While the world’s eyes were focused on the dozens of ships that tried to break into Gaza, behind the scenes, a completely different kind of battle was being waged in the past 24 hours – a battle of consciousness, timed and precise, in which Israel sought to neutralize both the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) itself and its explosive potential in the international arena.
In Israel, the flotilla was seen as an attempt to create a crisis of consciousness and politics on the eve of the discussions on implementing the components of Phase II of the Gaza Peace Plan in the Gaza Strip, and to divert attention from the international effort to move Gaza forward to the next stage.
Israeli officials described a combined operation, unusual in its scope, in which the Foreign Ministry – and not the IDF spokesman – took the lead in the information campaign.
“This is already the fifth flotilla. We have learned the lessons,” said Israeli officials. This time, they said, the challenge was more complex: it was an especially large flotilla, planned to include about 100 vessels, rather than a smaller event of the type Israel already has experience with.
The closer the flotilla got to the coast of Gaza, the greater the potential for operational, political, and media friction. Therefore, according to the official, it was necessary to deal with it at an early stage.
Approximately 175 activists from more than 20 boats of the condom flotilla are now making their way peacefully to Israel.
In the video: the activists enjoying themselves aboard Israeli vessels pic.twitter.com/0sz8kDpKLX
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) April 30, 2026
“The IDF knows how to act operationally, but the Foreign Ministry knows how to tell the story to the world – and that was the information and diplomatic battle that took place over the past 24 hours.”
Behind the scenes, several bodies were operating in full coordination: the Foreign Ministry, the Public Relations Division, the IDF Spokesperson, the police, the Prison Service, and the Population Authority.
Israeli officials said that, unlike previous incidents, this time there was “harmony” between all the bodies. The operational documenters from the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit transferred materials from the field to the Foreign Ministry, where they quickly turned them into informational materials, messages for networks, and political briefings.
Israel’s strategy for dealing with the flotilla narrative
The Israeli line rests on three central messages. The first: the denial of the flotilla’s legitimacy. According to the message conveyed to the world, the organizations currently managing the humanitarian effort in Gaza are international mechanisms, headed by the Gaza Board of Peace and the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), and not private flotilla operators.
According to Israeli officials, more than one and a half million tons of humanitarian aid and thousands of tons of medical equipment were brought into the Strip through the official international channels established following US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza.
“There is no humanitarian vacuum that the flotilla is filling – it is a show,” Jerusalem emphasized.
The second message was directed at elements identified by Israel as being behind the flotilla. Israel claimed that Hamas is the driving force behind the initiative, in an attempt to divert attention from international pressure to disarm and torpedo political progress.
“This is not an innocent civil initiative – it is an orchestrated move,” Israeli officials said.
The third message focused on the participants themselves, and it was the one that resonated quickly. The Foreign Ministry chose an unusual, almost satirical line, which became the talk of the town: branding the flotilla as the “condom flotilla.”
This is the “medical aid” found aboard the PR stunt flotilla: condoms and drugs pic.twitter.com/RKiHrGLWfw
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) April 29, 2026
Documents from the IDF – and passed directly to the Foreign Ministry – showed items such as condoms and drugs, alongside records of recreational activities on board.
“We didn’t have to invent anything,” Israeli officials said. “Just show the world who the people were and what was happening there.” The message was amplified on social media and quickly echoed, with attempts to portray the flotilla as a provocative public-relations move rather than a humanitarian operation.
In parallel with the information campaign, an intensive diplomatic effort was conducted. The turning point came with an unusual announcement by the Board of Peace.
The council effectively determined that it was the address for humanitarian aid in Gaza, and criticized the flotilla as an act of self-promotion rather than genuine concern for the residents of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials believed that such an announcement was not born in a vacuum, but reflected quiet diplomatic background work by the Foreign Ministry vis-à-vis international bodies.
Flotilla activists to be transferred to Greece
Immediately after that came the move by the Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who closed the circle: An announcement that the activists would be transferred to Greece and not to Israel, without casualties.
The decision to transfer the activists to Greece, instead of conducting a prolonged detention event around them in Israel, was intended to thwart in advance the image that the flotilla organizers were looking for: foreign activists facing Israeli police, cameras, legal hearings, and world headlines.
From Israel’s perspective, it was a move designed to defuse the event before it turned into another political demonstration.
The result, according to Israeli sources, was an almost complete neutralization of the image threat in less than 24 hours. “It was a rolling information mine,” one source said. “And this time – we managed to defuse it in time.”
In response to Sa’ar’s decision to deport the flotilla participants to Greece, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir issued a strong statement on Friday against the decision not to bring the flotilla activists to Israel.
In his statement, Ben-Gvir alluded to threats from Turkey being one of the factors behind the deportation of the participants.
He called it a “message of weakness towards Israel’s enemies and the spreaders of anti-Semitism in the world,” claiming that it was “contrary to previous discussions and the decisions of all professional bodies to arrest the flotilla participants.”
Following the announcement, Ben Gvir told Maariv that for an entire month, the relevant bodies – together with the IDF and the Prison Service – had prepared to hold the flotilla activists in Israel, arrest them, and transfer them to prisons.
According to him, the original plan involved about 1,000 activists.
According to a senior source, two small cabinet meetings were held yesterday regarding the decision to arrest the activists. However, according to the source, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sa’ar made the decision without cabinet input not to arrest them.
