At 12:23 AM (local time) on 2 May 2025, a ship with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) was targeted with two armed drone strikes while in international waters off the coast of Malta – before even sailing to Gaza. The date of the attack marks two full months of Israel’s brutal total closure and blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has seen no aid enter since 2 March 2025, bringing Gaza into famine. Amidst a backdrop of global inaction, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesperson, stated that “[t]he international community has a choice – to keep scrolling through the grisly images of Gaza being suffocated and starved or muster the courage and the moral fiber to make decisions that would break this merciless blockade”. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has demonstrated this courage and moral fiber to break the blockade to save Palestinian civilians with lifesaving aid –– acts which have been targeted in a criminal and cowardly drone attack by genocidaires.
The ship, aptly named ‘The Conscience’, was intending to deliver desperately needed, life-saving supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip, whose entire population is facing manmade famine, disease epidemics, infections, and complete exhaustion as they struggle to survive Israel’s constant bombardment, violent ground incursions and conditions calculated to bring about their destruction. The strike appeared to target the boat’s generator early on Friday, critically damaging the Conscience, setting it ablaze and leaving it without power and at risk of sinking. Over and above the blatant disregard for the lives of the twelve crew members and four civilian passengers on board, this incident has highlighted the extent of Third States’ complicity in Israel’s genocide.
The Maltese coast guard failed to respond to the SOS distress call from the ship, with calls to the coast guard indicating they are aware but were not intervening. Reportedly, when asked if they were going to respond and help the people on board, they hung up. Thiago Avila, the flotilla’s lead organizer, told CNN that he and other activists took a boat to the Conscience to try and provide assistance to their colleagues late Friday afternoon, but Maltese guards surrounding the vessel prevented them from approaching. By late Friday, the FFC stated that the flotilla was still trying to enter Maltese territorial waters but was being prevented. This is despite the FFC citing the risk of a new attack if left in open water for another night.
Throughout the past 24 hours, nearby countries in a position to provide physical assistance have largely ignored the incident. World leaders have remained silent, despite the egregious nature of an attack directed at a boarded ship anchored off the coast of a European country. The silence of European Union leaders, which should have immediately condemned the strikes, demanded an investigation and urgent access to the ship stranded in international waters, is particularly loud and reveals the extent of their indifference towards Palestinians in Gaza and Israel’s criminality.
While this incident should be viewed as a serious warning and further proof of Israel’s blatant disregard for international law, Israel has repeatedly tested the tolerance of the international community, and each time it has been shown that there are no limits to what it can do.
It is important to note that, while shocking, the drone strikes on the Conscience are not unprecedented. On 31 May 2010, Israeli commandos boarded six ships in a flotilla attempting to breach another unlawful blockade of Gaza imposed at the time. Israeli forces killed nine Turkish activists on the Mavi Marmara vessel, also located in international waters, and injured tens of others. A UN independent panel of inquiry examining the incident found that Israel’s interception of the flotilla and decision to board the vessels with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was “excessive and unreasonable”. Like in the present instance, the ships carried humanitarian assistance with the aim of acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza by defying Israel’s unlawful siege. In 2020, on the 10th anniversary of the Mavi Marmara incident, Al-Haq warned:
Impunity for the perpetration of crimes, against the flotilla and against Palestinians more broadly, risks becoming a mere feature of the international justice system. It remains imperative that such a reality be identified, challenged, and overcome.
This risk has now materialised, with the past 19 months showing that the international justice system is useless in he face of Western imperialism and colonial interests. Rather than forcing an end to Israel’s lethal siege, Third States are choosing to remain complicit through their silence – a silence that resounds in the unanswered cries of Palestinians.
- Al-Haq calls on the Third States to open their maritime waters to the uninterrupted passage of humanitarian aid flotillas to Gaza, and calls on activists and people of conscience to support and join the international efforts to physically ensure the delivery of lifesaving aid to Gaza.
- Al-Haq reminds Third States of the orders of the International Court of Justice in three separate sets of Provisional Measures Orders, to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza at scale, in order to prevent irreparable harm to the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention.
- Al-Haq calls on the UN Commission of Inquiry and the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate the criminal attacks on ‘The Conscience’ as part of Situation in the State of Palestine.
- Al-Haq calls for Third States to apply a full two-way arms embargo, and political and economic sanctions on Israel, and along with its unseating from the United Nations General Assembly for its continuous aggravated breaches of the United Nations Charter.