Australia welcomed its Gaza flotilla activists Tuesday in much the same way that Spain and Australia welcomed theirs: by armed security forces hauling them away.

About 50 anti-Israel demonstrators, including flotilla activists, blocked the marble foyer of the Parliament House in Canberra by kneeling with their heads down and hands behind their backs, mimicking the detention of the flotilla activists in Israel.

Israel’s navy had intercepted the latest attempt by activists to breach the joint Israel-Egypt blockade of Gaza, stopping the vessels in international waters some 150 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza and bringing them to Israel for deportation. The activists numbered about 430 people and hailed from 45 different countries.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry was quick to post its scorn, alongside a video.

“The flotilla anarchists sow chaos wherever they go,” the ministry tweeted. “Now in Australia. Before that in Spain, Austria, and Greece. The flotilla = provocations and riots.”

The Foreign Ministry, pointing out that even the Gaza Board of Peace called the flotilla movement a PR stunt, had ordered the flotilla “to change course and turn back immediately” shortly before intercepting it when it refused to comply.

“The purpose of this provocation is to serve Hamas, to divert attention from Hamas’s refusal to disarm, and to obstruct progress on President Trump’s peace plan,” the ministry said.

The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) posted Monday on X that “over 1.6 million tons of food have entered Gaza since the beginning of the ceasefire” in October 2025, adding to the approximately 2 million tons of aid that had entered the Strip from the beginning of the war until that point.

Israel has also maintained that the blockade on Gaza, which was implemented to prevent shipments of arms to the Hamas-controlled territory, complies with international law.