"After the last flotilla, a Hamas legislator said it 'did more than 10,000 rockets to change things.' That shows we're reaching people," continues Mr. Naiman, who is bringing Arabic translations of "The Montgomery Story," a 1958 comic book about Martin Luther King Jr., nonviolent resistance, and the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott.
Naiman says he hopes the flotilla will show Palestinians that nonviolent struggle can work and to bolster nascent grass-roots Palestinian movements that have sought, with some success, to use nonviolent protests and passive resistance to press their demands.
"Never in the past 25 years has there been anything like this political moment, where half of Palestinian society is poised to go [toward nonviolence], and that’s exciting to me," says Naiman, giving a rough estimate of the Palestinian mood. "The more nonviolence works, the more they will adopt it. That’s why there’s so much excitement about the flotilla."
Israel lobbying to stall flotilla
Last year's flotilla symbolically sought to break Israel's economic siege of the Gaza Strip, which includes a naval blockade. Gaza's port has been shut since 2006, and goods flow almost exclusively through a border crossing tightly controlled by Israel, leading to shortages of fuel, medicine, and construction materials in the territory.
