Spanish activist Saif Abukeshek, a member of the humanitarian aid mission to Gaza Global Sumud Flotilla, is already in Barcelona. Abukeshek arrived around 5:30 pm this Sunday after being imprisoned without charges in Israel along with Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila. Both were detained in Israel after, on April 30, the army raided 22 ships of the flotilla and illegally captured 175 members in international waters a thousand kilometers from its border, with only the two of them remaining detained until, nine days later, Israel decided to deport them. A group of activists welcomed Abukeshek at the Barcelona airport with shouts of celebration and condemnations of Israel. Upon arrival, the activist warned that “Israel violates human rights at any time and in any space.”
As soon as he arrived, Abukeshek expressed his joy at returning to Barcelona, where he resides: “But I do not promise not to do it again,” he said, then confirming that he will soon rejoin the flotilla in Turkey. The activist began his speech at the airport by remembering the “thousands and thousands of Palestinian prisoners left behind, left defenseless, tortured, continuously violated.” “Rights are for everyone, they are not exclusive to just some,” he reminded.
Abukeshek was one of the members of the Global Sumud Flotilla, participating aboard an observer ship that had no intention of reaching Gaza. “During the interrogation, they kept asking me why I had gone there, but they were the ones who came to look for us,” he recalled before his fellow activists. This flotilla, as on previous occasions, set sail from Sicily on April 12 to undertake a sea journey to the coasts of Gaza with the aim of bringing humanitarian aid to this Palestinian territory devastated by the war unleashed in October 2023. A thousand kilometers from Israeli territory, the army of this country raided the flotilla and illegally captured 175 members. All were disembarked in Greece except two: the Spanish-Palestinian Abukeshek and the Brazilian Ávila, with the argument that they needed to be interrogated. Israel considers the former “suspected of affiliation with a terrorist organization” and the latter of “illegal activity.”
Abukeshek flatly rejected these accusations: “Every day they repeated to me that they had evidence, that they were sure, and in the end they closed the investigation without bringing me before a judge. The terrorists are the genocidal occupying governments,” he asserted. “What we saw in our interception is the result of impunity and the complicity of governments that allow Israel to act as it does,” he lamented, calling on citizens to confront this situation: “Our generation faces a historic task.”
After spending 40 hours at sea under Israeli custody, the flotilla members arrived in Greece and the two detained activists were separated from the rest, a moment in which assaults by the Israeli army were already reported. Abukeshek recalled those assaults and thanked the support received from the flotilla comrades.
Abukeshek was born in the Askar refugee camp, in Nablus, has lived in Spain for two decades, and in recent years has settled in Barcelona, where he lives with his three children (one boy and two girls) and his wife. The activist explained that, in the detention center, he stopped eating, drinking, and finally speaking in protest of his detention without charges. Abukeshek explained that the guards offered him typical desserts from his hometown to break the hunger strike, and also made him listen to Palestinian songs. “They repeated their version of displacement and genocide to me over and over, and told me that Palestine does not exist. They repeated it many times,” he recounted.
He is one of the founders of the Global Movement to Gaza in Spain, one of the organizations that make up the Global Sumud Flotilla. Abukeshek is part of the Palestinian Community in Catalonia and the Intersindical Alternativa de Catalunya (IAC), a union for which he is responsible for international affairs. Last year he was already detained for three days in Egypt, during which he reported having suffered torture, for participating in the action to try to open a humanitarian corridor to Rafah amid Israel’s attack on Gaza.
