that “the Palestinian people will never be broken, nor will they forget their homeland and their cause, no matter how many enemies gather against them or how great the hardships and challenges become.”
She also called for global pressure to compel the Israeli occupation entity to allow the flotilla to reach Gaza, affirming that “this popular initiative represents a global outcry in the face of the genocide and starvation being inflicted upon the Palestinian people.”