I last saw Gaza from the windows of an Israel Defense Force (IDF) army bus in the summer of 1979 as a reservist returning from deployment in the eastern Sinai. As we drove through Gaza City, the streets seemed practically deserted. Maybe it was because it was brutally hot that afternoon. Maybe, almost 10 years before the first intifada, no one in the city particularly felt like provoking a number of heavily armed paratroopers.

No one on the bus gave it much thought one way or the other: we’d been gone for over five weeks and wanted to get back to our base, turn in our kit, and get home. Indeed, if we thought about the Gazans at all it was that this part of Palestine might soon revert to the control of Egypt. It had been only a few months before that Egyptian president Anwar Sadat had come to Jerusalem. Peace with Egypt was in the cards and some sort of settlement with the Palestinians couldn’t be far behind we thought. After all, most in the unit were fairly progressive by Israeli political standards of the day and, except for a few who believed in the concept of a “Greater Israel”, the idea of an endless occupation seemed simply ludicrous. To paraphrase Yeshayahu Lebowitz, a famous rabbi of the time, Jews who had suffered such harsh discrimination themselves over the centuries should not inflict it on others or rule over another people. Lebowitz and others cited a famous Jewish dictum that “justice, always justice” must prevail.

That was then.

A lot has changed in the intervening years: two intifadas that pitted teenagers against the vaunted IDF war machine, an invasion of much of Lebanon in 1982 that dragged on for almost 20 years, a second war in southern Lebanon in 2006 against Hezbollah, and an all out assault on Gaza in 2008. Suicide bombers struck back. A wall cutting off whole villages built in parts of the West Bank became the accepted answer for much of the Israeli electorate in response to the bombings. And, not least, Gaza was permanently besieged from the ground and sea. The official reason for the latter was the rocket attacks into southern Israel from the Strip; the less official reason was that the Gazans had freely elected a Hamas government that the Israelis (and the U.S. and Canadian governments) didn’t like.

The situation that we on the bus thought would be transient became permanent. Rule over others became the norm, not the exception. And Gaza, home to over a million and a half people today, became what has been called the world’s “largest outdoor prison.”

I’ve learned a lot since those days. Belatedly, I’ve begun to appreciate that there are two quite different narratives about Palestine and Israel, the Zionist one and that of the Palestinians. The “facts” differ radically between the two, but what assuredly remains wrong is the domination by Israel of another people, people who for the most part merely want raise their children well, live their lives in peace, and want to elect the government of their choice. They certainly can’t do the first two from under a blockade that restricts trade and interaction with the rest of the Palestinian territories and the outside world. They can’t do so when their territory can be attacked at any time by a vastly superior military force. Holding a population hostage because one doesn’t like its leaders is a frank violation of the Geneva Accords. Bombing an entire civilian population to punish a few is the same.

In June, a boat — the Tahrir — staffed by prominent Canadians and some journalists will depart from somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean and attempt to breach the sea blockade of Gaza. It will be joined by an international flotilla of boats from various countries attempting to do the same. The goal will be to land the boat and engage in notional trade between Gazans and the world. The boats are not smuggling weapons or other contraband, but rather bringing in much needed medical supplies and food.

The convoy won’t succeed in getting through the blockade, of course. Unless there is a significant change of heart by the Israeli government, the Israeli navy simply won’t let it. But the act of trying to break the blockade itself is symbolic of the view held by people from many countries that the blockade is immoral, as well as illegal. The boats to Gaza will sail for human rights for all peoples, not just the Palestinians, rights that accept no boundaries or walls.

How the IDF responds will have repercussions far beyond this one event. If the navy fires on the boats as it did against a Turkish boat in international waters last year, Israel will further convince the world that it cares nothing for international law, let alone human rights. If it lets the boats though, Israel will have acknowledged that the Gazans cannot be held in prisons simply because they are a different people. Either way, “citizens of the world”, in Thomas Paine’s words, will have made their point.

In 1979, I passed through Gaza because I thought I was serving my country. Now I want to go back as one more citizen of the world. For me, justice demands it.

Alas, the crew of the Canadian boat, Tahrir, has been chosen and I’m not on it. But my heart and wishes go with it and all of those on board as they seek “Justice, always justice.”