So now we know why it was possible for the bomber to get through!…
Israeli firm blasted for letting would-be plane bomber slip through: Haaretz
The Israeli firm ICTS International (not to be confused with ICTS Europe, which is a different company), and two of its subsidiaries are at the crux of an international investigation in recent days, as experts try to pinpoint the reasons for the security failure that enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board Northwest flight 253 and attempt to set alight explosives hidden in his underwear.
A Haaretz investigation has learned that the security officers and their supervisor should have suspected the passenger, even without having early intelligence available to them.
At this time, ICTS and the Dutch security firm G4S are hurling recriminations at each other, as are the authorities at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Federal Aviation Authority and U.S. intelligence officials.
The failure was a twin flop: An intelligence failure, which U.S. President Barack Obama has already stated, in the poor handling of information that arrived at the State Department and probably also the CIA from both the father of the would-be bomber and the British security service; and a failure within the security system, including that of the Israeli firm ICTS.
The ICTS daughter company, I-SEC, has another daughter company – called PI (Pro-Check International). The firms provide security services to airports: consultation, instruction, training, inspection and supervision.
Two decades ago, ICTS adopted the system used in Israel, namely of profiling and assessing the degree to which a passenger is a potential threat on the basis of a number indicators (including age, name, origin and behavior during questioning). At the same time, a decade ago, the company developed a technological system called APS (Advanced Passenger Screening).
This system is based on a computerized algorithm, and is fed passenger information from the airline company. The system was offered to the Israel Airports Authority and the Shin Bet in the past, but rejected. According to the company’s Web site, most of the large airlines in the United States use the system.
However – in real time – the system of ICTS failed. Even if U.S. intelligence failed and the name of the Nigerian passenger was not pinpointed as a suspect for the airline, he should have stirred the suspicion of the security officers. His age, name, illogical travel route, high-priced ticket purchased at the last minute, his boarding without luggage (only a carry on) and many other signs should have been sufficient to alert the security officers and warrant further examination of the suspect.
However, the security supervisor representing I-SEC and PI allowed him to get on the flight.
ICTS was established in 1982 by former members of the Shin Bet and El Al security. Menachem Atzmon, who has been chairman of the board of directors since 2004, holds the controlling shares in the firm.
The ICTS headquarters are in the Netherlands and the company is traded in the New York Stock Exchange. Some senior managers are Israeli, including the joint managing director Ran Langer.
Another important figure is Doron Zicher, general manager of I-SEC. Zicher has been in charge of operations in the Netherlands for more than two decades and has served as adviser to the Dutch Justice Ministry, which is responsible for setting guidelines for airport security.
The company prides itself on employing 1,300 persons and providing security services to airports in 11 countries including France, Britain, Spain, Hungary, Romania and Russia.
WE HAVE BROKEN THE SIEGE! PSC online
The Viva Palestine and PSC aid convoy arrived in Gaza last night at about 19:00pm, with thousands of Palestinians greeting and cheering the convoy to welcome them.
Congratulations to everyone taking part in the convoy and all of those here who raised funds for the trip to become a reality. This has been a tremendous achievement and its importance is political as well as practical.
Thanks of course to the Reading PSC, Waltham Forest PSC, York PSC for their blogs and information which have kept us informed throughout the journey, we look forward to welcoming them and all the other participants back to Britain. We hope that branches around the country will invite them to speak to get their message about Gaza out to the public. Well done, Viva Palestina and Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Reports here:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/01/201016165325573953.html
http://www.vivapalestina.org/home.htm
– Contact the media: Please phone and email the BBC, and other media, to ask for coverage of the Convoy’s arrival in Gaza.
– Please ask your MP to sign EDM 536 by Richard Burden MP
– Please organize local meetings about Gaza. PSC and Viva Palestina can provide speakers; contact the PSC office to arrange for a speaker.
Financial support: Support the financial appeal on Viva Palestina website as the additional costs incurred because of the obstacles created by the Egyptian government are astronomical http://www.vivapalestina.org/emergency.htm
Sign the PSC petition to end the siege on Gaza: http://www.iparl.com/petition-psc/
January Gaza Events
There will be number of events in January to commemorate the first anniversary of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. These include the following:
– National Week of Boycott Actions 9 to 17 January
– Gaza One Year On – Rally Tuesday 19 January, Conway Hall
– Week of events, starts with meeting on Wednesday13th in Friends House, London
– Brighton Demonstration on Monday 18th
Plus many more vigils, film screenings, meetings and concerts – Please visit the Events section on the PSC website to find out more!
Appeal for Help: we need footage from last January’s demonstrations in London
Over 60 protesters have been charged, mainly with violent disorder, following the demonstrations last year over Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and are now facing a jail term of up to five years. Most of these arrests came in a series of ‘dawn raids’ throughout the summer, including one teenage boy who was arrested after 25 police officers broke into his house in the middle of the night, causing intense fear and panic to his family and neighbours. Each of those arrested has been required to surrender their passports and are not allowed to apply for travel documents without the permission of the court. Those who are not British citizens have been threatened with deportation depending on the outcome of the criminal proceedings.
It is essential that we gather together as much footage as possible in order to help those that have been charged. If you have any footage (photograph or video) of any of the protests outside the Israeli Embassy or of the demonstrations on the 3rd, 10th or 17th January, please contact Joanna on joanna.gilmore@manchester.ac.uk or 07813 797 853.
Update on Britain’s War Crimes Warrants
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/05/israel-war-crimes-warrants-britain
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/85242
http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=5470
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/06/lady-scotland-israeli-war-crimes
Please contact your MP to ask him to sign EDM 502, and to intervene to stop the law being changed. More info: http://www.palestinecampaign.org/Index7b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=2&l2_id=14&Content_ID=1017
More news:
Fayyad helps burn settlement products
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3830147,00.html
Israel approves Jerusalem settlement expansion
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=252442
Israel leveled More than 23.000 Homes Since 1967
http://www.imemc.org/index.php?obj_id=53&story_id=57552
Israel To Pay 10 M. In Compensation To The UN
http://www.imemc.org/index.php?obj_id=53&story_id=57559
Get Lowkey’s new single “Long Live Palestine” into the charts
Buy Lowkey’s new single to get it in the top 40 UK music charts, visit: www.lowkeytop40.co.uk for more information. See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p1CJwTNC9M
Children in Prison
Today, DCI-Palestine submitted 13 cases to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in relation to alleged mistreatment at the Al Jalame Interrogation and Detention Centre in Israel. In each case, boys report being detained in ‘Cell No. 36’, usually in solitary confinement for lengthy periods, in a small cell containing a dim yellow light that is kept on 24 hours a day. Whilst being detained in this cell, the boys are regularly taken for interrogation during which they report being physically mistreated and threatened prior to giving confessions.
http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=1342&CategoryId=1
Ross Kemp in Gaza: UNRWA’s John Ging & Children’s Psychiatric Hospital in Gaza http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsxkquaMDo0
Only psychiatrists can explain Israel’s behavior: Haaretz
Our wild world of crime has recently been sent for observation. From the bodyguard of the IDF Chief of Staff to the killers of their own children – all have been sent for observation. The time has come, as is the custom around here, to send the country for observation, too. Maybe with ongoing treatment from specialists, the diagnosis that will save us can be made.
There are numerous reasons for the observation. A long series of acts that have no rational explanation, or really any explanation whatsoever, raise the following suspicions: a loss of touch with reality; temporary or permanent insanity, paranoia, schizophrenia and megalomania; memory loss and loss of judgment. All of this must be examined, under careful observation.
The psychiatric specialists might be so kind as to try to explain how a country with leaders committed to a two-state solution continues to direct huge budgets toward building more settlements in territories it intends to vacate in the future. What explanation could there be, if not from the psychiatric realm, for a 10-month halt to residential construction in the settlements, to be immediately followed by more construction? How can a country be so tightfisted when it comes to healthcare spending on its citizens, whose poor are getting poorer – and yet when a portion of the roads in the West Bank are already deemed as dangerous, they build more and more roads there leading from nowhere to nowhere?
They should explain how the state prosecutor can announce his intention to expropriate more privately-owned Palestinian land at the settlement of Ofra – the “largest illegal settlement in the territories” (in the words of the defense minister’s adviser on settlement issues) – when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his address at Bar-Ilan University last year, explicitly committed not to do so, and President Shimon Peres did more of the same in a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
They should explain what lies behind the decision to examine annexing Highway 443, which runs through the West Bank, as Israeli territory – as a way of defeating the recent High Court of Justice ruling opening it to Palestinian motorists. How can a country that preaches the rule of law dare outfox the High Court through “bypass” laws? And how have an insignificant minority – the settlers – sown fear and managed to extort the country for so many years?
Psychiatric specialists should make clear how a country that’s been dealt a report as potentially disastrous for it as the Goldstone report can so adamantly and stubbornly refuse to convene the commission of inquiry the report provides as an escape clause. How can a nation that has so desperately fought for its international image and standing, and which is so dependent on the world’s benevolence, appoint such a thuggish and violent figure as Avigdor Lieberman as its No. 1 diplomat? Half the world is closed to the foreign minister and we suffer the consequences.
Why didn’t Israel consider presenting, even through some illusion, a nicer face to the world than Lieberman’s threatening visage? Why doesn’t a country so ostracized by so much of the world not ask itself, even for a moment, what part it played in shaping that position of isolation, from which it simply attacks and points fingers at its critics? How can a society which has already existed with a cruel occupation in its backyard for two generations refuse to deal with it, continue feeling so good about itself and evade any kind of self-examination or even an inkling of moral equivocation?
What kind of explanation can be given for the fact that a nation with a clear secular majority has no system for civil marriage, no buses or trains operating on Shabbat? How in such a country are wealthy municipal governments required to transfer funds to religious councils, of all places, rather than other needs? How can a country that has to deal with a domestic Arab minority which has maintained surprising loyalty to the country for more than 60 years do everything to put it down, humiliate and exclude it, treat it unfairly and engender a sense of frustration and hatred within it?
Can it be rationally explained how a country, to which all of the Arab nations have presented a historic peace proposal, refuses to even discuss this? It is a country that the president of Syria (whose major ally, Iran, is threatening Israel) is begging to come to a peace agreement with, yet it remains insistent in its refusal. Only psychiatric experts could possibly explain how the continued occupation of the Golan Heights and the missed opportunities for peace relate to security or logic. At the same time, they should try to explain the connection between the sanctity of historic sites and sovereignty over them. And above all, they should clarify how such a smart and talented society participates in this march of folly without anyone objecting.
True, it’s a difficult case to figure out – all the more reason to recommend the country be sent for observation.
The following is the best and most detailed report I have seen on the events surrounding Gaza in the last couple of weeks. It is very interesting for its scathing critique of Hamas from a left-wing perspective:
Pro-Gaza activists under siege – imposed by Egypt and Hamas: Haaretz
By Amira Hass
The departure from Ramses Street in Cairo, in about 20 buses, was set for the morning of Monday, December 28. However, the organizers of the Gaza Freedom March knew the buses would not arrive. Just as on Sunday night, the buses hired by a group of French activists never made it to their starting point – Cairo’s Charles de Gaulle Street, near the French Embassy and across from the zoo. In the week before the planned march, the Foreign Ministry in Cairo made it clear that the protesters would not be permitted to enter Gaza. Boats even mysteriously disappeared from the Nile on Sunday evening. The Egyptian authorities knew that scores of activists were planning to sail and light candles to mark the first anniversary of Israel’s attack on Gaza and the 1,400 people who were killed. A total of 1,361 people came to Cairo from 43 countries to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, 700 of them from the United States alone, many more than initially expected. It started out as a small initiative. Then the American feminist and peace group Codepink signed on, and it gradually spread to other countries.
Bringing Gaza to Cairo
“If we can’t go to Gaza, we’ll bring Gaza to Cairo,” said one American peace activist. And indeed, for an entire week, more than a thousand foreign citizens, the vast majority of them from Western countries, scurried around the Egyptian capital looking for ways and places to demonstrate against the blockade of Gaza. “The demonstrations in Cairo are conclusive proof that Israel pressured Egypt not to allow entry into Gaza,” said one Egyptian citizen (who like other Egyptians, did not dare participate in the demonstrations, for fear of punishment). “What does Egypt need this headache for? It would have been easier and simpler to have sent them all to Gaza and forget about them.”
When the buses didn’t show, the French activists set up tents and sleeping bags outside the embassy. At 2 A.M., they discovered that le camping had been surrounded by a fence and a tight cordon of riot-dispersal police. Tents, a police barrier, movement restrictions, and an area under siege: Without having planned it, they were replicating the Gazan situation in particular and the Palestinian situation in general. Withstanding the siege conditions became an aim and a challenge. During the next two or three days, the cordon intensified, from one row of police to three. Every few hours, the activists discussed how to proceed; this was direct democracy in action. Without secrets, without orders from on high, without hierarchies. A similar process unfolded at various spots around Cairo. Some activists discovered police were surrounding their hotels, blocking them from exiting. Several demonstrated in front of their respective embassies – and were immediately surrounded by riot police. The most violent were those posted to the American Embassy.
Who’s to blame?
One large group set up under the United Nations Development Program’s offices. “In our presence here, we are saying that we are not casting the blame on Egypt. The responsibility for the shameless and obscene Israeli siege on Gaza rests squarely with our own countries,” explained one of the organizers. This sounded like an answer to an accusation voiced mostly by supporters of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah: With Hamas encouragement, international especially Arab popular pressure is being directed at the wrong address – Egypt, rather than Israel. Some of the organizers said they were indeed under the impression that Hamas was not at all interested in demonstrating at the Erez crossing into Israel, which is almost sealed, but rather at the Rafah crossing into Egypt.
The dream was to have tens of thousands march to the Beit Hanun/Erez crossing point on the first anniversary of the Israel Defense Forces offensive, in order to demand that Israel and the world lift the siege. The would-be participants are a very varied bunch: Some have been left-wing activists for decades, while others joined only during the Gaza campaign itself. Students and pensioners, university lecturers, paupers, young and old. The older activists included Hedy Epstein, 85, a German-born American citizen whose life was saved when her Jewish parents sent her to England when she was 14. They later perished in Auschwitz. She sat on a chair under the building housing the UNDP offices, with those on hunger strike, in protest of their being banned from entering Gaza. Hippies in their 50s and 60s cavorted nearby, Italians sang “Bella Ciao,” and South African activists unfurled a banner calling for sanctions on Israel and quoting Nelson Mandela: “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Jewish mother
“I feel that I’m doing something for Israel, for the sake of its future,” said one bearded young man from Boston, who has been volunteering in a Palestinian village in the West Bank. His mother, who is Jewish, accompanied him on one of his flights into Israel to have a look at his new life. When they landed, they learned his name was on a Border Control list at the airport, and mother and son were detained for eight hours of questioning. “She came out of there a radical,” laughed the young man, who a year and a half ago discovered the alternative discourse about his “second homeland.” A Venezuelan documentary director said, “Eighty percent of the participants I have interviewed at random are Jewish.” Eighty percent is probably an exaggeration, though a large percentage of those present were Jews. The colorful crowd also included Palestinians who are citizens of Western countries, some of them Gazans hoping to see relatives for the first time in years. There were also religious Christians and Muslims. Some of the slogans they proclaimed were overly ambitious, such as “We have come to liberate Gaza.” But by and large, this variegated whole sounded a message of militant pacifism and feminism, liberation theories and a lot of faith in the cumulative, positive effect of popular, non-hierarchical action and its ability to bring about change.
It’s a pity, I thought to myself: The Egyptians are preventing us from seeing what happens when this direct, transparent democracy meets the Hamas regime. On Monday evening, the demonstrators learned that, at the request of the president’s wife, Suzanne Mubarak, 100 people would be allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. Many saw this as a way of breaking the demonstrators’ solidarity and lessening the pressure on Egypt. In the end, on December 30, about 80 people set out on buses, including several journalists who were not affected by the dilemma. At midnight, about 12 hours after leaving Cairo, we arrived at a hotel in Gaza. There the first surprise awaited us: A Hamas security official in civilian dress swooped down on a friend who had come to pick me up for a visit, announcing that guests could not stay in private homes.
The story gradually became clear. The international organizers of the march coordinated it with civil society, various non-governmental organizations, which were also supposed to involve the Popular Committee to Break the Siege, a semi-official organization affiliated with Hamas. Many European activists have long-standing connections with left-wing organizations in the Gaza Strip. Those organizations, especially the relatively large Popular Front, had organized lodging for several hundred guests in private homes. When the Hamas government heard this, it prohibited the move. “For security reasons.” What else? Also “for security reasons,” apparently, on Thursday morning, the activists discovered a cordon of stern-faced, tough Hamas security men blocking them from leaving the hotel (which is owned by Hamas). The security officials accompanied the activists as they visited homes and organizations. During the march itself, when Gazans watching from the sidelines tried to speak with the visitors, the stern-faced security men blocked them. “They didn’t want us to speak to ordinary people,” one woman concluded.
Hijacked or poorly organized?
The march was not what the organizers had dreamed of during the nine months of preparation. The day before the trip to Gaza, they already knew that the non-governmental organizations had backed out. Some people said that Hamas government representatives had found the NGOs did not have a clear, organized plan for the guests and therefore had taken the initiative. One Palestinian activist insisted: “When we heard there would only be 100, we canceled everything.” Another said, “From the outset, Hamas set conditions: No more than 5,000 marchers, no approaching the wall and the fence, how to make speeches, how long the speeches should be, who will make speeches. In short, Hamas hijacked the initiative from us and we gave in.”
Hamas, or its Popular Committee, brought 200 or 300 marchers. The march turned into nothing more than a ritual, an opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the company of Western demonstrators. Especially photogenic were four Americans from the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta, who joined the trip only at Al Arish. There were no Palestinian women among the marchers – a slap to the many feminist organizers and participants, both women and men. After the march, the guests voiced protests to some of the official Palestinian organizers. “We came to demonstrate against the siege, and we found that we ourselves were under siege,” they said. Their variegation and the transparency of their behavior did not suit the military discipline the official hosts tried to impose. The officials listened, and after the reins were loosened a bit, I set out to visit the homes of friends.
There people described the lingering fear from the Israeli onslaught. Saturday afternoon, at 11:30 A.M. – the time of the first aerial bombardments – remains today a sensitive hour for many children. Just as thunderstorms, or electricity failures (an everyday occurrence) or a persistent drone flying above cause anxiety and evoke nightmarish memories. Some of the marchers were now allowed to go out on their own, with Gazan acquaintances they had previously known only via telephone and e-mail. Some, especially the Arabic-speakers, complained that “a shadow in the shape of a security man” continued to accompany them. In quick “safari” tours of bombed neighborhoods, through bus windows, they saw ruins that had not yet been cleared, like the complex of bombed-out government buildings that are still standing – ugly concrete skeletons with empty rooms and no walls, like screaming mouths.
In meetings without the security men, several activists got the impression that non-Hamas residents live in fear, and are afraid to speak or identify themselves by name. “Now I understand that the call for ‘Freedom for Gaza’ has another meaning,” one young man told me. The participants spent Thursday and Friday in the Gaza Strip. Friday, January 1, was the 45th anniversary of the establishment of Fatah. The Hamas government does not allow the rival organization to assemble, just as the PA does not allow Hamas to assemble in the West Bank. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh congratulated Fatah on its anniversary, but at the same time the Hamas security services did all they could to deter the movement’s activists from even thinking about a celebration. Hundreds of Fatah activists were summoned by the police and kept in semi-detention for several hours, until evening. Security officials entered homes where candles were burning or Fatah flags were being flown to mark the anniversary. In one home, the security officials tried to arrest two people, and the mother tried to block them. One policeman allegedly hit her – and she had a heart attack and died.
I wondered: Were the restrictions an order from above, or an unwise interpretation by lower ranks? Does Hamas think it can entirely prevent the few visitors – clearly pro-Palestinian – from hearing non-official versions? Don’t the people giving the orders realize what a bad image they were creating? Or was there really a security concern?
Someone who, to put it mildly, is not a Hamas fan explained to me that young men who quit Iz al-Din al-Qassam for the amorphous Jaljalat militia are a genuine headache. They are a convenient excuse for restricting contact with “just anyone,” but the fear that they might try to harm the visitors in order to damage Hamas is real.
These are devout young men who, officially, criticize Hamas for not enforcing Islamic religious law in its entirely. However, as the critic said, “Unwittingly, because of their lost lives, our lost lives, they are angry at the whole world.”
Postscript: After two days all the visitors, journalists included, had to leave Gaza. According to Hamas, this was an explicit Egyptian demand. Egyptian officers confirmed this.
“No army, no prison and no wall can stop us”: The Electronic Intifada
Abdallah Abu Rahmah, 7 January 2010
Abdallah Abu Rahmah being arrested by Israeli soldiers at demonstration in Bilin in 2005. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills) To all our friends,
I mark the beginning of the new decade imprisoned in a military detention camp. Nevertheless, from within the occupation′s holding cell I meet the New Year with determination and hope.
I know that Israel’s military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our nonviolent struggle is effective. The occupation is threatened by our growing movement and is therefore trying to shut us down. What Israel’s leaders do not understand is that popular struggle cannot be stopped by our imprisonment.
Whether we are confined in the open-air prison that Gaza has been transformed into, in military prisons in the West Bank, or in our own villages surrounded by the apartheid wall, arrests and persecution do not weaken us. They only strengthen our commitment to turning 2010 into a year of liberation through unarmed grassroots resistance to the occupation.
The price I and many others pay in freedom does not deter us. I wish that my two young daughters and baby son would not have to pay this price together with me. But for my son and daughters, for their future, we must continue our struggle for freedom.
This year, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee will expand on the achievements of 2009, a year in which you amplified our popular demonstrations in Palestine with international boycott campaigns and international legal actions under universal jurisdiction.
In my village, Bilin, Israeli tycoon, Lev Leviev and Africa-Israel, the corporation he controls, are implicated in illegal construction of settlements on our stolen land, as well as the lands of many other Palestinian villages and cities. Adalah-NY is leading an international campaign to show Leviev that war crimes have their price.
Our village has sued two Canadian companies for their role in the construction and marketing of new settlement units on village land cut off by Israel’s Apartheid Wall. The legal proceedings in this precedent-setting case began in the Canadian courts last summer and are ongoing.
Bilin has become the graveyard of Israeli real estate empires. One after another, these companies are approaching bankruptcy as the costs of building on stolen Palestinian land are driven higher than the profits.
Unlike Israel, we have no nuclear weapons or army, but we do not need them. The justness of our cause earns us your support. No army, no prison and no wall can stop us.
Yours,
Abdallah Abu Rahmah
From the Ofer Military Detention Camp
Abdallah Abu Rahmah is a schoolteacher and nonviolent activist from Bilin. He is currently being held in an Israeli prison after he was arrested on International Human Rights Day, at 2am on 10 December 2009, by Israeli occupation forces.
Another excellent report on the Gaza events, by Ali Abunimah:
Gaza Freedom March: detained at the US embassy: The Electronic Intifafda
Ali Abunimah writing from Cairo, Live from Palestine, 7 January 2010
On the afternoon of 28 December 2009, I was with several persons who accompanied CODEPINK cofounder Jodie Evans to the US Embassy in Cairo to present a letter from Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in which he expressed “strong support” for citizens of his state who were traveling to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and requesting they be given “every courtesy.” In fact, we were turned away at the first checkpoint at a side street off Corniche al-Nil leading up to the embassy, and told to come back the next morning.
At 9:45am on 29 December, Evans, myself and two other Gaza Freedom March participants came back to the embassy. We explained that we wished to see Ambassdor Margaret Scobey to discuss why Egypt had prohibited more than 1,300 persons including hundreds of Americans, from going to Gaza to take part in a peaceful march with Palestinian civil society against the siege of Gaza.
We were allowed through the first checkpoint, and told we would have to be sniffed by dogs. But as the dogs finished their task, an Egyptian police officer came running up, and demanded we leave. We stood our ground. We explained that we were Americans, and wanted to visit our embassy. If they would not let us, then they must send someone out to explain why.
By this time dozens of other Americans began to arrive at the embassy — all with the same request: to meet representatives of their government to talk about the situation in Gaza. A stand-off quickly developed as detachments of riot police arrived and surrounded and tightly barricaded a group of 31 persons just inside the first checkpoint. A second group of seven, closer to the street, attempted to hold up signs but police pulled them down, and surrounded them. Others, who arrived later, were kept even further away.
As I was among the earliest to arrive, I had somehow avoided being trapped inside the barricades (although on at least two occasions Egyptian police physically grabbed me and attempted to push me into an enclosure). Others were pushed and shoved. A plain-clothes officer who appeared to be in charge made it clear that no one was allowed to leave unless everyone agreed to leave and disperse completely. A young woman who said her leg had been injured when she was shoved inside the barricade area by police said she wanted to leave and go to the hospital. I watched as she was physically prevented from doing so. A man in his 80s who was not feeling well, was also prevented from leaving.
Eventually, a representative of the embassy emerged and stated that three and only three persons would be allowed to enter. Through an on-the-spot, ad hoc process, CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin, activist Kit Kettredge and myself were selected. We made clear to other marchers that we did not view this “concession” as binding them in any way — they still had the right, as they demanded, to visit the embassy and represent themselves, and we would make that point.
The “delegation” was ushered through the checkpoints until we found ourselves outside the door of the building. There we were met by three officials who said they were ready to hear what we had to say. (At that point, a young woman who had made it that far separately, identified herself to the officials as an American and said she had been struck in the face by police the previous day. She said that the embassy had been unresponsive to her complaints and wanted to see them take an active role to protect Americans against police harassment.)
Benjamin, Kettredge and I said we would not meet in the street; we wanted to be received inside the building. Eventually we were told that there was a small room near the entrance where they would agree to see us, but only the three of us.
Just beyond the airport-style security checkpoint inside the building, was the door to a small room with a table, three chairs and a heavy steel door that resembled a holding cell or an interrogation room more than anything. In a strangely petty gesture, our request for a glass of water was adamantly refused. In that room, we were met by three officials, including Gina Cabrera, head of US citizen services, and Gregory D. LoGerfo, First Secretary in the Office of Economic and Political Affairs. The third official, whose name I did not note, identified himself as a “regional security” official.
Our first request was that the embassy immediately intervene to free US citizens being held against their will by Egyptian police, and invite any American who wanted to visit the embassy to be heard or seek assistance to do so. Cabrera constantly reassured us “we are taking care of it,” although she herself was taking no action, and not apparently communicating with anyone else in the embassy who might do so. At the same time, Medea Benjamin was in constant phone contact with those held outside; they reported that no embassy staff had come to assist them, people were still being forcibly detained, and occasionally rough-handled. Eventually, only after repeated requests, Cabrera left the room saying she was going to find out what was happening, though as we found out when we left the embassy, she had done nothing to change the situation at the gate. At this point, several hours had passed and people had pressing needs for water or to use bathroom facilities.
LoGerfo, as a senior political officer, addressed our demands about Gaza: that the US work with us to lift the siege on Gaza and allow the Gaza Freedom March to proceed. This discussion went on for an hour and made little headway. LoGerfo insisted that the embassy would take no action to facilitate our passage to Gaza because of a State Department travel warning advising US citizens against traveling to Gaza. We responded that we were not asking the embassy to violate its travel warning; in the past, the embassy had not objected to US citizens traveling to Gaza provided they signed affidavits stating that they knew the US embassy would do nothing to help them if they got into trouble. We were prepared to sign such affidavits. We simply wanted the embassy to ask Egypt not to prevent a peaceful civil society initiative from proceeding to Gaza.
We noted the irony that it was in Cairo last June that US President Barack Obama had lauded and recommended to Palestinians peaceful civil-rights-style actions. And yet here were 1,300 individuals from dozens of countries who had answered such a call from Palestinian civil society only to find their plans blocked by the Egyptian government while they faced constant police harassment.
Cabrera reminded us, “US citizens have been hurt in Gaza, you know, so we are concerned about your safety.” To this, I answered that I knew that Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist, had been killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza on 16 March 2003, and that the embassy’s protestations of concern for our safety would be much more convincing if the United States government had demanded proper accountability from Israel in her killing. Benjamin, Kettredge and I also pointed out that the main source of danger to people in Gaza is from attacks by Israel using weapons provided by the United States.
LoGerfo asserted that the the closure of the Rafah crossing into Gaza was a “sovereign” Egyptian decision and that the US could not interfere. I pointed out that Egypt claims that its closure of the border is in keeping with the 2005 “Agreement on Movement and Access” brokered by the United States, and that the US is helping Israel and Egypt to enforce the siege as part of its policy of putting pressure on Palestinian civilians in order to force a change in their leadership. LoGerfo acknowledged that the US Army Corps of Engineers is providing Egypt with assistance to build an underground steel wall designed to prevent Palestinians digging tunnels which have become a lifeline to break the siege. We also challenged LoGerfo that the United States, as a high contracting party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, has a legal obligation to help break the siege on Gaza — which remains an occupied territory — and to bring to justice those suspected of the massive war crimes and crimes against humanity described in the UN-commissioned Goldstone report. Sadly, however, US policy is to help tighten the siege and to actively obstruct justice.
Once it became clear that LoGerfo could not or would not provide any support to the Gaza Freedom March, we requested a meeting with Ambassdor Scobey. We were told the request would be passed on, but no commitments were made to us or to the dozens of US citizens barricaded by riot police at the gates of the embassy compound. Benjamin and Kettredge decided to remain in the embassy until they could secure a specific time to meet with Scobey — who had met CODEPINK organizers previously. I decided to leave the building to brief and rejoin the others detained by the police.
There, I found the situation unchanged — except for more riot police. There were still 31 persons penned in one area — which I dubbed the “West Bank” — and the seven barricaded about 30 meters away — which I dubbed “the Gaza Strip.” Egyptian police allowed me to move between the two groups and speak to them, but no one was allowed to leave. Still no one from the embassy had come to assist or intervene.
During this time, the correspondent of a major Arabic-language TV network phoned me and said that she and her camera crew had attempted to get near the area but had been physically prevented from doing so by Egyptian police. I witnessed another independent journalist being jostled by police and forced to leave the area.
Eventually, Benjamin and Kettredge emerged from the embassy — having failed to schedule an appointment with the ambassador. Like me, they were allowed to move freely between the “West Bank” and “Gaza Strip,” but at one point they were completely surrounded by police. At another point, several police officers grabbed me and tried to push me into the “West Bank” enclosure, but thinking quickly, Benjamin, who was standing nearby, dropped to the ground and put her arms out. I dropped to the ground and grabbed her. A man in plain clothes — I believe, though I am not certain, an Egyptian who worked for the embassy — rushed up shouting at the police in English “no touch, no touch!” This seemed to indicate that while the embassy was content to have us detained against our will for hours, it did not want us treated “too” roughly. (Indeed, journalist Sam Husseini recorded on his blog an Egyptian police official outside the embassy saying that the US embassy “told us” to prevent Americans from reaching the building.)
At about 3:30pm — almost five hours after our attempt to peacefully visit our embassy had begun — we were told that everyone would be permitted into the embassy to speak to a consular officer. After discussions with police, individuals were allowed out of the barricades one at a time, and those showing US passports were led in groups of 10 toward the embassy. Those wishing to leave the area completely were allowed to do so one at a time at five minute intervals. Having been held hostage, we were forced to negotiate our own release. It was a lesson — if we needed one — that when it comes to the siege of Gaza, the United States government is not part of the solution, but an active part of the problem. And, the United States is not beyond relying on the repressive police tactics of the Egyptian state to protect itself from the opinions of its own citizens.