Today, a thousand activists with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition have planned to set sail from Turkey aboard three ships with over five thousand tons of humanitarian aid, including food, medicine, and even ambulance vehicles. From a port in Istanbul, the flotilla will be heading to the Gaza Strip, where the ongoing Israeli genocide has killed at least 34,262 Palestinians, including 14,500 children and 8,400 women, according to Al Jazeera. Coming amid Israel’s seventeen-year blockade of Gaza, the strip is now mere weeks away from famine, according to the World Food Programme.

Although the Freedom Flotilla Coalition is adamant that its plans are both lawful and peaceful, it is concerned about how the Israeli military will react. This is due in large part of the fact that Israel met the last flotilla with deadly force.

“We have no idea what Israel is going to do,” says Elliott Adams, an activist with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. “They’ve tried to sink some boats by ramming. They’ve also captured boats, taken all humanitarian observers and crew hostage, put them in jail and stolen the boats. . . .  And, as you know, in the case of the MV Mavi Marmara, they killed ten of the people on board and wounded fifty.”