Sumud's impact—Part 2: who does the Mediterranean belong to?

The Sumud Flotilla failed to reach its destination on its second mission to draw attention to the Gaza blockade, but it did reveal the "unknown sovereignty map" of the Mediterranean. This civilian movement—while its activists, many of whom are close friends of mine, were subjected to severe pressure and torture—shook military and geopolitical equations and laid bare the helplessness of states in the face of Israel in many respects.

The attacks on the latest flotilla have shown us this: The Mediterranean has now turned into a vast zone of surveillance and military operations where Israel acts arbitrarily. The Zionists intervened twice in quick succession against the latest Sumud Flotilla. In the first instance, soldiers were boarded onto the boats in international waters off the island of Crete, hundreds of miles from the shores of Gaza, the intended destination. In the second, on the Cyprus line, activists heading toward Gaza were stopped on the high seas and, in an act of piracy, taken to the port of Ashdod.

On paper—that is, according to existing international agreements and the law of the sea—the Mediterranean's coastal states should have risen up against this piracy. But the fact that Israel can carry out operations wherever it wants, seize ships in international waters in violation of the principle of freedom of the high seas, abduct citizens of dozens of countries, and do all of this without facing any recorded sanctions, shows that the sovereignty order in the Mediterranean has effectively been suspended.

The intervention off Crete was, in fact, also an assault on Europe's presence in the Mediterranean and its claim to sovereignty. Israel sent a message to all the coastal states, especially Italy and Greece: "I determine the security boundaries and the law in the Mediterranean." While the European Union issued only statements of "concern" for days, Israel expanded its operational capacity hundreds of miles from its own shores.

So it is quite possible to say this: The Mediterranean is governed by Israel's undeclared "invisible territorial waters."

There is no institutional force capable of telling Israel "Stop!" in the face of warships, drones, raids, and operations to abduct civilians.

Yet the Mediterranean has its territorial waters, continental shelves, exclusive economic zones, and search-and-rescue areas. There are NATO security zones, European Union maritime borders, energy corridors, and military bases belonging to numerous countries. In other words, the Mediterranean is one of the most sensitive seas in the world, where dozens of states superimpose their sovereignty claims.

Under normal circumstances, any entity conducting military operations hundreds of miles away, entering the areas of responsibility of other countries, would be grounds for an international crisis. But through this process, we have been confronted with another reality:

Israel is now acting with a barbarism that regards not just the occupied Palestinian coast but the entire Mediterranean as its own security zone.

The second intervention, on the Cyprus line, made the situation even worse. In a region where Türkiye, the TRNC, South Cyprus, Egypt, British bases, NATO, and all the flashpoints of the Eastern Mediterranean energy equation intersect, Israel once again carried out its operation and again used de facto force at sea.

The extent to which the structures established by the global system have been neutralized has been exposed by Sumud's "update test."

So what will all of this picture change?

Some may read what has happened as "Israel showed its power and intimidated everyone." But the paint has peeled off. The whole world saw with its naked eyes how weak Europe's discourse of an "international legal order" is—so weak that it cannot protect even a few civilian boats—and how the rhetoric of civilization, human rights, and "standards" has collapsed.

No one will ever again evaluate what happens in the Mediterranean using concepts like "security reflex" or "legitimate defense."

Gaza, which shows why established orders are collapsing and why they are no longer sustainable, continues to shape the world.

This is why the Sumud Flotilla, while demonstrating the will to go to Gaza at the cost of lives, has become a civil mirror of truth, showing the world who actually rules the Mediterranean and with what kind of tyranny.

Sumud has also completely washed away, in the waters of the Mediterranean, that fake legal makeup on the faces of the rulers.

Everyone has now seen that the Gaza blockade does not begin off the coast of Gaza, but has turned into an invisible occupation zone spreading across the entire Mediterranean, haven't they?