ISTANBUL — A flotilla of ships bound for the Gaza Strip is preparing to sail from Turkey in the coming days, organizers say, on a mission aimed at breaching Israel’s naval blockade and highlighting the lack of aid reaching Palestinians in the besieged enclave.
Washington
Gaza aid flotilla plans to challenge Israeli blockade, organizers say
But the flotilla’s well-traveled route — the Mediterranean — has gained new relevance during the current conflict as governments and relief organizations alike turn to sea deliveries to circumvent what aid groups say is Israel’s persistent obstruction of deliveries to Gaza over land.
The latest flotilla mission, which will include a cargo ship carrying more than 5,000 tons of aid, comes as global attention on Gaza’s worsening humanitarian crisis has waned, shifting to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. Apparent Turkish sensitivities over whether to allow the ships to depart has caused organizers to hedge on when exactly the voyage, which was scheduled to begin Sunday, would get underway.
The regional dynamics were “challenging,” Ann Wright, one of the flotilla organizers, said in a phone interview from Istanbul last week, where activists planning to join the maritime convoy were gathering. The mission was also at the “mercy of the port authorities” in Turkey, said Wright, a retired U.S. diplomat and former Army colonel who resigned her State Department position in opposition to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
“The ships are ready,” she said.
At a news conference Friday aboard one of the ships, Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American human rights attorney who has joined previous flotillas to Gaza, said “our governments have thus far done nothing but we call on them to start now, to uphold their own obligations under international law, to demand that Israel allow the flotilla safe passage to Gaza.”
“We expect that Turkey will not be bought off and we will indeed sail,” she said. “Anything less than this is collaborating with the illegal siege on Gaza, and we don’t think that is what the Turkish government will do.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the flotilla’s mission. Israeli channel N12 reported Saturday that “security preparations” had begun, including for taking over the flotilla. One of the groups participating in the voyage — a Turkish Islamic charity organization, IHH — is designated as a terrorist group by Israel. The group has denied links to terrorism.
Israel has argued for years that the naval blockade is justified to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza — a policy that Arraf said was part of Israel’s “hermetic closure” of the territory that amounted to collective punishment of its population, and a war crime.
A report by a U.N. panel on the May 2010 Israeli raid called the naval blockade a “legitimate security measure,” but said that Israel’s boarding of the vessels “with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone” was “excessive and unreasonable.”
Since October, Israel’s hindrance of aid deliveries by land, as well its attacks on relief organizations, have helped fuel a humanitarian crisis that has caused northern Gaza to slide into famine, according to aid officials and human rights groups.
The killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers by Israeli forces on April 1 highlighted the dangerous environment in which relief agencies operate. In the aftermath, the Biden administration warned Israel to swiftly address civilian suffering in Gaza or risk future U.S. support.
“This is a completely man-made and preventable situation,” Andrea de Domenico, the head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory, said during a press briefing last week. “I think there has been a lot of effort from our side and the Israeli side to some extent to increase the volume of aid that is going to the north,” he said, while adding that significant obstacles remained.
In a six-day period this month, “41 percent of our requests for operations in the north have been denied,” he said. For Gaza’s residents, “every day is literally a struggle to survive.”
In March, President Biden announced a plan to establish a maritime aid corridor to Gaza, shortly after the United States joined other countries in dropping relief supplies by air on the enclave. Humanitarian officials said that while any additional deliveries were welcome, they were no substitute for aid delivered by trucks.
Wright said the flotilla would include a cargo ship carrying food packages, water, ambulances and medical supplies including anesthesia. “We are trying to stop the starvation,” she said. “It’s not nearly enough. It will make a dent,” she said.
Flotilla participants were conducting nonviolence training last week, in advance of the scheduled departure, she said. “We hope that we can get into Gaza,” Wright said. But they were preparing for the myriad ways they could be turned back.
Many of the governments in the region had participated in stymieing previous Gaza missions, including Greece, which stopped boats from departing in 2011. The United States had warned its citizens not to participate in the missions, and offered “very little assistance” when American activists on the flotillas were detained and then deported by Israel, she said.
If the current mission got underway, they were possibly facing an “armada,” she said, with U.S. warships stationed in the waters off Israel.
Mustafa Ozbek, the media coordinator for IHH, said the organizers had notified the Turkish government, the United Nations and other international institutions about the mission.
Dylan Saba, a 31-year old writer and attorney who was planning to travel with the flotilla, said he was joining in part because “there is an obligation for citizens of the world to act, where governments have failed, and to act in the spirit of international law.”
As a Palestinian, whose father was born in Gaza, there was a “lot of symbolic value in being able to accompany this aid that we are attempting to deliver, not just to my distant family members who are living there, but all of the Palestinians of Gaza,” he said.
“I feel very confident that this is the right thing for me to do,” he said. “But I would be lying to you if I said that I was not scared.”
Alon Rom in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Ore. (KPTV) – The Washington County Sheriff’s Office released video of deputies using a drone to track down a man wanted for damaging a car.
On Saturday, May 30, a 911 caller reported a man damaging a car outside their home on Southwest 179th Avenue in Aloha. The sheriff’s office said it was reported the suspect, 21-year-old Santos Paulino Castro-Ramirez, was punching the car.
Deputies used a drone to follow the suspect as he ran toward Southwest Barcelona Lane. The sheriff’s office said Castro-Ramirez then entered a white SUV that did not belong to him on SW Barcelona.
Deputies arrested Castro-Ramirez. He was booked into the Washington County Jail for first-degree burglary and attempt to commit a crime – second-degree theft.
Copyright 2026 KPTV-KPDX. All rights reserved.
Beirut, Lebanon – On Tuesday, representatives from Lebanon and Israel met at the US Department of State in Washington, DC – the first session of a two-day round of negotiations that Lebanese negotiators hope will end an invasion of their country.
The negotiations, which started at 9am local time (13:00 GMT), come as Israel’s invasion of Lebanon pushes deeper than at any point since the year 2000 and as Hezbollah and Israel continue to trade attacks. Israel has killed 3,468 people in Lebanon since March 2, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health.
With the war raging on, what do Lebanon and Israel have to discuss and will the talks lead to an end of the Israeli assault?
Here’s everything you need to know.
What will Israel and Lebanon discuss?
Similar to past meetings, the two sides are ostensibly looking to come to some kind of deal following fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, with strong doubts it will be achieved.
Lebanon’s government is still pushing for a total ceasefire. However, as talks started, Israel was striking various parts of southern Lebanon. Lebanon is also trying to get Israel to withdraw from Lebanese territory in the south, so that more than 1.2 million displaced people can return home, and so the state can resume finding a way to disarm Hezbollah and rebuild areas devastated by Israeli attacks.
Israel is meanwhile looking to get assurances that Lebanon will disarm Hezbollah, a prospect analysts say Israel knows is complicated by the continuation of its military operations and occupation of swaths of southern Lebanon. Instead, Israel appears to be trying to fuel sectarian tensions inside Lebanon, leading to chaos and internal strife.
What has happened so far?
An initial meeting took place in April between Israel and Lebanon’s ambassadors to the United States. A second round took place in May with a larger delegation on both sides.
On Friday, a meeting took place with Lebanese and Israeli military representatives, while Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group, is not involved in the meetings.
Israel claimed the two sides found common ground in that they both wanted to see Hezbollah disarmed. Some Israeli officials suggested there may soon be trade agreements and an exchange of tourists between the two countries. Lebanon, however, said it preferred to find a deal closer to the 1949 armistice agreement between the two countries.
In the last meeting, Beirut reportedly outlined the damage done by Israeli attacks since the 2024 ceasefire agreement and presented detailed maps showing homes destroyed or razed by Israel.
Is there a chance for a ceasefire?
That remains to be seen, but for now, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country’s military would continue attacking Lebanon.
On Monday, Netanyahu announced that attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs would resume, despite a ceasefire. Apart from two targeted attacks, Israel has not struck the suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, since April.
Iran, which has attempted to include Lebanon in a wider ceasefire between themselves, on one side, and Israel and the US on the other, then intervened by threatening to attack northern Israel.
US President Donald Trump reportedly intervened to stop Israel’s attacks. He announced another ceasefire, after his previous announcement of one between Israel and Lebanon on April 16, after claiming he had gotten the approval of Netanyahu and spoken to Hezbollah.
“There will be no troops going to Beirut, and any troops that are on their way have already been turned back,” Trump announced on his social media platform, Truth Social.
But attacks from Israel and Hezbollah are continuing.
How do Lebanese people feel about the talks?
Not everyone is on the same page.
Some Lebanese support the talks and say they are the only option the state, which has little leverage, has. Among those who believe direct talks are the best way forward are Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.
“There is no option other than negotiation,” Aoun said in a statement on Tuesday.
Others, however, oppose direct talks. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and his allies, Hezbollah, have said indirect talks are preferred and that negotiations cannot be conducted while attacks are ongoing.
How are Iran and the US connected?
Israel and the US attacked Iran on February 28, killing the country’s longtime leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran is Hezbollah’s primary benefactor, and two days after Khamenei’s assassination, Hezbollah fired six rockets towards Israel on 2 March.
Hezbollah’s response brought a huge response from Israel, who have crossed the Litani River – the supposed buzzer zone in southern Lebanon it had created – towards the Zahrani River.
Despite a 2024 ceasefire, Israel had never stopped attacking Lebanon, while Hezbollah had only responded once in December 2024.
Iran has attempted to include Lebanon in the ceasefire deal it has with the United States and Israel, who say this theatre is not part of the agreement.
Although Trump has now announced a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel twice, the invasion of southern Lebanon continues.
Are there other actors involved?
Gulf states have also intervened. Saudi Arabia has been working behind the scenes to get Lebanon’s leadership – Aoun, Salam and Berri – on the same page. Meanwhile, analysts say Saudi Arabia and Qatar engaged the Trump administration to stop an escalation in Lebanon.
The Washington Lottery offers several draw games for those aiming to win big.
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02-42-47-57-58, Powerball: 14, Power Play: 3
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11
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8-6-0
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07-08-09-18
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04-05-08-14-16-17-23-24-27-28-31-32-38-43-45-47-51-58-65-66
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05-09-10-15-21-26
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02-07-35-44-57, Powerball: 25
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All Washington Lottery retailers can redeem prizes up to $600. For prizes over $600, winners have the option to submit their claim by mail or in person at one of Washington Lottery’s regional offices.
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PO Box 43050
Olympia, WA 98504-3050
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- Powerball Double Play: 8:30 p.m. PT Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Washington editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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