Hundreds of activists protest against Gaza blockade: BBC
Several hundred people have joined demonstrations on the Israel-Gaza border to protest against the Israeli blockade of the territory. The demonstrators, who marched to the Erez crossing point from both sides of the border, included dozens of international activists. The Egyptian authorities have allowed about 80 protesters to cross into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Dozens more, however, scuffled with police in the capital Cairo. Some report say protesters were injured by Egyptian police. More that 1,000 international activists had gathered in Cairo in the hope of being allowed into Gaza but were refused because of what Egyptian officials called the “sensitive situation” in the Palestinian territory. Israel maintains a strict blockade of Gaza, tightened in 2007 when Hamas took over the strip, banning virtually all exports and allowing in only humanitarian basics. Egypt’s border is open to only occasionally, to people not goods. Much of what Gazans need is supplied through illegal tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border. Israel says this is also a supply route for weapons.
It has become almost impossible to work out what happens in Cairo. While this is covered on local media in Egypt, there is nothing on the western media outlets. We depend on emails from the activists and on the Gaza Freedom March messages:
Internationals In Cairo Set Off On March To Gaza In Protest Of Siege
Contact: Ann Wright, Egypt (19) 508-1493
Ziyaad Lunat, Egypt +20 191181340
Medea Benjamin, Egypt +20 18 956 1919
Ehab Lotayef, Egypt +20 17 638 2628 (Arabic)
(Cairo) Following Egypt’s refusal to allow the Gaza Freedom Marchers to enter Gaza, the more than 1,300 peace-and-justice activists are setting out on foot. Despite police blockades set up throughout downtown Cairo in an attempt to pen the protesters in and prevent them from demonstrating in solidarity with Palestinians, the internationals are unfurling their banners and calling on supporters of peace around the world to join them to demand the end of the siege of Gaza.
Egypt’s offer to allow 100 of the 1400 marchers to enter Gaza was denounced as insufficient and deliberately divisive by the organizers. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs has sought to spin this last-minute offer as an act of goodwill for Palestinians and isolation of “troublemakers.” The Gaza Freedom March categorically rejects these assertions. Activists are in Cairo because they are being prevented by the Egyptian government from reaching Gaza. “We do not wish to be here, Gaza has always been our final destination”, said Max Ajl one of the marchers.
Some individuals managed to overcome the police barricades and began the march at the meeting point in Tahreer Square in downtown Cairo. They were joined by Egyptians who also wished to denounce the role of their government in sustaining the Gaza siege. The authorities have sought to separate international from the locals. The police is brutally attacking the nonviolent marchers. Many plain clothes police officers have infiltrated the crowds and are violently assaulting them. “I was lifted by the Egyptian police forces and literally tossed over the fence,” said Desiree Fairooz, one of the protesters. Marchers are chanting and resisting the attempt to disperse them vowing to remain in the square until they are allowed to go to Gaza. The GFM banner is hanging up high in a tree in the square. Some marchers are bleeding and riot police destroyed their cameras.
The Gaza Freedom March represents people from 43 countries with a diversity of backgrounds. They include peoples of all faiths, community leaders, peace activists, doctors, artists, students, politicians, authors and many others. They share a commitment to nonviolence and a determination to break the siege of Gaza.
“Egypt has tried every way possible to isolate us and to crush our spirit,” the march organizers say. “However, we remain as committed as we ever to standing up against tyranny and repression. We will march as far as we can towards Gaza, and if we are stopped by force, we will hold our ground in protest. We call on those committed to justice and peace everywhere to support our stand for freedom for Palestinians.”
Among the participants are Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, Filipino Parliament member Walden Bello and former European Parliamentarian Luisa Morgantini from Italy. More than 20 of the marchers, including 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, have launched a hunger strike against the Egyptian crack-down and are now entering their fourth day.
New year in Gaza reopens wounds of old: The Electronic Intifada,
Eva Bartlett, 31 December 2009
New Year’s in Gaza is time to honor the dead. (Eva Bartlett) GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) – For many survivors of the last Israeli war on Gaza, time has not healed their wounds, physical or emotional.
Halil Amal Samouni, 10, still suffers vision problems in her right eye. The shrapnel remaining in her head causes her constant pain and she is unable to concentrate at school.
Her concentration is broken, also, by memories of her martyred father and younger brother, both of whom she saw shot dead at close range by Israeli soldiers during the 2008-2009 winter war on Gaza.
The name Samouni has become well known for the high number of martyrs in the extended family, and for the brutality with which many victims were killed, the Israeli army’s prevention of medical access to the injured, and the thorough and systematic destruction of homes, farms, and civilian infrastructure in the Zeitoun district in eastern Gaza, and all throughout Gaza.
In the wake of Israeli tanks, bulldozers, warplanes and Apache helicopters, the once tree-laden area was left a muddy pitch of rutted earth and tree stumps. Chicken farms were destroyed, along with plastic greenhouses, farm equipment, water piping, and the tens of homes, agricultural buildings and the local mosque.
Many of the remaining houses were taken as military positions, sniper holes bored through walls, soldiers’ excrement, clothing, spent ammunition and food provisions were routinely left among the trashed belongings of the house. Hate graffiti was found throughout homes in the Samouni neighborhood and all over Gaza.
Most horrifying was the targeted shooting of the family — including children — and the deliberate shelling of homes they had been forced into by Israeli soldiers.
Amal Samouni was among the least fortunate of survivors.
When Israeli soldiers came to her home early on 4 January, they shot her father Atiyeh dead at close range, then fired continuously into the room full of family members. Amal’s younger brother Ahmed, 4, was seriously injured by the shooting. Denied medical care, he died the following morning, roughly ten hours after Israeli soldiers prevented medical rescuers from entering the area.
“They killed my dad and my brother. They destroyed our house,” Amal says simply. She has told her story to journalists many times. “But it hasn’t done any good, nothing has changed.”
Zeinat Samouni, Amal’s widowed mother, shows the single room her family of eight are crammed into, cracked asbestos tiling covering the roof.
“The roof leaks. We put plastic jugs on the floor to catch the water,” she says. “And because we can’t buy cooking gas, we cook over a fire instead.”
Aside from their physical discomfort, it is memories of the massacre and fear of a new attack that trouble them.
“I was terrified he would choke,” she says, gesturing to a child she holds. “He was only a few weeks old at the time.”
She recounts the trauma of having another child die in her arms, seeing him shelved in an overcrowded mortuary freezer, and all the while desperately wondering whether Amal was still alive.
“Even now, I’m still so afraid for my children, afraid that another war will come. The UAVs (unmanned drones) are always over us, and often at night the helicopters come.”
In northern Gaza’s Ezbet Beit Hanoun, families and friends of the Abd al-Dayem and Abu Jerrad families gather on 26 December, holding a candlelight vigil in remembrance of their sons, wives and husbands killed during a series of Israeli flechette (dart-bomb) attacks a year back.
The first to be killed in that area of Gaza by the razor-sharp nails was medic Arafa Abd al-Dayem, 35, on the morning of 4 January. Along with other medics, Abd al-Dayem had been on duty in the Attatra region, in Gaza’s north, retrieving wounded and martyred. As the medics loaded the ambulance, Israeli soldiers fired a flechette shell at the clearly marked vehicle, spreading thousands of darts at high velocity. Abd al-Dayem died an agonizing death, his internal organs and lungs shredded by the darts.
Khalid Abu Saada, a medic and the driver of the ambulance, testified to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: “The shell directly hit the ambulance and 10 civilians, including the two paramedics, were injured.”
The following morning, the Abd al-Dayem family and friends gathered at a funeral tent erected for Arafa. Israeli tanks again fired flechette shells, striking the gathering multiple times, killing five at the tent, one down the road, and injuring at least 25.
“The pain is still fresh, I still can’t move on since my sons’ murders,” said Sabbah Abd al-Dayem, mother of two martyrs in their twenties.
Jamal Abd al-Dayem, father of the young men, recalls: “It was clearly a mourning house, on the road, open and visible. Immediately after the first strike, the Israelis fired again. I lost two sons. One of them was newly married, his wife eight months pregnant.”
Said Abd al-Dayem, 29, died of dart injuries to his head one day later in hospital. Nafez Abd al-Dayem, 23, died immediately from the darts to his head.
Nahez Abd al-Dayem, 25, survived but retains two darts in his abdomen, one in his chest, with only the dart in his leg removed. Islam Abd al-Dayem, 16, a cousin, died after three days in hospital from the darts to his neck. Arafat Abd al-Dayem, 15, a cousin, died instantly.
Human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and B’Tselem, among others, have criticized Israel’s use of flechette bombs in civilian areas in densely populated Gaza, where the darts have a “wide kill radius,” and indiscriminately target civilians.
Wafa Abu Jerrad, who was 21 and pregnant, lived down the street from the mourning tents. She was with her husband Muhammad, their two children, and relatives outside their house when Israeli soldiers fired the dart bombs.
Muhammad Abu Jerrad was stepping into the doorway, their two-year-old son Khalil in his arms, when the bomb hit. Wafa dropped to ground, struck by flechettes in the head, chest and back. She was killed instantly.
Sitting outside his family’s tent in the Attatra region, Saleh Abu Leila says, “Everything I worked for is gone.”
Since their two-story home was destroyed by Israeli soldiers during the war on Gaza, Abu Leila and 13 other family members have crowded into two small tents. During the summer, they sweltered in stifling heat. Now that winter is setting in, they are struggling to keep warm and dry.
Over 21,000 houses were destroyed or seriously damaged during the 23 days of Israeli attacks throughout Gaza that finally ended 18 January.
Since the end of the Israeli war on Gaza, Israeli authorities continue to block entry to cement and other necessary building materials. Glass, along with wood, piping and many other items, is considered potentially dangerous by Israeli authorities. The bomb-blasted windows of homes and buildings remain un-repaired one year later; the luckier families making due with plastic sheeting.
A small portion of Gaza’s 1.5 million people can afford to buy the overpriced, poor-quality cement smuggled in through the tunnels running between Gaza and Egypt. For those hardest hit, however, this is out of reach.
Hundreds of families, like the Attars, still remain in substandard shelters, insufficient for winter cold and rains.
Many Gazans do not welcome the New Year, they fear what it will bring.
More information from Gaza (sent by Jenny Morgan)
Images from Gaza, it seems, though the opening line of commentary says ‘Palestinians and Israelis come together to protest…’.
Some mobile phone footage from Cairo from a few days ago — demo led by Egyptians
Today’s march from the Israeli side of Erez
Interesting print discussion here
And interesting material in this tv blog:
Fascinating Amy Goodman interview with Ali Abunimah, intercut with interesting footage
There is no deluxe occupation: Haaretz Editorial
The High Court of Justice’s decision, in a panel headed by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, to end the ban on Palestinians using Route 443 is one of the most correct and just decisions the court has made in recent years.
Ever since the outbreak of the intifada, more than nine years ago, this road – which runs from the Ben Shemen interchange to the Ofer Base junction – has become a route for Israelis only. The ban even applied to the 10-kilometer portion of the road that passes through the West Bank, including on lands that were expropriated for public use. As a result, residents of nearby villages, including the owners of the land that was expropriated, who seek to reach the West Bank’s main cities are forced to use roundabout ways of getting to their destinations.
Over the course of 42 years of occupation, an approach has taken root which holds that the security and even convenience of the settlers take precedence over the property rights and welfare of the Palestinians. In order to ensure the safety of Israelis, dozens of bypass roads were paved in the West Bank and hundreds of roadblocks were put up. The route of the separation fence, which was supposed to separate the West Bank from the territory of the State of Israel, was also adjusted to the settlements’ expansion plans. To this end, thousands of dunams of land were expropriated from their owners and farmers were separated from their fields, the source of their livelihood.
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As was to be expected, MKs from the right attacked the Supreme Court with the questionable assertion that removing the roadblocks at the entrance of the villages near the road would undermine the security of travelers. These MKs ignore the principle behind the court’s ruling and the rules of international law, which enable the military administration to violate property rights only if this is done for the benefit of the local population. The term “local population” does not include those citizens of the occupying country who choose to live in the middle of occupied territory. Democratic and moral countries do not expropriate both the land and the right to make use of it.
The barring of Palestinians from Route 443 was one of the ugliest aspects of a deluxe occupation. Real security cannot be achieved by roadblocks, fences and separate roads, but only by a fair peace accord that will bring an end to the occupation.
Some more information as it arrives: MondoWeiss
After three days of vigils and demonstrations in downtown Cairo, Suzanne Mubarak’s offer to allow just 100 of 1,300 delegates to enter Gaza was rejected by the Gaza Freedom March.
Coordinating Committee as well as many of the larger contingents – including those from France, Scotland, Canada, South Africa, Sweden and New York State (U.S.).
“We flatly reject Egypt’s offer of a token gesture. We refuse to whitewash the siege of Gaza. Our group will continue working to get all 1362 marchers into Gaza as one step towards the ultimate goal for the complete end of the siege and the liberation of Palestine” said Ziyaad Lunat a member of the march Coordinating Committee.
The clip from Democracy Now above features an interview with Ali Abunimah giving the latest update (starts around 30:00). Abunimah states that between 50-80 people did board a bus to head to Gaza for various reasons, and according to this twitter update the bus may have been turned back at the Suez canal. Abunimah explained his own decision not to go to Gaza on his blog:
This was a very difficult morning. Many delegations to the Gaza Freedom March rejected the Egyptian offer of two buses to Gaza. Personally I wanted nothing more to be in Gaza. I did get on a bus. But I could not go when people I know and trust in Gaza did not want us to come under such conditions and when there was so much opposition to this. For me that was the bottom line. Their fear is this small delegation would be used by the Egyptian government for propaganda and there was great anger at the statements made by the Egyptian foreign minister last night maligning the Gaza Freedom March. I understand the agony of people on those buses who wanted to reach Gaza. I felt that. But it was impossible. We need to keep up the struggle to end the siege. We’ve come this far. Solidarity means standing together and continuing the struggle.
It’s been difficult to piece the situation together online, but clearly the march was put in a near impossible situation by the Egyptian offer and any decision regarding the offer would have been controversial. Here is a fascinating update on how march participants handled the news of the offer, and it’s clear that critics who felt that Egypt was using the march to whitewash their own complicity in the Gaza blockade won out. This decision was supported by Palestinians who were coordinating the march inside Gaza. Here is a statement from the Gaza-Gaza Freedom March Steering Committee:
Gaza 30.12.2009
Over the past week we, representatives of various civil society sectors in Gaza, have been humbled by the sacrifices that you, 1400 people, have made in order to come and support us in breaking the siege.
Despite our grave disappointment that we can not yet meet you all that we are still separated by this medieval siege we feel that your arrival in Cairo has already borne fruits. Your insistence to break the siege in order to be in solidarity with us has inspired many and shamed many others. Thanks to your presence with us, a network to break the siege and free Palestine has been established.
We support any decisions taken by the Gaza Freedom March Coordination Committee about the entry of just 100 of 1400 delegates into Gaza instead of all the delegates presently in Cairo. Obviously it is, as all previous decisions, a majority decision. We, at the Gaza- GFM Steering committee have reiterated our position, namely, that it is up to The Gaza Freedom March Coordination Committee in Cairo to decide. We initially felt that if representatives of all forty some countries can go to Gaza and join a march along Palestinians it would convey a very strong message to the world public opinion. Had they decided to go through with the Egyptian offer, we would have welcomed them in Gaza and deeply appreciated their solidarity.
The decision to send 100 delegates, however, seemed too divisive for the growing solidarity campaign with the Palestinian people. The unity of the global solidarity campaign is of utmost importance for us, the besieged Palestinians of Gaza. We have repeatedly argued that the march itself is not supposed to be only a symbolic gesture, but rather a part of a series of events which will lead to the end of the siege, once and for all. We want to intensify and continue building the solidarity campaign, not divide it.
We salute the GFM delegates and thank them for the tremendous amount of work they have been doing and whatever decision they came up with.
Gaza-GFM Steering Committee
Egyptian Police Beat Protesters from Gaza Freedom March: Democracy Now
Eighty-six international activists and journalists have reportedly entered Gaza carrying humanitarian aid, but the Egyptian government is continuing to block more than 1,200 other other activists with the Gaza Freedom March from crossing the border. Organizers said Egypt’s position has prevented more aid from entering Gaza. Meanwhile, in Cairo, plainclothes Egyptian police officers beat members of the Gaza Freedom March as they staged a demonstration to demand the right to enter Gaza. Protesters were reportedly beaten with blows to the head and forcefully kicked. Other activists were detained in hotels. One Belgian protester named Maude said Egyptian security forces were tightly controlling their actions in Cairo.
Maude: “There was a lot of events in the street, in the street during the last few days. And now there is a big manifestation, but it’s not possible for us to join our group, because the police is making a circle and we can’t enter in. It’s not possible now.”Gaza militants fire Grad rocket into Netivot: Ha’aretz
Gaza militants fired at least one Grad rocket into the southern Israeli town of Netivot Thursday evening, following a long lull in violence.
Police were looking into reports of a second explosion.
The Color Red early warning system did not go off, giving the resident no indication of the coming attack.
One woman suffered shock and no damage was reported.
The rocket marked the first such attack on Netivot in nine months. The last Grad rocket to hit the city exploded near a synagogue, and caused some damage.
Netivot Mayor Yehiel Zohar contacted the Israel Defense Forces demanding to know why the early warning system failed to work.
The unusual Grad attack came hours after hundreds of demonstrators gathered on both sides of the Gaza border to mark one year since Israel’s offensive in the Strip last winter.Journey to nowhere: Ha’aretz
By Gideon Levy
Well, here we are. A new year begins at midnight, and for the Middle East, 2010 will be a year of negotiations. Peace envoys are warming up at the starting line, document writers are polishing draft agreements for the envoys, advisers are coming up with their own phraseology, pundits are piling up verbiage, photographers are aiming their cameras, and diplomats are packing their bags and sharpening their tongues. George Mitchell will be here soon, Benjamin Netanyahu has already been to Cairo, Mahmoud Abbas is on his way. In the end there will be a summit. In Washington they’ll be elated, in Europe they’ll be exhilarated, the settlers will fulminate and the leftists will somnambulate. Yet another scene in the theater of the absurd, another act in the endless grotesque burlesque. Here we are again: The season of negotiations is upon us, negotiations that amount to nothing.
Already the archives are bursting at the seams with plans and initiatives, outlines and parameters, all already thick with dust. Never before has there been so dangerous and so protracted a conflict with so many wars and so many peace plans. From the first Rogers Plan of December 1969 to the second and third Rogers plans and up to the present, it’s been a horrifyingly dreary tale of sterile diplomacy, a 40-year journey to nowhere.
Everything has already been written and all the plans are amazingly similar, which isn’t surprising. If you want peace, just go to one of the drawers and randomly pluck out any of the plans, it really doesn’t matter which, and start implementing it. And if you want a “peace process,” you’re invited to join the coming festivities, including the killer hangover.
One could, for example, pull the original Rogers Plan out of the mothballs. William Rogers himself has been dead for years, but everything is right there in his plan: withdrawal to the 1967 borders, recognition, sovereignty, peace. It was Israel that rejected it. Forty years on, and we are wallowing in the exact same spot. You want to be a little more up-to-date? Take Bill Clinton’s plan – everything’s there too. So why start off yet again on another campaign of tortuous language? Why do all the Uzi Arads and George Mitchells have to wear themselves out?
Benjamin Netanyahu has already undergone his “historic turnabout,” he’s reportedly ready to discuss, certainly discuss, the ’67 borders, with territory swaps and security arrangements. Even the timetable has already been set – two years, of course it’s two years, it’s always two years, two years more. At the end, Israel’s ultimate triumph will be declared: There’s no partner. Again we’ll hear that the Palestinian president is “a chicken with no feathers” or that the Palestinian leaders are “a gang of terrorists,” and again we’ll hear that there’s no one to talk to.
There is no Palestinian partner, because there is no Israeli partner who is ready to take action. The day that Israel starts acting, together with the Palestinians, the partner will be there. Even Nelson Mandela wasn’t the Mandela we know until he was freed from prison and South Africa was placed in his hands. He too refused to give up armed resistance for decades, but when he was given a true opportunity, he followed a path of peace. The key was in the hands of F.W. de Clerk, not those of Mandela. Israel, too, has that key. Now that it is no longer possible to halt everything because of terrorism, since there is almost none, Israel has lost one of its best weapons. When there is terrorism, one cannot act, and when there is no terrorism, there’s no reason to act. But don’t worry, it will be back, if nothing happens. The experience of the disengagement won’t help either, because the continued imprisonment of the Gazans means that nothing has changed in their lives.
The last person to touch the dream was Ehud Olmert. Countless “excellent” meetings with Abbas, photo ops and bold speeches in abundance. Almost courage, nearly accord, a “shelf agreement” any minute now. Meanwhile, at the edge of the shelf are two lost wars and more settlement construction. All the fine words were rendered worthless by the action on the ground. Because this is the supreme test: It doesn’t matter what the Israelis say, it matters what they do.
The time for words is over. Stop negotiating, start doing. Lifting the blockade on Gaza and declaring a perpetual freeze on building in the settlements would do more than a thousand formulations. Someone who wants two states doesn’t build even one more balcony. This is the litmus test of Israel’s true intentions. Without taking these steps, everything else is a waste of time, the time of the negotiators and of all of us. Does Netanyahu mean to take any of these steps? That is very doubtful, troublingly so.Israeli Arab MK: Barak enjoys classical music and killing Gaza children: Ha’aretz
Some 1,000 people, among them all of Israel’s Arab MKs and community leaders, gathered Thursday at the Israeli side of the Gaza border to express solidarity with the residents of Gaza, one year after Israel’s offensive there. MK Taleb A-Sana relayed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s message to the Israeli side via a mobile phone.
During the rally, Israeli Arab MK Jamal Zahalka directed harsh criticism at Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who he said enjoys “classical music and killing children in Gaza.”
The terror emerging from the Gaza Strip was a result of Israel’s actions against Palestinians, Zahalka told the protesters.
Haniyeh told activists gathered on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the Gaza border that residents of the besieged territory had not given up hope and would never stop fighting for a state, with Jerusalem as its capital.
“Because of international solidarity and your support, we have become stronger,” Haniyeh declared. “The Palestinian nation will never give up its national aspirations or its right to Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine and the Islamic people.”
On the Gaza side of the border, nearly 100 international activists joined about 500 Palestinians, chanting and carrying signs denouncing the blockade.
Egypt allowed 84 pro-Palestinian foreign activists to march into Gaza, Egyptian officials in the North Sinai governorate said.
Some 1,400 activists from 43 countries have gathered in Cairo since Sunday to mark the first anniversary Operation Cast Lead. Egypt said 100 activists were allowed to pass through
“Egyptian authorities made an exception and opened the Rafah border on Wednesday and allowed activists from the Gaza Freedom March to pass through,” Alhamy Aref, secretary-general of the North Sinai governorate, said.
The Israeli Arab protesters on the Israeli side waved the flag of the Palestine Liberation Organization as they rallied against Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza, accusing Israel of starving the Palestinian people.
The 86 international activists began touring the Gaza Strip on Thursday, in an expression of solidarity with Palestinians living there under the Israeli blockade.
They were also scheduled to tour areas hit in the Israeli bombardments, visit Gaza’s Shifa hospital, and meet with community leaders, said Hamdi Shaath, the head of the pro-Hamas Committee to Defeat the Blockade.
Tighe Berry, the spokesman of the group, said Hedy Epstein, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, had remained behind in Cairo