Another anti-Israel convoy sets off to Gaza — this time by bus

The group is going in buses to the Rafah crossing in Egypt to challenge Israel’s blockade on the Strip.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A bus convoy set off from the capital of Tunisia on Monday with the intention of challenging Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Online video clips of several buses in Tunis starting out for the Rafah Crossing in Egypt showed passengers waving Tunisian and Palestinian flags, displaying the V for victory sign with their fingers, and chanting about freeing “Palestine.”

“Long live Palestine,” one older man called out of a window. “Long live Gaza.”

Women could also be seen on the buses, all draped in traditional long robes and head coverings.

The convoy is named Sumud, which means “resilience” in Arabic. It is a term used repeatedly by Hamas in describing their people’s alleged fortitude in the face of the war the terror organization unleashed on Gaza on October 7, 2023, when its forces invaded Israel, massacred 1,200 people, including children and babies, and took 251 hostages.

According to the Middle East Eye, the buses were organized by a coalition of Tunisian civil society groups to demand “the immediate lifting of the unjust siege on the Strip.”

France 24 reported that a group called the Tunisian Coordination of Joint Action for Palestine was behind what it acknowledged was a “symbolic act.”

Spokeswoman Jawaher Channa claimed that “about a thousand people” were participating in the convoy, with activists from Mauritania, Morocco and Libya among them, and that more were planning to join on the route, which will pass through Libya before getting to Egypt.

She admitted that the group had yet to receive permission to cross into Egypt, telling the French media outlet, “We will see what happens when we get there.”

The anti-Israel activists are not bringing humanitarian aid, but the timing of the convoy was moved up to directly follow Israel’s interdiction on Monday of a small ship carrying a minimal amount of aid, an act that received global headlines as one of the activists on board was famed young environmentalist-turned-Israel-foe Greta Thunberg.

The Madleen, sent by the anti-Israel Freedom Flotilla Coalition, had set out from Sicily to ostensibly break Israel’s maritime blockade on the Strip. It was blocked without incident by the Israeli Navy and towed to the Ashdod port.

While the minimal amount of aid that they brought with them will be taken to Gaza, Thunberg was deported Tuesday back to her native Sweden, and three others have agreed to be put on flights back to their home countries as well.

Eight activists are fighting their deportation orders, and a court will hear their arguments at an as-yet-undisclosed time.

Israel allowed aid to start flowing into Gaza again two weeks ago, using a new aid organization, GHF, after an 11-week hiatus in an effort to pressure Hamas into releasing its 55 remaining hostages, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive.