A US soldier leaves a cordoned-off area as other troops work on a beached vessel, used for delivering aid to Palestinians via a new US-built pier in Gaza, after it got stuck trying to help another vessel behind it, on the Mediterranean coast in Ashdod, Israel, May 25, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Forty anti-Israel activists set sail aboard the ship “Al Awda” with the intention of breaching the blockade around Gaza. Just outside Maltese waters last week, two drones of unknown origin targeted the ship’s generators, causing no injuries but leaving the vessel stranded at sea.

Nearby countries are refusing to allow the Al Awda to dock, and spokespeople for the activists, as well as Greta Thunberg, claim the drone attack to be a violation of international law. It is not.

Why is there a blockade around Gaza?

Hamas, the internationally designated terror organization that rules Gaza, uses foreign supplies, including international aid, to carry out a variety of combat operations, including the October 7, 2023, massacre against Israel, and much of the fighting since that time.

In 2010, an “aid ship” called the Mavi Marmara attempted to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza. Upon boarding, Israeli forces discovered large quantities of weapons and other military equipment, intended for use against Israelis by Gaza’s various terror organizations.

The incident had put Israel in an impossible “Catch-22”: either allow the delivery of weapons to terror organizations, or else suffer international condemnation for attacking a vessel that (falsely) claims the moniker “humanitarian.” It is likely that the Al Awda was hoping for a similar “win-win” scenario: to either successfully supply Hamas, or at the very least, to harm Israel diplomatically in the attempt.

Why did Israel freeze aid to Gaza?

On March 2, 2025, Israel temporarily froze the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza (as permitted by Article 23 of Geneva Convention IV) because such aid is typically transferred to enemy combatants instead of civilians.

Specifically, Hamas habitually steals international aid, as well as torturing and killing civilians who attempt to take aid for themselves. This reality has been confirmed by multiple international sources, including the United Nations, and has been caught on camera numerous times. Hamas uses aid materials to raise funds for combat, as well as directly in combat operations, such as fueling rockets or using concrete to build terror tunnels where Israeli hostages remain in captivity.

It is not known whether the Al Awda carried weapons, but based on the example of the Mavi Marmara, this must be considered a real and dangerous possibility for any un-inspected vessel. Even if the Al Awda were not carrying weapons, all materials that enter Gaza could very well end up being used by Hamas either to indirectly fund, or to directly carry out, terror activities.

Is a naval blockade legal?

A naval blockade is governed by the San Remo Manual on armed conflicts at sea and, when made pursuant the San Remo rules, is considered a legal act of war. Legal blockades have been used in numerous conflicts, including around Nazi Germany and Japan during World War II, and today around Russia and Iran.

By the same international rules, attempting to break a legal blockade is an act of combat. Specifically, Article 67 of San Remo states (in relevant part) that, “merchant vessels flying the flag of neutral States may not be attacked unless they are believed on reasonable grounds to be…breaching a blockade.”

International law provides a number of mechanisms for legally transferring aid to a blockaded territory, however attempting to break a legal blockade is not one of them.

Being in international waters does not guarantee impunity.

Section 10 of San Remo explicitly states that its rules apply to the “high seas,” which is a legal term often used with respect to international waters.

Therefore, when a ship is en route to a blockaded territory, with the intention of attempting to break the blockade, that ship is already engaged in an act of war under the terms of San Remo.

Anyone who follows naval history knows that battles often take place on the “high seas” and for good reason: if San Remo prohibited countries from striking an invading navy until it reached their shores, then international law would have effectively outlawed self defense. Therefore, even being en route to commit an act of war (such as breaching a legal blockade) opens the invading vessel to legitimate attack.

The crew and passengers of the Al Awda are not civilians.

The Geneva Convention Additional Protocol I defines three categories of persons in a conflict: 1. combatants (Article 43), 2. civilians (Article 50), and 3. any person who has taken part in hostilities but who does not qualify as a legitimate combatant under Article 43 (Article 44).

According to San Remo, activists aboard the Al Awda are taking part in hostilities, and they are therefore “non-civilians,” under international law and are “unlawful combatants” under the laws of numerous countries, including Israel and the United States.

Was the attack on Al Awda legal?

Israel has not taken responsibility for the drone attack on the Al Awda. However, under San Remo and the Geneva Conventions, Israel would be absolutely justified in treating the Al Awda, and all persons aboard, as hostile combatants. Under these circumstances, engaging the Al Awda, including in international waters, would have been absolutely permitted under international law. Merely stranding the vessel is not only permitted, but an enormous act of restraint.

Any shipment of supplies to Gaza, where Hamas controls all such deliveries, places Israeli civilians in direct and significant military danger, even as such shipments fail to help Gaza’s civilians. On the other hand, going after a vessel that claims to be “humanitarian” places Israel in diplomatic danger, even if due only to widespread ignorance of international law.

Therefore, the drone incident on the Al Awda, which took no lives, and cannot be officially traced to any source, combined with the regional refusal to allow the Al Awda safe harbor, has confounded both outcomes. In all likelihood, lives have been directly saved by last week’s events off the Malta coast.

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.

The post Why Anti-Israel Flotillas to Gaza Are Illegal Under International Law first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York, US, Sept. 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

As Western leaders plan to meet at the UN on June 17 to possibly give Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas recognition of a Palestinian state, Abbas continues to prove how unworthy the PA is of being a state. Abbas and the PA’s continued embrace of Oct. 7, 2023, show that the PA remains a terror-supporting entity, diametrically opposed to the values of the very countries that plan to recognize a Palestinian state.

Abbas has reminded us once again that if the PA were to become a state, it would be a terror state.

Last Sunday, the PA’s official daily published an interview that Abbas gave in August 2024, which included the straightforward question of how Abbas views the Oct. 7 atrocities. It turns out that the brutal murders, rape, torture and kidnappings are not atrocities at all from Abbas’ perspective, but rather Hamas’ attempt to achieve “important goals” which embarrassed Israel and showed its weaknesses.

Abbas defined Oct. 7 by listing the “important goals” that Hamas achieved:

• Hamas “killed 1,200 Israelis, abducted 250 others, and took them as hostages. This attack shook the foundations of the Israeli entity”;
• Hamas “exposed the [false] claims that … [Israel] has an invincible army”;
• Hamas exposed the “glaring failure of this entity’s [i.e., Israel’s] components, especially the army and the various security forces”; and
• The “entity” failed “to discover what Hamas was planning, and failed to block the attack and prevent heavy losses”[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 1, 2025]

However, according to Abbas, there was one problem with Hamas’ achieving these “important goals”: they were not equal to the devastation that Hamas brought on Gaza:

As important as the goals that Hamas attempted to achieve through this attack may have been, they are not comparable to the damages and heavy losses that the Gaza Strip, its residents, and the Palestinian cause have suffered …

Without absolving the hated Israeli occupation of the primary responsibility for the destruction of the Gaza Strip, Hamas provided this occupation [i.e., Israel] with the excuses to do what it did: genocide and war crimes against our people.

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 1, 2025]

The publication of Abbas’ interview lauding Hamas’ accomplishments comes shortly after an interview given by Abbas’ senior advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who defended the Oct. 7 atrocities as “legitimate resistance,” five times in one interview:

Al-Habbash: “What Hamas carried out on Oct. 7, I start from the assumption that resistance is legitimate. We agreed from the start that the resistance is legitimate, and no one can dispute the legitimacy of the resistance … What happened on Oct. 7 is a legitimate thing, okay? It’s legitimate.” [emphasis added]

Abbas’ interview and his advisor’s recent defense of Oct. 7 must serve as a wake-up call for all Western countries that plan to attend the UN event later this month.

To his people in Arabic, Mahmoud Abbas remains a terror-supporting leader. When he meets world leaders, he continues his years of deception.

Palestinian Media Watch calls on France and Saudi Arabia — the sponsors of the June 17 UN event — to condemn Mahmoud Abbas’ support for Oct. 7, and demand that Abbas retract this statement and publicly condemn the Oct. 7 massacre in Arabic on official PA TV, in the official PA daily, through the official PA news agency WAFA, and in mainstream and popular Arabic media.

If Abbas refuses to condemn the Oct. 7 atrocities, there is no justification for the June 17 UN event, and it should be cancelled.

The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared. 

The post If Mahmoud Abbas Won’t Condemn Oct. 7, the UN Should Not Meet With Him first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli military offensive, shelter in tents, in Gaza City May 11, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

While the international community is blaming Israel for the tragic civilian deaths in Gaza, Palestinians are correctly blaming Hamas for intentionally using civilians as using human shields. Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah published a short video criticizing Hamas for its responsibility for the deaths of Gazan civilians, because they use them as human shields in the war:

Fatah-run Awdah TV narrator: “From [Hamas leader] Khaled Mashaal, who described the Martyrs of the Gaza Strip as ‘tactical losses,’ to [Hamas official] Musa Abu Marzouq and [Al-Jazeera’s] Sa’id Ziyad, who said ‘We will fight using the flesh of Gaza’s children,‘ there is a clear way in whose name people are being sacrificed with utmost arrogance and denial.

But from the heart of the Gaza Strip voices are rising … Today the Palestinians are demanding that Hamas leave the political scene after it failed to provide the most minimal protection to the civilians and used them as human shields in an endless war.” [emphasis added]

[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, May 18, 2025]

A regular columnist of the official Palestinian Authority (PA) daily echoed this criticism two days later, saying Hamas is preoccupied with “child flesh production,” viewing Gazan women merely as “factories for producing babies” so they can be led to “the slaughterhouse” of the war:

Hamas, has demonstrated the discourse of disaster … The first was broadcasted on the [Al-Jazeera] screen of deceit and fraud: ‘We will fight using the flesh of our children,‘ as [Al-Jazeera commentator] Sa’id Ziyad said, and the second: ‘The Martyrs, Allah willing – we will create dozens of times as many in their place,’ as was said… by their [Hamas] Spokesman Dr. Sami Abu Zahri … [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 20, 2025]

A top Fatah official condemned Hamas, citing several statements from Hamas leaders during the current war that testify to the lack of value of human life for the Hamas terror organization and its evil use of civilians as human shields:

Fatah Spokesman in Europe and Fatah Revolutionary Council member Jamal Nazzal: “[Hamas] considers this as a gain because the value of the Palestinian person … has no consideration or value according to Hamas’ perspective …

[Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri] says that in return for the Martyrs, we will produce several times of them. [Hamas Political Bureau member] Ghazi Hamad said that whether Israel will kill 100,000 or 200,000 [Gazans] we will continue. Or as [Hamas leader] Khaled Mashaal said that these Palestinian losses are “tactical losses.“ …

[Hamas official] Musa Abu Marzouq said we did not establish the [bomb] shelters for the Palestinian people in Gaza, because the Palestinian people in Gaza are under the responsibility of the UN and our [Hamas’] responsibility is our fighters…  If we have a white cloth, we won’t use it as a white flag …[emphasis added]

[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, May 20, 2025]

Gazans themselves have been speaking out against Hamas, for some time now.

In November 2024, when the Gaza war launched by Hamas had lasted for more than a year, Israeli journalist Ohad Hemo entered the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and interviewed Gazans about Hamas. This video shows some of their statements (longer excerpt below):

Woman 1: “The situation is difficult, may God take revenge on those who uprooted us and killed us in our homes.”

Channel 12 reporter Ohad Hemo: “Who killed you?”

Woman 1: “Hamas killed us. Hamas wounded me and killed us. Hamas.”

Hemo: “Is Hamas responsible for everything we see here?”

Woman 1: “It’s all Hamas, Hamas.” …

Woman 2: “May God settle accounts with Hamas. May God take revenge on Hamas. They destroyed our lives. We want you [Israelis] to rule here, we do not want Hamas. The entire people hates Hamas.”

Woman 3: “Hamas has ruined our lives. We are a poor people. Hamas has eaten us up. Hamas has taken our [humanitarian] aid, they have taken everything. Hamas’ wicked government. Hamas are terrorists. Exterminate Hamas from the world! We are with you! We are with you! We are with you!” …

[Channel 12 (Israel), Nov. 10, 2024]

For years, Palestinian Media Watch has exposed that Hamas uses Gazan civilians as human shields.

The current Gaza war is just the latest example. In April, the PA complained that Hamas is holding “more than two million Palestinians hostage… as human shields.”

Additional criticism of Hamas was voiced by a group affiliated with Fatah, because it should be the shield for Gazans, but instead turned Gazans into shields for their own protection:

Posted text: “Hamas, which is supposed to be the shield, has become the sword raised over our heads. Instead of defending – it has become oppressive…

The people in the Gaza Strip are not only under external siege, but are also under an internal siege… Whoever speaks out receives a bullet, prison, or disappears… We are not against the resistance, but we are against being used as shields.” [emphasis added]

[“Sons of the Homeland,” Telegram channel, April 24, 2025]

A columnist of the official PA daily stressed that Hamas has endangered “millions of peaceful and innocent civilians”:

[Hamas] has become professional in ways of drawing the religious-Talmudic Zionist monster into the homes of millions of peaceful and innocent civilians in private wars, which are meant to achieve sectoral goals.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 29, 2025]

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.

The post Unlike the Media, Palestinian Authority Blames Hamas for Death of Civilians in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.