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War & Peace
Global Sumud Flotilla Announces Spring Mission to 'Break the Illegal Blockade of Gaza'
Organizers say they're "mobilizing thousands from over 100 countries in a coordinated, nonviolent response to genocide, siege, mass starvation, and the destruction of civilian life in Gaza."
Feb 05, 2026
Organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla—the largest-ever activist effort to break Israel's blockade of Gaza by sea—said Thursday that they will launch a new and bigger mission next month to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinian exclave, whose people have suffered from 28 months of genocidal Israeli war and siege.
Global Sumud Flotilla called its spring 2026 mission, which is scheduled to depart from Barcelona on March 29, "a historic escalation in civilian-led maritime action to break the illegal blockade of Gaza."
"We are sailing again this year. This time, we're sailing with more boats, and more activists... and we are determined to break this illegal siege on Gaza and show the world that the peace talks are not really peace talks, but the further colonization of Palestinian territories," organizer Yasmin Acar told South African Broadcasting Corporation News Radio. "We will not stop until the siege is broken."
Global Sumud Flotilla said: "A primary focus of the 2026 mission is the deployment of a specialized medical fleet. Carrying more than 1,000 healthcare professionals and stocked with lifesaving medicines and equipment, this fleet aims to stabilize Gaza's healthcare system and support the efforts of local medical teams who have endured two years of genocide."
Like most of Gaza, the strip's healthcare infrastructure is in ruins after deliberate targeting of medical facilities and workers by Israeli forces.
Mandla Mandela, grandson of South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and a past flotilla participant, called the new effort "cause... for those that want to rise and stand for justice and dignity for all."
Last summer, dozens of boats carrying hundreds of activists from over 40 nations took part in the last Global Sumud Flotilla—sumud means “perseverance” in Arabic—as it attempted to run Israel’s naval blockade and deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid including food, medicines, and baby formula to the starving people of Gaza amid Israel's genocidal war and siege on the people of the coastal strip.
Israeli forces intercepted and seized the flotilla vessels in international waters in early October, arresting all aboard the boats and temporarily jailing them in Israel, where some including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg said they were physically and psychologically abused by their captors.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has made numerous attempts to break Israel's blockade by sea, all of which ended in more or less the same way. In 2010, Israeli forces raided one of the first convoys carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea. The Israeli attackers killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
“We may not have reached Gaza physically," flotilla activist Susan Abdallah told Al Jazeera Thursday, but "we have reached the people in Gaza."
"They know that we care, that we will not stop at anything until we actually break the siege," she added.
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'Crime Against Environment and Health': Israel Slammed for Dropping Toxic Glyphosate on Lebanon, Syria
"This incident cannot be viewed in isolation from the scorched-earth policy pursued by the Israeli army," said watchdog Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
Feb 05, 2026
The Lebanese president has accused the Israeli government of committing "a crime against the environment and health" for allegedly spraying the herbicide glyphosate on agricultural lands in Lebanon and Syria.
As reported by Naharnet on Wednesday, Lebanon's agriculture and environmental ministries recently conducted analysis of soil near the site where Israel had sprayed a chemical substance and found glyphosate "20 to 30 times higher than the average" in the area.
The ministries said that this level of glyphosate in the soil could cause "damage to agricultural production," while also harming soil fertility.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun denounced the spraying as a "flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty," and called on the United Nations (UN) and the international community at large to take action to stop future attacks.
Al-Jazeera reported on Tuesday that the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was warned by the Israel military on Monday to stay away from the border area because it planned to deploy a "nontoxic chemical substance" there, forcing the peacekeeping forces to cancel over a dozen planned activities.
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, condemned Israel for preventing UNIFIL from conducting operations, emphasizing that "any activity that may put peacekeepers and civilians at risk is of serious concern."
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said on Wednesday that it has detected "Israeli aircraft spraying pesticides of unknown composition over farmland in the countryside of Quneitra in southern Syria" on January 26 and 27.
"This incident cannot be viewed in isolation from the scorched-earth policy pursued by the Israeli army," the human rights watchdog said. "It forms part of a pattern of systematic destruction of agricultural land, including the burning of approximately 9,000 hectares during recent military operations using white phosphorus and incendiary munitions."
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Rubio Confirms End of New START, Sparking Calls for Nuclear Talks With Russia, China
"Trump, Putin, and Xi can and must put the world on a safer path by taking commonsense actions to build down the nuclear danger," said one campaigner.
Feb 04, 2026
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday implicitly confirmed that New START—a key arms control treaty between the United States and Russia—will expire Thursday, prompting renewed demands for what one group called "a more coherent approach from the Trump administration" toward nuclear nonproliferation.
Asked about the impending expiration of New START during a Wednesday press conference, Rubio said he didn't "have any announcement" on the matter, and that President Donald Trump "will opine on it later."
"Obviously, the president’s been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile," Rubio said.
🇺🇸🇷🇺🇨🇳 Secretary of State Marco Rubio:
I don't have any announcement on New START right now. I think the President will opine on it later.
The President has been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it's impossible to do something that… pic.twitter.com/8pxi3bfdsy
— Visioner (@visionergeo) February 4, 2026
New START, signed in 2010, committed the United States and Russia to halving the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers in their arsenals. While the treaty did not limit the size of the countries' actual nuclear arsenals, proponents pointed to its robust verification regime and other transparency features as mutually beneficial highlights of the agreement.
“We have known that New START would end for 15 years, but no one has shown the necessary leadership to be prepared for its expiration,” said John Erath, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and former longtime State Department official.
“The treaty limited the number of nuclear weapons the United States and Russia could have, but perhaps more importantly, New START also provided each country with unprecedented insights into the other’s arsenal so that Washington and Moscow could make decisions based on real information rather than speculation," Erath added.
The last remaining major treaty limiting the world's two largest nuclear arsenals expires Feb. 5. Does this mean the end of nuclear arms control? Not necessarily. Read our statement.armscontrolcenter.org/statement-on...
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— Nukes of Hazard (@nukesofhazard.bsky.social) February 4, 2026 at 2:04 PM
Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said Wednesday that "the end of New START requires a more coherent approach from the Trump administration."
"If President Trump and Secretary Rubio are serious, they should make a serious proposal for bilateral (not trilateral) talks with Beijing," he asserted. "Despite Trump’s talk about involving China in nuclear negotiations, there is no indication that Trump or his team have taken the time to propose risk reduction or arms control talks with China since returning to office in 2025."
Kimball continued:
Furthermore, there is no reason why the United States and Russia should not and cannot continue, as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin suggested on September 22, to respect the central limits of New START and begin the hard work of negotiating a new framework agreement involving verifiable limits on strategic, intermediate-range, and short-range nuclear weapons, as well as strategic missile defenses.
At the same time, if he is serious about involving China in “denuclearization” talks, he could and should invite [Chinese President Xi Jinping] when they meet later this year, to agree to regular bilateral talks on risk reduction and arms control involving senior Chinese and US officials.
"With the end of New START, Trump, Putin, and Xi can and must put the world on a safer path by taking commonsense actions to build down the nuclear danger," Kimball added.
Erath lamented that "with New START’s expiration, we have not only lost unprecedented verification measures that our military and decision-makers depended on, but we have ended more than five decades of painstaking diplomacy that successfully avoided nuclear catastrophe."
"Agreements preceding New START helped reduce the global nuclear arsenal by more than 80% since the height of the Cold War,"
he noted. "Now, both Russia and the United States have no legal obstacle to building their arsenals back up, and we could find ourselves reliving the Cold War."
Last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board advanced its symbolic Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to global thermonuclear annihilation, citing developments including failure to extend New START, China's growing arsenal, and Russian weapons tests—to which Trump has vowed to respond in kind.
"The good news is," said Erath, is that "the end of New START does not have to mean the end of nuclear arms control."
"While New START can’t be extended beyond today, Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin could decide to respect the numerical limits the treaty set on nuclear arsenals," he explained. "They could also resume the treaty’s data exchanges and on-site inspections, in addition to implementing verification measures from other previous arms control treaties."
"Further, they could instruct their administrations to begin immediate talks on a new treaty to cover existing and novel systems and potentially bring in other nuclear powers, like China," Erath continued. "Meanwhile, Congress could—and should—fund nonproliferation and global monitoring efforts while refusing to fund dangerous new nuclear weapons systems."
Last December, US Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.), John Garamendi (D-Calif.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) reintroduced the bicameral Hastening Arms Limitation Talks (HALT) Act, "legislation outlining a vision for a 21st century freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons."
"The Doomsday Clock is at 85 seconds to midnight," Markey—who co-chairs the congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group—said Wednesday ahead of a press conference with HALT Act co-sponsors. "We need to replace New START now."
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'Vindication': UK Jury Clears Palestine Action Protesters Who Admitted to Elbit Break-In
“These verdicts are a huge blow to government ministers who have tried to portray Palestine Action as a violent group to justify banning it under badly drafted terrorism legislation," said one campaigner.
Feb 04, 2026
In what one campaigner called a "huge blow" to the UK government's efforts to crush Palestine Action, a London jury on Wednesday cleared six members of the direct action group of aggravated burglary—even after they admitted to breaking into and vandalizing an Israel-linked weapons facility.
Zoe Rogers, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Jordan Devlin—six of the so-called "Filton 24"—were found not guilty of aggravated burglary and criminal damage by a jury at Woolwich Crown Court after eight days of deliberation. Devlin, Rajwani, and Rogers were found not guilty of violent disorder, although verdicts were not reached for the three others on the charge.
Prosecutors alleged that the six activists drove a van like a "battering ram" to smash their way into the Elbit Systems UK research, development, and manufacturing facility in Bristol early on August 6, 2024 in a "meticulously organized" attack targeting the subsidiary of the Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems.
❗️BREAKING -- Palestine Action protesters found not guilty of burglary at Elbit weapons factory in Bristol.The six activists were also not convicted of other charges, having spent 18 months in jail awaiting trial.realmedia.press/filton-verdi...
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— Declassified UK (@declassifieduk.org) February 4, 2026 at 5:02 AM
The defendants—who had been imprisoned on remand for 17 months—were also accused of using fire extinguishers to spray red paint throughout the facility and of using crowbars and hammers to break computers and other equipment.
The activists admitted to breaking into the facility, only disputing that the sledgehammers were offensive weapons and arguing that they were only meant to damage property.
After the verdicts were announced, the courtroom erupted in cheers and the six cleared activists hugged in the dock.
“These verdicts are a huge blow to government ministers who have tried to portray Palestine Action as a violent group to justify banning it under badly drafted terrorism legislation," said a spokesperson for the group Defend Our Juries, which has organized numerous protests in support of Palestine Action.
“Despite government efforts to prejudice this trial, citing the allegations of violence to justify treating Palestine Action as ‘terrorists’, as if they were already proved, the jury which heard the evidence has refused to find the defendants guilty of anything, not even criminal damage," the spokesperson added. "It shows how out of step this government is with public opinion, which is revulsed by the government and Elbit’s complicity in genocide.”
The jury failed to reach a verdict on an additional charge against Corner, who allegedly caused grievous bodily harm by hitting Police Sgt. Kate Evans in the back with a sledgehammer as she laid on the floor, fracturing her spine.
Journalist Adam Ramsay pointed out that Corner's altercation with Evans "was widely used to justify the proscription of Palestine Action."
"The fact that the jury, who heard the full story, didn’t convict him of a crime leaves the case for proscription in tatters," Ramsay added.
Corner—and possibly other defendants—could face new trials on certain charges if the Crown Prosecution Service determines that there is a realistic chance of conviction and if further action serves the public interest.
Eighteen other alleged Palestine Action members are currently awaiting trials scheduled for later this year.
Numerous observers said the verdicts obliterate the government's rationale for banning Palestine Action under the highly contentious Terrorism Act of 2000.
"I'm not sure people appreciate quite what a blow to [UK Prime Minister Keir] Starmer's government the acquittal of the Palestine Action protestors is," East Anglia Law School professor Paul Bernal said on Bluesky. "It both blows apart the whole proscription idea and demonstrates how out of touch they are."
"This was a jury," Bernal added. "Juries represent the public."
Journalist Jonathan Cook noted that "the UK government pinned its case for declaring Palestine Action a terrorist organization largely on the trial of the so-called Filton Six, claiming they had proved the group to be violent. A jury today found none of them guilty of any of the charges."
A declassified UK intelligence report published last September by the New York Times acknowledged that “the majority” of Palestine Action’s activities “would not be classified as terrorism” under the country's highly contentious Terrorism Act of 2000.
In addition to the Filton break-in, Palestine Action's direct action protests have also including spray-painting warplanes at a British military base and defacing US President Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland—acts experts say do not constitute terrorism.
Britain's Terrorism Act has long been condemned by civil liberties defenders, who decry the law’s “vague and overbroad” definition of terrorism, chilling effect on free speech and expression, invasive stop-and-search powers, pre-charge detention and control orders, sweeping surveillance and data collection, and other provisions.
According to rights groups, more than 2,700 people have been arrested during demonstrations of support for Palestine Action since the group’s proscription. Many of those arrested did nothing more than hold up signs reading: “I Oppose Genocide. I Support Palestine Action.”
Arrestees include many elders, including 83-year-old Rev. Sue Parfitt, who argued that “we cannot be bystanders” in the face of Israel’s US and UK-backed genocide in Gaza, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing; nearly 2 million people forcibly displaced; and hundreds of thousands starved by design.
The Filton trial tells us two things: 1. The justice system cannot defeat us. If we trust in the inherent goodness of people, of empathy, of those of us willing to fight against oppression and genocide, we can and will be free.2. Direct action gets the fucking goods.
— BASH BACK (@bashback.bsky.social) February 4, 2026 at 8:28 AM
Last September, a panel of United Nations experts concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is currently reviewing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa.
The International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Dutch city, issued warrants in November 2024 for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 27-month assault and siege on Gaza.
Numerous Palestine Action members and supporters have gone on a monthslong life-threatening hunger strike to protest the defendants' imprisonment on remand and to demand a fair trial, lifting of the ban on Palestine Action, and closure of Elbit Systems’ UK facilities.
Late last month, Muhammad Umer Khalid, the last of the Palestine Action hunger strikers, began eating again after he was hospitalized with multiple organ failure.
Naila Ahmed, head of campaigns at CAGE International, said in a statement Wednesday that the Filton verdicts are "a powerful affirmation of jury independence and moral courage in the face of extraordinary political pressure."
"Though they cannot get back the 17 months of their life taken from them unlawfully, they should all be compensated and the remaining 18 defendants of the Filton 24 should also be released on bail," she added. "This case was used to justify the ban against Palestine Action, a decision that should now be overturned."
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