The Gaza Flotilla Now Has an ‘Armed Escort’ – And Israel Is Freaking Out

Right, so for thirteen years Turkey and Egypt barely spoke; their navies might as well have been on different planets. It’s no longer the case though, and with that said, coming into the present, at the exact moment fifty aid ships prepare to sail into Gaza’s danger zone, the two have suddenly decided to reinforce their rediscovered friendship. We’re talking military exercises, manoeuvres they are calling Operation Friendship Sea, isn’t that cute? A name so saccharine it belongs on a holiday cruise brochure, rather than a war games map. But beneath the syrupiness is something a little more sharper that might cut through rather deeply and very much not in Israel’s favour. Because Israel, already smearing the Sumud Flotilla for Gaza as “Hamas at sea,” now, now faces the prospect of trying its old piracy tricks that its pulled against previous flotillas under the eyes of NATO-grade frigates, that will just happen to be in that area at the very same time. Could this all be coincidence? Well that is the cover story. But with that much military hardware as 50 civilian boats head for Gaza, will they really be casting a blind eye to further criminality in international waters?
Right, so Israel is nothing if not predictable. When confronted with famine in Gaza, its leaders insist there is none. When confronted with starving children, it blames Hamas. And when confronted with a fleet of fifty ships carrying aid and activists from all around the world, well everyone on board mut be Hamas. Doctors, trade unionists, parliamentarians, priests – the odd comedian even, all apparently terrorist agents in Tel Aviv’s eyes. Reports from Palestinian media confirm that Israel has launched a full smear campaign against the Global Sumud Flotilla, branding participants as Hamas affiliates and raising fears of violent interception. It is a lie so thin and shocking it’s a wonder silicon valley hasn’t patented it yet to shove into a supercomputer, yet silliness aside, it is very much dangerous to the point it could prove deadly. Because when Israel paints humanitarians as terrorists, it is not just slandering them – it is priming its public for another assault at sea. It is little wonder that 16 nations therefore have positioned themselves as diplomatic bodyguards, it is little wonder that ports around the Europe, not just the Med are threatening repercussions against Israel acting as the Flotilla’s shield, both stories I’ve covered in recent days.
Israel’s smear campaign is the hook from which everything else hangs. For the activists, it is proof they are being targeted. For the flotilla, it is a warning that Israel will once again try to seize ships and tow them into Ashdod. And for Turkey and Egypt, it is the perfect moment to stage an exercise that just happens – purely by coincidence, of course – to place their navies in the exact waters where those ships will sail. Operation Friendship Sea, they call it. The name is almost too on the nose, but the timing sharper still: September twenty-second to twenty-sixth, exactly as the flotilla is expected to enter the so-called danger zone. After thirteen years without a single joint drill, Ankara and Cairo suddenly remember their friendship, just as fifty aid ships bear down on Gaza. Coincidence? Perhaps. Handy though eh?
The blockade of Gaza has survived because Israel has made it look inevitable. Every flotilla since 2010 has been intercepted, every ship impounded, every activist dragged into custody or killed. From the Mavi Marmara to the Handala, every voyage cut short, every cargo lost, symbolic as those cargoes were nonetheless. Israel’s reputation rests on this inevitability, on the sense that no matter what you do, no matter how many ships you send, they will all end up chained to Ashdod’s docks, or potentially put to Israel’s own nefarious uses as Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for. The Global Sumud Flotilla was designed to smash that inevitability. “Sumud” means steadfastness in Arabic. More than fifty vessels, carrying food, medicine, and moral solidarity, converging on Gaza in defiance of Israel’s war of starvation. It is the largest mobilisation of civilian vessels for such a mission ever. And Israel’s fear is obvious: two of the ships already struck in Tunis, reportedly struck by a drone. Even before it set sail, the flotilla was under fire all the way across the Med, there is no denying Israel is terrified of them and what they stand for, what they symbolise.
And so the question arises: what happens when those ships enter waters patrolled not just by Israel, but by Turkish frigates, Egyptian corvettes, and fighter jets? What happens when Israel tries to tow fifty vessels into Ashdod potentially, not under the cover of darkness, but under the eyes of other navies? That is the trap that might now be set, whether Ankara and Cairo intend it or not.
To understand why this exercise matters, its worth revisiting the bitter history between Turkey and Egypt. In 2013, when General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seized power in Cairo by ousting the elected president Mohamed Morsi, Ankara erupted in outrage. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then Prime Minister as he still is, denounced the coup as illegitimate and branded Sisi a dictator. Egypt, in turn, accused Turkey of sponsoring the Muslim Brotherhood, harbouring exiled opposition, and interfering in Arab affairs. For a decade, the two governments were locked in a cold war with each other. Ambassadors were withdrawn, embassies downgraded, rhetoric poisonous. Trade continued, but political and military ties were severed. Naval cooperation, once a sign of regional coordination, collapsed entirely.
For thirteen years, there were no joint manoeuvres, no Friendship Sea, no display of military comradery. The Mediterranean became a dividing line rather than a meeting point. Egypt drew closer to Greece and Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, while Turkey sparred with both over maritime borders. Cairo quietly deepened ties with Israel, especially around gas exports and counter-terrorism, while Ankara positioned itself as the champion of Gaza, hosting Hamas leaders and denouncing every Israeli strike, despite feeding them Azerbaijani oil as they still do. The two capitals were on opposite sides of regional conflicts from Libya to the Gulf.
And yet, geopolitics has a way of forcing old enemies to reconcile. By 2021, Ankara was isolated. Its quarrels with nearly every regional power leaving it exposed. Egypt, meanwhile, needed new diplomatic levers as its economy faltered and its reliance on Gulf backers became precarious. By 2023, Erdoğan and Sisi finally shook hands – a gesture long thought to be utterly unthinkable. Ambassadors were reappointed. Channels of dialogue reopened. Both governments began to explore whether pragmatic cooperation could outweigh ideological hostility. And in 2025, the culmination of that thaw arrives at sea: the first joint naval drill since 2012, a show of renewed coordination in the very waters that separate them, which just happen to be between the Flotilla and Gaza.
Officially, this is reconciliation theatre, a demonstration that Turkey and Egypt can bury the hatchet and present themselves as stabilisers rather than spoilers. But the timing cannot be ignored. After thirteen years of silence, they did not choose to drill in 2024. They did not choose to drill earlier this year. And although the exact timing that these exercises were approved is not publicly known, they have nevertheless chosen the precise week when the Global Sumud Flotilla will confront Israel’s blockade. Naval exercises of this scale take months of planning as a rule. They are not pencilled in at random. The decision was taken with Gaza already under siege and flotilla plans already widely known and several flotillas having already made the attempt to break the siege of Gaza. So it all raises the obvious question: is this coincidence, or cover?
What exactly would Turkey and Egypt be required to do if Israel strikes the flotilla just as they enter these waters? The answer lies in maritime law, and in how it is interpreted when warships and civilian ships collide. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is thankfully very clear. Article 87 guarantees the freedom of navigation on the high seas. Article 90 reaffirms the right of every state’s vessels to sail freely. Article 98 goes further: it imposes a duty on all states to render assistance to persons in distress at sea. That means if the flotilla is attacked and civilians are thrown into danger, Turkey and Egypt would be legally obliged to intervene, at least to rescue. And if those waters happen to be within their Exclusive Economic Zones, their justification for direct action grows stronger still. Within twelve miles of their coast – their territorial waters – intervention would no longer be optional, it would be mandatory. But the assumption is we’re talking international waters, so bare minimum, they must provide rescue.
The duty to assist has been invoked before. When migrants’ boats capsize in the Mediterranean, European navies are obliged to rescue, whether they like it or not. When tankers were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, US and British warships claimed the right to protect and escort them under the same principles of free navigation. The law is flexible enough to cover military operations when states choose, and rigid enough to force their hand when civilians are at risk. For Ankara and Cairo, this provides the perfect alibi. They do not need to declare themselves escorts, or as having anything whatsoever to do with the flotilla. They can claim they were already on exercise, already in the area, already obliged by international law to act when civilians were endangered as we expect to happen once more. Who could accuse them of aggression for upholding the very conventions every maritime power claims to respect?
And this is where law becomes politics. Because the legal obligation is limited to rescue. But the political obligation is far greater. Turkish and Egyptian publics are enraged by Gaza’s starvation. The Arab street sees the blockade as a crime. For Erdoğan, who once vowed to send warships to escort flotillas, doing nothing would be humiliation and another example of how two faced he is. For Sisi, who faces accusations of complicity through keeping Rafah closed from the Egyptian side and for blocking the passage of the Sumud Land Flotilla some months ago, silence would be a further stain. The law gives them a baseline. Politics pushes them further. They can shadow the flotilla, block manoeuvres by Israel, issue warnings, fly fighter jets overhead. They can make it impossible for Israel to seize ships without directly confronting their navies, or at the very least stop Israel catching them all, because if one boat reaches Gaza, the siege has been broken. And they can do all this under the cover of legality, never admitting intent, never stepping beyond the letter of international law. Plausible deniability becomes their shield. Weaponising maritime law if you like.
To see how devastating this could be, lets look at a few scenarios facing Israel here. Imagine the first: mass interception. Israel deploys every available corvette, patrol boat, commando team to take on these fifty plus boats. Helicopters swarm overhead, commandos drop onto decks, activists surrender and are subdued. One by one, ships are boarded, seized, and towed to Ashdod. But there are fifty ships. The operation would take hours, maybe days. Every move livestreamed. Every scuffle broadcast. And all of it under the eyes of Turkish frigates and Egyptian corvettes manoeuvring nearby. To the world, it would look like piracy. To Israel, it would very much be a pyrrhic victory – the blockade upheld, but at the cost of its legitimacy imploding.
Now imagine a second scenario: partial breakthrough. Israel intercepts many ships, but cannot stop them all. Some slip through, shielded by confusion, protected by shadows of warships on the horizon. Even one docking in Gaza would shatter the myth of inevitability. The blockade, once presented as absolute, would be exposed as beatable. The precedent would be set. If one ship can break through, others can follow. Israel’s deterrence would collapse, its aura of control implode.
And then the third scenario would be a direct clash. Israel boards a ship too close to Turkish or Egyptian units. A warning is issued. An Israeli vessel ignores it. A collision occurs, or worse, shots are fired. Suddenly, what was meant to be a tidy interception becomes a state-to-state confrontation. Israel, already bogged down in Gaza and Lebanon, now risks a naval front against NATO-standard militaries. Washington scrambles to contain the crisis. Tel Aviv finds itself isolated, blamed for escalation, its blockade now not just questioned but endangered by force. It is the nightmare scenario, it’s the one Netanyahu cannot afford.
Each path is a trap. Mass interception makes Israel look like a pirate state, more so than they already do, having committed piracy in seizing other flotilla vessels previously in international waters. Partial breakthrough makes its blockade shatter in public. Direct clash risks war it cannot fight. Which poison will it choose? That is the question hovering over the eastern Mediterranean right now. And that is why the presence of Turkish and Egyptian navies, even without firing a shot, is so dangerous to Israel. They turn inevitability into uncertainty. They transform control into doubt. They make every scenario lose-lose.
And so we circle back to ambiguity. Operation Friendship Sea is reconciliation on paper, cover possibly in practice. Ankara and Cairo do not need to say they are protecting the flotilla. They need only to be present, manoeuvring in the right waters, under the right dates. In the right place at the right time. If Israel attacks, they can claim duty under law. If Israel hesitates, they can claim coincidence. If activists thank them, they can smile and say it was nothing. Plausible deniability allows them to walk both sides, to appease their publics while avoiding rupture with allies. For Israel, that ambiguity is deadly though. It cannot plan around it. It cannot control it. It cannot stop it. The blockade depends on certainty. And that’s just been removed.
So what is Operation Friendship Sea? On the surface, a naval drill between two reconciled states. Beneath the surface, possibly a perfectly timed, plausibly deniable shield for the largest civilian flotilla ever. Perhaps it is coincidence. Perhaps not. But in geopolitics, coincidences are rarely meaningless. By staging their first joint drill in thirteen years at the precise moment the Global Sumud Flotilla confronts Israel’s blockade with their best chance to break it ever, Turkey and Egypt have given themselves leverage, deniability, and the ability to act without declaring intent. For Israel, that is a trap. Mass interception looks like piracy and there will be more witnesses to that than ever before, be that from the flotilla, to the respective navies to people watching events unfold on social media around the world. Partial breakthrough makes the blockade implode. Direct clash risks war. Every option is poison. And for Gaza, starved and besieged, that sliver of doubt may be the first real crack in the wall and a genuine reason to be hopeful. What the truth of the matter, we won’t have long to wait perhaps.
Where the flotilla may now have an undeclared armed escort awaiting them, they have been provided with a firewall as dockworkers around Europe threaten to down tools to all Israeli goods if the flotilla is attacked as well, another line of defence shielding the boats and their crews, so check out the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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