Gazan Artists Pay Tribute to the Global Sumud Flotilla with Mural

Gazanian artists dedicate a mural to the Flotilla as Israel detains its activists

The solidarity shown by the hundreds of people aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla has been met with a mural painted by a group of Palestinian artists in a refugee camp in the heart of the Gaza Strip. It is their way of thanking them for trying to lift the blockade.

As Israel intercepts another mission of the Global Sumud Flotilla in the middle of the Mediterranean, a group of young Palestinian artists paints a mural in the Al Bureij refugee camp, in the heart of the Gaza Strip, dedicated to the international activists fighting to break the siege of the Palestinian enclave.

"I want to thank the Flotilla and everyone who tries to reach Gaza and help us lift the humanitarian blockade." “We can’t thank you enough with words, so we’re going to paint you on the streets of Gaza,” Yumana Yudi, a 21-year-old artist and co-creator of the mural along with her colleagues Sahar Ismail and Abdelmuti Ashuor, told EFE.

The artwork is dominated by the portrait of Brazilian Thiago Ávila, arrested by Israeli authorities in early May after being captured in international waters on April 30.

The three artists created the mural to coincide with Israel’s interception of the latest flotilla bound for Gaza in international waters, which resulted in the arrest of 430 activists from some fifty boats. The migrants arrived this Wednesday at the Israeli port of Ashdod, just 40 kilometers from Gaza.

The painting depicts a handful of sailboats, adorned in the colors of the Palestinian flag, seemingly sailing across the blue canvas toward a black and gray Gaza, where buildings are crumbling and smoke and debris fill an area even larger than the city itself.

Over this Gaza, the three young men and a girl leave their red-painted hands. The artists also brushstrokes simulating blood across the streets of the Strip, where, following the ceasefire that ended two years of war in October, Israel has killed 871 people, occupied more than half the territory, and maintained a humanitarian blockade.

After painting the flotilla, Sahar—one of the three artists—updates the scene with the day's news. The young Gazan woman uses the same black she used to paint her city to depict the helicopters, boats, and ships with which the Israeli Navy has once again intercepted the flotilla. All of them are captained by a huge Star of David over the Mediterranean, adorned with a pirate patch.

“It has touched our hearts”

“The maritime flotilla has already touched our hearts and shown our people how much the activists support us. Of course, all the inhabitants of Gaza know them and know everything they do for us,” Abdelmuti, another young artist who created the mural, explained to EFE.

“From Gaza, from under the rubble and amidst the bombings, we say to you: thank you for never abandoning Palestine,” Sahar thanked Thiago Ávila in a social media post.

At one end of the artwork, the artists inscribed the famous phrase by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: “On this land there is something worth living for.”

The mural for the Flotilla is nestled between two other works: one depicts a woman crying; the other, Spanish footballer Lamine Yamal, celebrated in Gaza last week for displaying a Palestinian flag during the Barcelona players’ victory parade after winning La Liga.

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