The Haifa District Court, sitting as an admiralty court, accepted the state’s request and ordered 11 vessels seized during the October 2025 Sumud flotilla transferred to state ownership, according to a partial judgment issued Monday.
The ruling comes as Israel again faces an international confrontation over Gaza-bound flotillas, after the Navy intercepted the latest Global Sumud Flotilla this week. The Foreign Ministry said all 430 activists aboard the current flotilla were being brought to Israel, while organizers said all 50 vessels were intercepted. Israeli officials have described the flotilla as a public-relations stunt in service of Hamas, while activists said they were trying to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid.
Boats were on their way to violate Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip
Senior Judge Ron Sokol ruled that the state may confiscate the 11 vessels, which were among dozens of boats seized by the Navy on October 1-2 and October 8, 2025, while, according to the court, they were on their way to violate Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. The state filed its confiscation request on November 9, 2025, under the 1864 Naval Prize Act and wartime regulations governing admiralty proceedings.
The decision applies only to the vessels marked in the case as numbers 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, and 51 - not to all 52 vessels listed in the wider proceedings.
The state argued that the owners of the 11 boats did not respond to the confiscation request for roughly six months.
According to the decision, formal notice was served to the owners of two vessels, Saad Umm and Alaa Al Najjar, but no response was filed. For the other vessels, the state said it could not complete formal service: French authorities did not provide ownership details for several boats; two vessels were owned by Libyan owners who could not be served; and the owner of Soul of My Soul, which bore an Italian flag, could not be located despite attempts to find an address.
Sokol accepted the state’s position, writing that although formal service was not completed for all the boats, there was “no doubt” the owners knew the vessels had been seized, both because of the public attention surrounding the seizure and because the boats had been held by the state for more than six months.
“The owners’ disregard of the confiscation proceedings for such a long period indicates that they do not object to the confiscation request,” Sokol wrote.
State must turn to the court without delay after seizing a vessel
The court said that under maritime prize law, the state must turn to the court without delay after seizing a vessel, so the court can decide what should be done with it. Since many months had passed since the seizure, Sokol wrote, the appropriate order was to confiscate the boats and transfer them to state ownership.
However, the transfer is not immediate. Sokol ordered the state to first submit or correct a survey identifying the vessels, after noting difficulty matching the names and numbers in the confiscation request with those appearing in the survey previously submitted by the state.
Once the corrected survey is filed, ownership of the 11 vessels will be transferred to the state. The state must notify the court within 15 days of the filing of the survey and the transfer of ownership.
The ruling lands amid renewed focus on Israel’s naval blockade enforcement. The current Turkish-backed flotilla included more than 50 vessels and some 500 participants, and was part of the Global Sumud Flotilla’s second blockade-running attempt after a previous effort in April was intercepted by the Navy.