Category Archives: Gaza

Children of Gaza: scarred, trapped, vengeful

(h/t to Ann El Khoury at Pulse.)

The Independent previewed “Children of Gaza” which aired on Channel 4 in the UK on March 14:

Omsyatte adjusts her green school uniform and climbs gingerly on to a desk at the front of the classroom. The shy 12-year-old holds up a brightly coloured picture and begins to explain to her classmates what she has drawn. It is a scene played out in schools all over the world, but for one striking difference: Omsyatte’s picture does not illustrate a recent family holiday, or jolly school outing, but the day an Israeli military offensive killed her nine-year-old brother and destroyed her home.

“Here is where they shot my brother Ibrahim, God bless his soul. And here is the F16 plane that threw rockets into the house and trees, and here is the tank that started to shoot,” she says, to a round of applause from the other children. The exercise is designed to help the pupils at the school come to terms with the warfare that has dominated their short lives; particularly the horrors of the 2008 Israeli military offensive Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,400 Palestinians, and destroyed one in eight homes.

Like hundreds of displaced Gazans, Omsyatte’s family have spent more than a year living in a tent on a site near their home. Little rebuilding work has been done during this time – with supplies unable to pass into Gaza because of the ongoing blockade imposed by Israel in 2007 – and groups of children now pick their way through piles of rubble, kicking footballs around the bombsites which used to be local landmarks.

Homelessness is just one of the issues facing the 780,000 Gazan children in the aftermath of the conflict, problems that are explored in a revealing new documentary Dispatches: Children of Gaza, to be screened tomorrow at 8pm on Channel 4. Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the emotional scars borne by children who have survived the conflict; the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme reports that the majority of children show signs of anxiety, depression and behavioural problems.

Small boys build toy rockets out of drinks bottles, and talk about the fake guns they are going to buy with their pocket money. While boys the world over are preoccupied with fighting and weapons, this takes on a more sinister significance when the game isn’t Cowboys vs Indians, but Jews vs Arabs, and the children’s make-believe warfare is chillingly realistic.

To find out how to help the children of Gaza visit the Children of Gaza Fund website.

Which is worse for women? Hamas oppression or Israeli oppression?

Ever since Hamas assumed full political control of Gaza in June 2007, there have been occasional reports that the Islamist movement is finding ways to impose a more rigidly conservative and religiously intolerant way of life in the Palestinian enclave — changes that would impact secular, liberal-minded women more harshly than any other social group.

The BBC spoke to five Palestinian women ranging in age from 21 to 36 to find out how they have personally been affected by living under Hamas’ rule. The consensus was pretty clear: nothing Hamas has done has had a fraction of the effect that Israel has had through imposing a brutal economic siege on the population of 1.5 million.

Mona Ahmad al-Shawa, 36, who runs the women’s unit at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, said:

The siege of Gaza, which Israeli tightened when Hamas took control in June 2007, makes women’s lives much more complicated.

There are shortages of water, electricity and cooking gas. It is very difficult to leave Gaza for medical treatment.

And after the war in Gaza last year, things got worse because many women lost their husbands. Women lost lives too, of course.

You can’t imagine how hard it is to be a disabled woman in this society. Or a widow.
Our Sharia law means that a widowed woman will lose custody of her children when a boy reaches nine years old and a girl 11.

Since the war, Hamas has ruled that a widow can keep her children if she doesn’t remarry. This is an improvement.

Women’s priorities in Gaza are focused on practical matters – a home, clean water and electricity. Finer points of human rights are not top of the list.

We have many problems with the Hamas authority, but we are not in a big fight with them about women.

People in Gaza feel they are in a big prison, they feel have no choices in life.
Conditions change according to the political situation.

When the first intifada started in 1987 most women covered up, because people could speak badly of you, or throw stones if you went uncovered in the streets. It is not as bad as that now.

Israel is empowering al Qaeda, Petraeus warns

As erupting violence in Jerusalem suggests a third intifada may soon take hold, the CENTCOM commander Gen David Petraeus, testifying before the US Senate Armed Services Committee today, gave a grave warning about the wider impact of a conflict that has been the epicenter of Middle East hostilities ever since the creation of Israel.

In issuing his warning, Petraeus — arguably the most influential even if not the highest ranking member of the US military — was reiterating a statement he made almost a year ago. The only difference between what he said in April 2009 and what he said today, was that he now acknowledges al Qaeda is being strengthened by the conflict.

He now says:

The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [CENTCOM’s area of responsibility]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.

If such a statement was being made outside the American political arena, it could be regarded as a rather bland expression of what has long been utterly obvious. Yet from the lips of a celebrated general, regarded by many as a potential future president, these words come as a bombshell.

Neoconservatives and the Israel lobby have worked hard and long to obscure the deeply corrosive regional impact of a conflict that successive Israeli leaders have either been unwilling or seemingly incapable of resolving. Others, who earlier said what Petraeus now says, have either been dismissed as poorly informed or worse, branded as anti-Israeli or by insinuation, anti-Semitic.

No such charge will stick to Petraeus. Indeed, if the Israel lobby was so foolhardy as to try and go after an American general who sometimes gets treated like a latterday Eisenhower, the lobby will be at dire risk of being visited by its own greatest fear: being branded as anti-American.

UN envoy: Gaza an open-air prison

Yousef Munayyer writes:

“To cut down on gang-related crimes, policies could be put in place to curb the African-American population growth in places like Harlem and Compton. The government could consider cutting off welfare benefits for families in these urban areas to discourage births of blacks and cut down the supply of ‘superfluous young men’ who have nothing else to do in their lives but be preyed on by criminal gang leaders who give them a sense of belonging. Ultimately these policies are an effective way to limit gang related crimes.”

The absurdity and lack of logic in the above fictitious paragraph is overshadowed only by its offensive nature. Few would welcome such a view in 2010, but this kind of argument was made recently to an audience that received it with applause instead of disgust.

Martin Kramer, a fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, made this argument at a conference in Israel last month. The only difference was that the population he sought to limit was Palestinians in Gaza to prevent “economically superfluous young men” from joining radical groups. He said that “if society cannot offer dignified pursuits for the fourth and fifth and sixth sons, then someone else will.”

He also supported lowering the fertility rate for Palestinians in Gaza and argued that this “will happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies for Palestinians with refugee status.”

Hamas-Israel prisoner swap negotiations collapse

Der Spiegel reports:

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has reached an impasse in its efforts to secure the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been held captive in the Gaza Strip since 2006. The chief negotiator for the Palestinian militant group Hamas has told SPIEGEL that he is no longer willing to take part in talks.

Mahmoud Zahar, 64, is sitting in an armchair in the corner of a huge room on the ground floor of his house in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City. On the other side of the room stands a massive desk, and beyond that a Toyota off-road vehicle. This space serves Zahar as a reception room, an office and a garage, all rolled into one. Zahar looks like a lonely man.

He feels betrayed by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the spring of last year, Netanyahu asked Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), to act as a go-between in the negotiations with the militant Islamist group Hamas over the possible release of the soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted and taken to the Gaza Strip in 2006. Zahar, who is a senior Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, became the BND’s contact person on the Hamas side. Now he has had enough. “I am not ready to negotiate anymore,” Zahar told SPIEGEL.

Gaza: BBC takes Obama to the streets

Mariam Hamed writes:

“[After] one year of Obama… What has changed?”

The BBC has raised this question 430 times in banners featuring U.S. President Barack Obama in key locations across Gaza. The banners confront Gazans on morning and evening commutes, and as a result Obama has become the talk of the town.

Gaza’s BBC correspondent Shohdy Al-Kashef explains the banners are part of an ad campaign for a recent a BBC Arabic-language program, and the Obama banners have gone up in cities across the Palestinian territories. The BBC called on Palestinians to interact with the program, especially asking for comments about the Obama presidency one year later, via text and interactive internet forum. Said Al-Kashef, “The main goal is for… the people to ask questions [about Obama] without restrictions.”

I wandered up to a number of people looking at the Obama banners and asked them to answer the question the signs raise.

Abu Mohammed, a falafel vendor, sees the BBC sign everyday, as it is suspended on the side of the street opposite his. About the question, he answers, “There is nothing new under the sun. Obama’s sleeping in honey – [he has gotten comfortable where he is], and he does not mind ruin of the Palestinian people.”

Israel’s effort to silence political protest

Israel deports US journalist
By Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, January 20, 2010

Israeli authorities today deported an American journalist who was working as an editor for a Palestinian news agency.

Jared Malsin, who is Jewish and in his late 20s, was detained at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport eight days ago as he returned from a holiday in Prague.

His girlfriend, a Lutheran church volunteer who flew back with him, was deported two days later., but Malsin was held in detention at a cell in the airport while he began a legal challenge to his deportation order.

Early today Malsin, who has worked with the Ma’an news agency for two years as its English news editor, spoke by telephone to a colleague to say he was being deported and was then put on a flight to New York. “He was not in a good place. He sounded very confused,” said George Hale, a staff writer at Ma’an.

Sabine Hadad, a spokeswoman for the Israeli interior ministry, said Malsin had refused to answer questions and co-operate with security staff when he landed at the airport last week. “It is the minimal right of every immigration authority to ask questions or to clarify things that are not clear about every person who wants to enter Israel,” she said. “He refused to co-operate and we told him if he continued to refuse he would not enter Israel.”

Hadad said they did not know Malsin was a journalist until they were contacted by the press about his detention.

However, Hale said Malsin was interrogated repeatedly and was asked about articles he had written from the occupied West Bank that were critical of Israeli policies. Hale said Malsin had briefly overstayed his last tourist visa, but was registered as a journalist with the Palestinian Authority and with the authority’s labour ministry. He had applied for an Israeli government-issued press card, which most foreign journalists here carry, but was told it would not be granted because he was based in Bethlehem, in the West Bank. [continued…]

Israel accused of silencing political protest
By Ben Hubbard, AP, January 19, 2010

Israel is arresting a growing number of prominent opponents to its policies toward the Palestinians, say critics who are accusing the government of trying to crush legitimate dissent.

In the most high-profile case yet, Jerusalem police detained the leader of a leading Israeli human rights group during a vigil against the eviction of Palestinian families whose homes were taken by Jewish settlers. [continued…]

What the Gaza war meant for Israel
By Orly Halpern, Al Jazeera, January 19, 2010

Last month the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) revealed an alarming trend in its annual survey on the protection of human rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories – the conditioning of rights.

“The realisation of the entire spectrum of rights is now more than ever dependent on what we say or believe, what ethnic group we belong to, how much money we have, and more,” says the ACRI.

“We have the freedom to express ourselves and demonstrate – only if we don’t say anything displeasing; we have the right to equal treatment and opportunities – only if we are “loyal” to the state.”

In the streets, the Israeli security forces are waging a war against protests by Jewish left wing and human rights activists, who non-violently protest against Israel’s separation barrier or against Jewish settlers taking over Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.

Many have been arrested and some were attacked by the security forces.

However, right-wingers protesting against the government’s decision to temporarily freeze building in settlements are accorded much more leniency by Israeli law enforcement agencies.

During Operation Cast Lead about 800 Israeli citizens, most of them Arab, were arrested, with criminal charges brought against most of them.

In a recent editorial, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz called the arrests “an evil omen regarding the state’s attitude toward protesters” and said that as a result, “concern is growing over Israel’s image as a free and democratic country”. [continued…]

Israel withholding NGO employees’ work permits
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, January 20, 2010

The Interior Ministry has stopped granting work permits to foreign nationals working in most international nongovernmental organizations operating in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, Haaretz has learned.

In an apparent overhaul of regulations that have been in place since 1967, the ministry is now granting the NGO employees tourist visas only, which bar them from working.

Organizations affected by the apparent policy change include Oxfam, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, Terre des Hommes, Handicap International and the Religious Society of Friends (a Quaker organization). [continued…]

Israel targets Palestinian anti-wall activists
By Omar Karmi, The National, January 18, 2010

Jamal Juma’ could not help but laugh at one of the accusations he said he had been threatened with while in Israeli detention.

“They said they would indict me for links to Hizbollah. They didn’t like it when I started laughing,” Mr Juma’, a lifelong communist, said on Sunday, five days after his release.

He was talking in an office in Ramallah at the headquarters of the Stop the Wall organisation, of which he is a coordinator. Stop the Wall is a Palestinian grassroots effort dedicated to peaceful and popular resistance against the separation barrier Israel is building up and down the occupied territories. [continued…]

The looming war in Gaza: Can Obama stop it before it starts?

The looming war in Gaza: Can Obama stop it before it starts?
By Bradley Burston, Haaretz, January 11, 2010

Next week, or the week after, Barack Obama may well see intelligence reports of tank battalions moving south and west along Israeli highways, and whole infantry brigades setting up camp in the western Negev.

The countdown to the Second Gaza War has begun in earnest. Date it, if you like, to Sunday, and a coolly terrifying analysis by Yom Tov Samia, former overall Israeli military commander of the Gaza Strip and the adjacent Negev.

Or date it, if you prefer, according to axiom of contemporary Israeli history which reads: A future war becomes practically inevitable the moment a key IDF reserve major-general declares it so.

Alternatively, date it from the moment that selective amnesia allows Israeli political figures to court the illusion that Hamas can be invaded to death.

All this and more was to be had from an interview Samia gave Army Radio this week, which should give pause not only to the Palestinians and Israelis who may fall victim to a Second Gaza War, but to Washington as well. [continued…]

Israel’s crisis
By Phil Weiss, Mondoweiss, January 11, 2010

Just back from Israel/Palestine, the overwhelming sense I carry away is that the present state cannot last. Just how it goes down I have no idea. But conditions are so obviously discriminatory, and the knowledge of these conditions now so widespread– among the Christian pilgrims in my Jerusalem guesthouse, among European leaders, and now too among the Israeli elite and American left–that the situation is reminiscent of the delegitimizing of communism in the 70s and 80s. The period of apartheid struggle that Ehud Olmert warned of two years ago is upon us. So too his warning of possible “national suicide.”

The surprise for me is that the indifference of American Jews to this injustice is more than matched by that of the mass of Israelis: They live inside the bubble of their opinion that Israeli society is fair. So this trip has left me pretty depressed, even as it has renewed my sense of ethnocentric purpose: I will do what I can to bring the American Jewish community into the world conversation about the reality of Israel/Palestine.

This will happen. A few weeks back Israeli activist Micha Kurz said that a war had begun between one part of Israeli society and another; and I come home knowing that that war is about to erupt inside American Jewish life. You might say that it has already erupted: J Street’s emergence and all the liberal Zionists in the New York Review of Books attacking the occupation are signs. But we ain’t seen nothing yet. We are on the verge of a Jewish intifada, and about time too. [continued…]

Egypt ‘deports aid convoy leader’

Egypt ‘deports aid convoy leader’
Al Jazeera, January 8, 2010

George Galloway, the British MP leading the Viva Palestina international aid convoy to the Gaza Strip has been forced to leave Egypt, the group has said on its website.

Galloway was apparently picked up by Egyptian officials at the Rafah border crossing on Friday and driven to Cairo where he was placed on a flight back to London.

Galloway told Al Jazeera by telephone from the airport that he had been harassed by about 25 Egyptian police officer as he attempted to re-enter Gaza to join the rest of the Viva Palestina activists.

He said Egyptian officials told him he was being sent out of the country and was now “persona non grata”. [continued…]

Eunice Wong on ‘Footnotes in Gaza’
By Eunice Wong, Truthdig, January 8, 2010

Joe Sacco’s latest volume of comic book journalism, “Footnotes in Gaza,” is a detective story drawn from the Greek tragedy of Palestinian-Israeli history. It is a search for the truth about a bloody 50-year-old incident almost obliterated from historical memory. Rigorous journalism and moral and philosophical musings are wrangled into an explosive feast of a comic book.

On Nov. 3 and Nov. 12, 1956, in the Gaza towns of Khan Yunis and Rafah, large-scale killings of Palestinian men—275 dead in Khan Yunis and 111 in Rafah, according to the United Nations—were carried out by invading Israeli troops. There is almost nothing written in English about these massacres.

“This is the story of footnotes to a sideshow of a forgotten war,” writes Sacco. Over a drawing of a crowd of Palestinian men, their hands up and their faces contorted, the text continues: “Well, like most footnotes, they dropped to the bottom of history’s pages, where they barely hang on.” [continued…]

Liberal Jews and Israel – a case of split personality disorder

Liberal Jews and Israel – a case of split personality disorder
By Noam Sheizaf, Promised Land, January 5, 2010

Last Saturday I met an Israeli-American friend who came for a short visit from his studies in Europe. We talked some politics, and finally came to an issue which always puzzles me: the fact that American Jews are unwilling – almost unable – to criticize Israel, both in public and in private, and even when Israeli policies contradict their own believes. My friend noted that if some of the articles on the Israeli media – and not even the most radical ones – were to be printed in the US and signed by none-Jews, they would be considered by most Jewish readers like an example of dangerous Israel-bashing, sometimes even anti-Semitism.

I’ve became more aware of this issue myself since I started writing this blog. Things I say or write which are well within the public debate in Israel are sometimes viewed as outrageous by American Jewish readers; at the same time, events which would make the same readers furious if they happened in the US – for example, the Israeli municipality which tried to prevent Arabs from dating Jewish girls – are met with indifference.

Naturally, I’m generalizing here. Between millions of Jews you can obviously find all kinds of voices – and this is part of the reason I hesitated before writing this post – but I think one can recognize some sort of mainstream opinion within the Jewish community, which both echoes the official Israeli policies, regardless of the identity of the government in Jerusalem, and at the same time, turns a blind eye on events which might distort the image of Israel which this community holds. And this is something which is hard to understand. [continued…]

Stealing Gaza
By Brian Eno, Counterpunch, January 2, 2010

It’s a tragedy that the Israelis – a people who must understand better than almost anybody the horrors of oppression – are now acting as oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked “Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it’s the Palestinians”. By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they’ve forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the Palestinians – with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing teenagers – and themselves – with one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world – they sacrifice all credibility.

The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending. [continued…]

Israeli army officers fear arrest in UK
By Ben Lynfield, The Independent, January 6, 2010

A group of Israeli army officers has cancelled a visit to Britain because London was unable to guarantee they would not be arrested for alleged war crimes under universal jurisdiction provisions, Israeli officials said yesterday.

Four officers, including a major, a lieutenant colonel and a colonel had been due to visit last week at the invitation of the British Army.

An Israeli official declined to specify the purpose of the visit but said that Israeli officers are invited to Britain “to assist in defensive technology in the military arena”.

The incident has fuelled Israeli anger at the British Government for not yet following through on promised changes to the law so that Israeli officers and officials do not run the risk of arrest on UK soil. There have been several incidents in which visiting Israelis have been vulnerable to arrest. [continued…]

Viva Palestina convoy’s arrival in Gaza

Viva Palestina convoy entering Gaza

Viva Palestina convoy entering Gaza
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 6, 2010

Although it’s very slow moving, vehicles in the Viva Palestina aid convoy have finally started entering Gaza:

The Viva Palestina aid convoy entered Gaza Wednesday, after it received the approval of Egyptian authorities to bring into the besieged, impoverished coastal sliver several tons of humanitarian supplies.

The activists entered Gaza through Rafah border crossing. More than 500 international activists accompany the convoy organized by the British-based group Viva Palestina, a Press TV correspondent reported. — Press TV

V slowly we r moving out 2 Rafah. Many still at port, but first vehicles 2 leave r already in #Gaza. It’s finally happening! #vivapalestina — joti2gaza

An Egyptian soldier has been killed and at least eight Palestinians hurt in clashes at the Egypt-Gaza border. — BBC News

Viva Palestina convoy heading to Rafah

Viva Palestina convoy heading to Rafah
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 6, 2010

After a battle between Egyptian riot police and convoy members in Al-Arish last night, the convoy finally started out on the last leg of its journey a couple of hours ago:

“Vehicles very slowly exiting port gates now, heading to Rafah, insyaAllah.” – juanajaafar

An Egyptian border guard was shot dead Wednesday and about 55 people were injured late Tuesday in clashes between Egyptian police and pro-Palestinian activists trying to get a relief convoy into the Gaza Strip, militants, medics and officials said.

Some 520 activists belonging to the convoy – led by charismatic and outspoken British MP George Galloway – broke down the gate at El-Arish to protest an Egyptian decision to ship some of the goods through Israel.

They blocked the two entrances to the Sinai port with vehicles, and clashed with police. Forty militants were injured, a source close to them said, while medical sources said 15 policemen were also hurt.

An Egyptian official said Wednesday that the border guard was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper while Gazan youths hurled stones across the border at the Egyptian security forces.

The protests were sparked by an Egyptian decision to allow 139 vehicles to enter Gaza through the Rafah bordering crossing, about 45 kilometers from El-Arish, but requiring a remaining 59 vehicles to pass via Israel. Talks in which Galloway and a delegation of Turkish MPs sought to change the Egyptian’s minds proved unsuccessful. — Hurriyet Daily News

At the beginning, it was a peaceful protest, singing and making noise. The Egyptians were there to be provoked, no doubt, but they needed a reason. This went on for about 1 hour 30 mins, and then all hell broke loose. I don’t know who threw the first stone but the Egyptians seemed to have prepared stones to be thrown. A running battle went on for about 30 minutes, mainly the Egyptians hurtling stones at us. Some people fought back with stones and sticks against the riot police with batons. Five seasoned Derry men stood at the back. Ole hands at these riots.

The end result was up to 20 people injured, head injuries and even worse it appears. There was news that the Turks had captured 3 Egyptians police as hostages but they were later released. There was a deadly atmosphere amongst the compound. This wasn’t the way it was suppose to work out, we should of been heading for Gaza. At this point, it’s too early to see where the blame lies.

Galloway made his way onto the stage, looking very shaken and holding prayer beads, he recalled the progression of events that I have just told, and once again, encouraged people to protest throughout the world against the Egyptians. He said we wouldn’t be going anywhere soon’. We went to bed after that.

So another massive change of events, and I think the whole thing has had a negative rather than positive effect on proceedings. A lot of people think this way and I could see a lot of people going home. — Derry to Gaza

“Galloway challenged in open convoy mtg to resign leadership!” — zhat

Jordan’s Islamic Action Front (IAF) on Wednesday condemned Egypt’s alleged assault on members of the Viva Palestina humanitarian convoy in the Egyptian port of El Arish.

“The attack by the Egyptian authorities on the Viva Palestina convoy late Tuesday is heinous and cruel. We condemn the assault on the convoy members who seek to break the siege imposed on Gaza and such behaviors do not reflect the history of Egypt,” the IAF, the political arm of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, said in a statement posted on its website. — Xinhua

In Istanbul, thousands of protesters staged a demonstration to condemn the Egyptian police crackdown on the Gaza-bound aid convoy. The protestors marched towards the Egyptian Consulate in the Turkish capital and held a picture of assassinated Hezbollah commander Imad Mugniyah and a picture titled “the picture of betrayal”, showing Egyptian President Hosni Muabark shaking hands with former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Tuesday’s demonstration joined a wave of protests against Mubarak across the Arab world. The Hamas organization in Gaza called on Palestinians on Wednesday morning to stage protests calling on the Egyptian authorities to allow the entry of the foreign activists. — Ynet

An Egyptian soldier was killed and four Palestinians were wounded in a gunbattle on Wednesday during a protest against an anti-smuggling wall Cairo is building on the Gaza border. — Reuters

Viva Palestina are faced with 2,000 riot police in the port of Al-Arish!

Viva Palestina are faced with 2,000 riot police in the port of Al-Arish!

To all friends of Palestine

Our situation is now at a crisis point! Riot has broken out in the port of Al- Arish.

This late afternoon we were negotiating with a senior official from Cairo who left negotiations some two hours ago and did not return. Our negotiations with the official was regarding taking our aid vehicles into Gaza.

He left two hours ago and did not come back. Egyptian authorities called over 2,000 riot police who then moved towards our camp at the port.

We have now blocked the entrance to the port and we are now faced with riot police and water cannons and are determined to defend our vehicles and aid.

The Egyptian authorities have by their stubbornness and hostility towards the convoy, brought us to a crisis point.

We are now calling upon all friends of palestine to mount protests in person where possible, but by any means available to Egyptian representatives, consulates and Embassy’s and demand that the convoy are allowed a safe passage into Gaza tomorrow!

Kevin Ovenden
Viva Palestina Convoy Leader

———————
Alice Howard
Viva Palestina UK – Administration Manager
Tel: 07944 512 469
Email: alice@vivapalestina.org
Website: http://www.vivapalestina.org/

Turkey helps Viva Palestina deliver aid to Gaza

Turkish MPs to enter Gaza with Viva Palestina convoy in Egypt
World Bulletin, January 4, 2010

Five Turkish MPs will on Monday join an international aid convoy that has reached Egyptian port one-week later after the date that they initially hoped to reach Gaza Strip on the first anniversary of Israel’s 22-day offensive.

Viva Palestina Convoy is now at the Egyptian port of El-Arish with Turkish ship ULUSOY-6, which carried the convoy from the Syrian port of Lattakia to Egypt.

The aid volunteers who stay at Lattakia will fly in the day in 3 separate flights to Al-Arish to join the convoy. After everyone arrives at the Al- Arish port, the convoy will make an hour-drive to the Rafah border.

It is expected that the convoy will enter Gaza on Tuesday evening. It will be able to stay in Gaza for 24 hours only. During this time, all aid, drugs and medical tools will be delivered to the Gazan authorities. After 24 hours, all volunteers who travel with the convoy will go to Egypt and then fly back to their own countries. [continued…]

The iron wall

The iron wall
By Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom, January 2, 2010

Egypt considers itself as the leader of the Arab world. It is the most populous Arab country, situated at the center of the Arab world. Fifty years ago the president of Egypt, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, was the idol of all the Arabs, especially of the Palestinians. How can Egypt collaborate with the “Zionist enemy”, as Egyptians called Israel then, in bringing 1.5 million brother Arabs to their knees?

Until recently, the Egyptian government had been sticking to a solution that exemplifies the 6000-year old Egyptian political acumen. It participated in the blockade but closed its eyes to the hundreds of tunnels dug under the Egyptian-Gaza border, through which the daily supplies for the population were flowing (for exorbitant prices, and with high profits for Egyptian merchants), together with the stream of arms. People also passed through them – from Hamas activists to brides.

This is about to change. Egypt has started building an iron wall – literally – along the full length of the Gaza border, consisting of steel pillars thrust deep into the ground, in order to block all tunnels. That will finally choke the inhabitants.

When the most extreme Zionist, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, wrote 80 years ago about erecting an “Iron Wall” against the Palestinians, he did not dream of Arabs doing just that. [continued…]

Gaza steel wall

Hamas urges clerics to reverse Gaza wall edict
Ma’an, January 3, 2010

Hamas on Sunday urged leading Islamic clerics in Egypt to reverse a recent edict supporting the construction of a metal wall cutting off smuggling tunnels under the border with the Gaza Strip.

It emerged late last week that scholars at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning, issued a fatwa in favor of the wall.

“It is one of Egypt’s legitimate rights to place a barrier that prevents the harm from the tunnels under Rafah, which are used to smuggle drugs and other [contraband] that threaten Egypt’s stability,” the newspaper Al-Masri Al-Yom quoted the scholars as saying, according to AFP.

“Those who oppose building this wall are violating the commands of Islamic law,” they added, after a meeting attended by Egypt’s top cleric Sheikh Muhammad Said Tantawi, who is a government appointee. [continued…]

Galloway Gaza convoy leaves Syria
Ma’an, January 3, 2010

A British-led aid convoy bound for the Gaza Strip is on its way to the Egyptian port of Al-Arish after departing Syria by boat, organizers said on Sunday.

The Viva Palestina convoy, led in part by firebrand British MP George Galloway, loaded 210 truckloads of food and medical supplies onto a ferry in the Syrian port of Latakia.

The group, which set out from London nearly a month ago and drove through Turkey and Syria, spent five days stranded in Jordan after Egypt denied it permission to travel to the Red Sea port of Nuweiba, insisting that aid convoys should transit through the port of Al-Arish, on the Mediterranean. [continued…]

From the Cairo Speech to the Cairo Declaration

From the Cairo Speech to the Cairo Declaration
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 2, 2010

In early June last year, after Barack Obama gave his Cairo speech, the think tanks in Washington were abuzz as analysts could barely contain their excitement at witnessing the new Democratic president making history.

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop,” Obama boldly declared in front of a youthful Egyptian audience giddy with hope inspired by the lofty oratory of America’s visionary leader.

When the embodiment of hope, invested with the authority of the White House, spoke, the world listened.

Six months later Obama’s authority seems to mean nothing and his words of hope have been soured by their apparent lack of authenticity.

Now comes the Cairo Declaration.

A few hundred activists whose hope of breaking the siege of Gaza got squashed like a bug under the heals of Egypt’s security forces, have signed a declaration. Will the world pay much attention?

Maybe not. But what the Gaza Freedom March lacks in authority it makes up for with authenticity and this — not political office — is ultimately what gives language its power.

End Israeli Apartheid
Cairo Declaration
January 1, 2010

We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:

In view of:

* Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;
* the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements;
* the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;
* the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;
* the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;
* the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;
* and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;
* all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;
* in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity;
* and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007)

We reaffirm our commitment to:

Palestinian Self-Determination
Ending the Occupation
Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine
The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees

We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law.

To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.

Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:

1) An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally;

2) Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;

3) A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors;

4) Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;

5) Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries;

6) Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen’s Arrest Bureaux to identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;

7) Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality. Continue reading →

Simultaneous solidarity marches held on northern and southern borders of Gaza Strip

Simultaneous solidarity marches held on northern and southern borders of Gaza Strip
By Saed Bannoura, IMEMC, January 1, 2010

A s a group of Israeli peace activists gathered near the Erez crossing on the northern border of the Gaza Strip, 1200 international activists with the ‘Gaza Freedom March’ held a rally in Cairo to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. The Cairo march was attacked by Egyptian police, injuring several demonstrators.

After over 1200 international delegates with the ‘Gaza Freedom March’ were denied entry into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday (100 members of the delegation were allowed to enter), the group organized a protest march and rally in Cairo Thursday, which was attacked by Egyptian riot police. [continued…]

the reluctant radical
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, January 2, 2010

There was very little discussion of political ideas, and what Mick offered was pithy and inspiring: We were here because it was “an obscenity in the 21st century” that the people of Gaza did not have the freedom to come and go. The walls had come down in Berlin and South Africa, they must come down here.

A lot of the questions were about violence. The Egyptians had shown little appetite for hurting westerners, but you did not know. And what if you felt uncomfortable with the idea of being arrested or clubbed? “The demonstration is for everyone,” Mick said. “There’s always the option of walking away and saying, enough is enough.” Those who wanted to observe and support could do that. There would not be “a scintilla” of pressure on anyone to do what they did not want to do.

Sitting on the stairwell, I wondered what I was doing there. The jammed space had a romance, an air of the many freedom marches before this; and the word “provocateurs” was redolent of socialist activism. I’m not a radical, but a left/liberal; the doorways for my engagement here was not solidarity with suffering people but good old self interest: my concerns about American militarism in the Middle East and Zionism in Jewish life. And yet here I was; and it occurred to me that certain injustices become so disturbing to some people, to their understanding of history, that they must take a stand, and are willing to make great sacrifices to do so; and in that sense I was also a radical, if a reluctant one. [continued…]