Gaza Views

From Egypt to the Promised Land

2011-02-08T17:21:00.001-05:00

I went to Egypt at the end of January to meet up with a group of 18 people organized by CodePink to go to Gaza. The Egyptian revolution caused the Egyptian government to seal the borders with Gaza. So I stayed in Cairo and had an incredible front row seat on the most amazing grassroots uprising you can imagine.

Saturday, January 30

Kit Kittredge and I arrived in Egypt about 5 pm Friday, went thru immigration and customs with no signs of abnormality, got our bags and came out to look for our pick up from the Lotus Hotel. No sign of anyone. We tried to get a cab to take us to downtown Cairo, but rejected the outrageous (it seemed to us at the time) offer of a ride for E 250. It still didn’t dawn on us what was happening. We tried calling the Lotus, but couldn’t get through. Only after noticing that, in the huge crowd of people that was building at the terminal, no one was using a cellphone did we realize that the government had shut down the cellphone networks and the internet as well. The cabdrivers told us it was impossible to get to downtown Cairo. The entire area is cordoned off. We settled for an offer of a cab and a hotel room for the two of us in Heliopolis for $90. It seemed like a bargain given the circumstances.

The road out of the airport was eerie. Almost no cars when normally it would be choked with traffic. The same on the main boulevard thru Heliopolis. As we neared Mubarak’s palace, we were stopped by a roadblock. Our ingenious driver turned around and found a way to our hotel thru the side streets.

It’s a very strange feeling to be cut off from communication with anyone while watching an uprising taking place on television. Athough I imagine Mubarak’s aim is to prevent the organization of demonstrations, the feeling induced is not one of passivity. Rather, I think, it makes you feel like it is worth taking risks. You have to go out and join up to find out what’s going on.

Everyone we talked to at the hotel – the desk manager, the bell boy, the waiter, and the guests who understood what was going on – were quietly or loudly supportive of the demonstrations – albeit with not much political sophistication. “35 years of Mubarak – he has to go” would be representative of the general feeling.

The next morning we talked to Tighe Barry who was already in Cairo and learned that it was possible to get to downtown Cairo. We got a driver, for a fairly exorbitant price, and took off. Again, almost no traffic on the road at all. We arrived on Talaat Harb St., which had been the center of demonstrations and police action the prior day, and went into our hotel. Tahrir Square, just a few blocks away, was already starting to fill with demonstrators. We went out to join the crowd. The army had blocked most of the main streets leading into the square to separate the police from the demonstrators. The police, other than some undercover plainclothesmen, were nowhere in sight. The demonstration was almost like a be-in from the 1960s. People of all ages were out on the street. Old people, young people, parents with small children, men in suits, men in workclothes, and a surprising large number of women – maybe 10%. Contrary to what the US media was saying, this was no Islamist exercise. When the hour of prayer came, you could make the count. No more than 15% percent of the demonstrators were praying. We saw several signs with both the Christian Cross and the Muslim crescent on them. (We learned later that this was the symbol of the Revolution of 1919 against British rule). Some people were sweeping the streets to pick up litter. Some others were bringing drinks to the soldiers.

The overall feeling was one of peace, joy, and excitement. People were jumping up on tanks to shake hands with the soldiers. Many people said to us, “This is the real Egypt.” They lifted their children up onto the tanks.

We were constantly asked where we were from. When we said the US, people welcomed us to Egypt and asked us to spread the word at home that this is a peaceful revolution, and that all the Egyptian people want is the right to choose their government and to live normal lives.

There were at least 100,000 people in Tahrir Square, with more people joining in the demonstration all the time until close to 5 o’clock. There was massive applause and rejoicing when firefighters joined the demonstration and even greater excitement when an army captain came over to the demonstrators.

There were other areas where demonstrators gathered as well. They hoped to take over the state run media and gathered in front of that building which is on the Corniche, along the Nile. The army clearly wasn’t ready or willing for that to happen and had stationed soldiers with machine guns and automatic weapons on the balconies of the building, ready to shoot down into the crowd if necessary. The soldiers were backed up by tanks and APCs. Again, the spirit of the crowd was one of friendly determination and there were no efforts to break into the building.

The only building in Cairo that was burned was the headquarters of the National Democratic Party – Mubarak’s party. That large, high rise building was set on fire yesterday and was still burning today. Firefighters made no attempt to put out the flames, which also incinerated the cars parked in the lot in front of the building.

Just as we were about to return to the hotel, the crowd learned that Mubarak had chosen Omar Suleiman as president (turned out he was appointed vice-president). They were not happy. Immediately the chant began “Out with Mubarak, Out with Suleiman.” It is clear people are looking for a regime change, not just a different face. I think the appointment of Suleiman, rather than seeking a compromise, is a major challenge to the people. Suleiman is the head of intelligence/secret police and has long acted as Mubarak’s right hand man. Darth Vader might be an accurate archetype for him. He is the one responsible for the repression.

We went back out to Tahrir Sq. about 8 pm. The crowd was significantly diminished but there were still thousands of people. We walked up towards the area where the police had made their last stand two days ago, before going into hiding in the Interior Ministry complex. The army was barricading the streets that ran into the Interior Ministry in what looked to us like an effort to protect the police from the demonstrators. However, people were gathering on a side street that lead to the entrance to the Interior Ministry complex and no soldiers were there. We walked on to take a look.
Some students from the American University of Cairo told us the police were shooting into the crowd with live ammunition and that some people had been killed. As we walked a little closer, a fusillade of shots was fired into the crowd we were approaching, followed by tear gas. We ducked down a side street to get out of the way. We continued hearing gunfire for several minutes. Later we heard a report, which we couldn’t confirm, that 10 people had been killed.

Some very interesting things are happening here. Most impressive is the self-organization which has taken place. We saw people cleaning up, directing traffic, and everywhere neighborhood watches were formed – almost on every block – to guard against looting and thievery. All of this is happening with the greatest good humor and respect. The only violent action we saw was when a crowd of about 20 demonstrators caught an undercover policeman, and dragged him into a building – presumably to beat him up.

There is good reason for neighborhood watches. Not only are the police not on the streets, but the police opened the prisons and let criminals out to help them with their attacks on demonstrators. Nada Kassass, one of the organizers of the protests, told us that a group of young people, including her, were chased into the Press Syndicate building by police and criminals, some of whom had not even changed out of their prison uniforms. When they got inside the building, thugs and plainclothes police demanded the security guards open the doors. They refused. The thugs tried to force the doors but weren’t able to. She also told us that some looters entered the Egyptian Museum – the home of priceless treasures and the demonstrators barricaded the building to keep them from escaping with stolen goods. When the Army came to search the building, the thieves they found were two police officers, three soldiers, and some employees of the Museum. In Alexandria, she said, two police officers were caught robbing a bank.

The role of the Army, she says, is a bit ambiguous. They have clearly refused Mubarak’s orders to disperse the demonstrators, but it is not clear what the next step will be. The danger is a military coup. She felt that a military government would only be acceptable to a small portion of the demonstrators. Although the formal political process has been gutted over 35 years by Mubarak, there is an informal political structure which could play a role in forming a new government. The two trusted groups she cited are The Popular Committee for Change, and the Popular Parliament. The Popular Parliament came out of the last fraudulent parliamentary elections, where many candidates were prevented from running at all, and others had their votes stolen. It is 91 people who, had there been an honest election, would have been chosen for Parliament.

However, Egypt is a client state of the US, and certainly the US will try to control the outcome of a regime change. The US government is much more likely to favor a military government than a popular government.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Crowds are just starting to gather in Tahrir Square to continue voicing their demand that the Mubarak regime go. The army remains stationed on the roads leading into the square, preventing cars from gaining access. Everything appears very calm, but we are warned by the demonstration organizers that “something big” could be in the works – good or bad we don’t know.

This can hardly be a surprise. Mubarak threw down the gauntlet by appoint Suleiman as his number two. Omar Suleiman is the head of the hated secret police (Egyptian intelligence), works closely with Israel and the US, and is clearly just another face of the Mubarak regime. The key question here is the relationship between the army and the police. They are reputed to hate each other. On the other hand, Suleiman has held the rank of General in the Army. What kind of deals are being cut among Egypt’s elite and will the rank and file in the Army accept any order they receive? So far their actions have tilted slightly towards the people. That is, they have prevented the police force from deploying against the demonstrators. But they have not definitively taken sides against the police. For example, last night, when demonstrators went to the Interior Ministry to rout out the police hiding in there, the procession was led by Army APCs and possibly a tank. But when the police began firing live ammunition at the demonstrators, the Army did not fire back, despite pleas from demonstrators to do so. Also, demonstrators would like to take over the state run television stations to get their message out. The state media has portrayed the demonstrators as thieves and criminals to the extent they have shown anything at all. But the Army deployed to protect the state television station building from takeover. Their ultimate role in this revolution remains to be determined.

Possible alternative political leadership to Mubarak does exist, but may not be able to surface in the face of American machinations for “stability.” That alternative leadership does not rest in a single person, but rather in the Popular Council for Change and the Popular Parliament I described earlier. Most people seem to feel Egypt needs a little time to develop a real political process.

Later Sunday afternoon – one amazing event after another continues to unfold. When we left the hotel early in the afternoon, we met a human rights activist/reporter that Medea knew who invited us to come to the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Justice and the Hisham Mubarak Center Law Center, which he said was a center for the organization of the protests. (This Center was the organizer of the April 9th Movement protests in 2008). We went into an unprepossessing building in a narrow street, climbed up about six flights of stairs and came into a room that was filled with young organizers/activists.

We met with Nada Saddek, a middle aged woman who is a key person at the center. She told us a number of interesting things pointing to the conclusion that Mubarak is trying to save himself by creating chaos. At least four prisons, 3 in the Cairo area and 1 in Alexandria were emptied of their prisoners. Her daughter called her on the way from Alexandria to Cairo to tell her men in prison uniforms were trying to hitch rides along the road. This fits right in with Nada Kassass’ story of the police using criminals in prison uniforms to attack the press syndicate. She also told us that the police had seized ambulances which they were filling with police officers who jumped out with automatic weapons and killed people. We saw some concrete evidence of that at the Interior Ministry. As we walked towards the demonstrators there last night, we saw that the crowd was trying to roll over an ambulance – quite shocking since we had seen nothing like that before. The ambulance was literally thrown up in the air, and emptied of whoever was inside it. The driver then frantically backed it down the street away from the crowd with the back door hanging ajar. Now, it turns out, the ambulance was being used to smuggle police out of the building where they were holed up. Finally, several people told us that the army arrested police officers for several criminal acts – attempting to loot the Egyptian Museum, robbing a bank in Alexandria. Of course, the lack of almost any communication, and my inability to understand what is broadcast on television, makes it impossible to substantiate anything I haven’t actually seen.

We also discussed with Nada the possibility that the almost complete disruption of internet service was an effort to sow chaos. February 1 is payday, and the banks have no way to transfer money to people’s accounts without the internet. Many people who can ill afford it will go with no pay. Nada told us she is conserving her money because of this worry. Her daughter needs surgery for injuries from an auto accident but Nada is postponing it until she knows whether or not money will be available. People are also worried that the government will stop shipments of food into the city.

Other rumors circulating are that the Minister of Interior was arrested by the Army. He had been hiding in the Interior Ministry, which may have been why the police took so many lives shooting live ammunition into the crowd. (The New York Times said the police at the Interior Ministry fired rubber bullets, but live ammunition was clearly used. We interviewed an 11 year old boy who had been shot twice, and produced the bullet that had been extracted from his arm. It was not a rubber bullet.

Another rumor was that the Minister of Defense was arrested. We were told that he had ordered the army to shoot live ammunition at the demonstrators on Friday. A general refused the order, creating the rift that led to the army tilting towards the demonstrators. Later this afternoon, the chief of the army came to Tahrir Square to tell the demonstrators not to worry, things will move forward. Again, I can’t substantiate any of this. But people very much want to trust the army and believe that it is with them. This afternoon, the air force staged continuous flyovers with fighter jets roaring and rolling across the sky. Some people took this as a very positive sign. Others saw it as a show of strength after the arrest (if it took place) of the Minister of Defense.

Regardless, Tahrir Square began to fill up again with people streaming in all afternoon, and the crowd growing particularly after work. It seemed a little smaller than yesterday, but not by much. And many more women and children came out to join in.

People have so much to say. Thirty five years of being muzzled means you have a lot to say. Everyone wanted to talk to America via the video camera.

Monday, January 31, 2011

Another day in the peoples’ revolution. Staying in touch with the rest of the world is life’s biggest daily challenge. Down to the street to look for the guy at the kiosk who sells cellphone cards – closed. Around the corner to the Internet Café, whose owner told us he would open at 9 – closed. Off to Tahrir Square to check in on the revolution and there are alarmingly few people there – maybe a few hundred. Don’t worry we are told, people will come. And they did. By the time we got back by 2:30 or so, the crowd was amazing. Much larger than on Sunday. In any case, we had to have a more optimistic outlook. The internet café had opened (probably the only place in Cairo where the internet is working and we know where it is)! Unfortunately, other people are starting to find it as well so it was a challenge to hold our space while we slowly, ever so slowly uploaded pictures. We had found food. A fast food khoshary place is, I swear, feeding all of Tahrir Square. I would like to take a movie of the guys behind the counter dishing out orders at a dizzying pace. But if I did I would probably be crushed by the enormous crowd trying to elbow its way in to the counter to order.

The contrast between the joyous, collaborative, self-organized environment of Tahrir Square and the elite area nearby is profound. We walked over to the Semiramis Hotel on the Corniche to see if we could snag a mainstream media person who would help us upload video. The place was barricaded like a fortress, with a huge desk across the entrance, guards everywhere, metal detectors. They weren’t buying any of our excuses to get in and appeared to be expecting attack imminently. We had already seen tanks blocking the road two or three blocks from the American Embassy. It all smells of an extremely guilty conscience. And yet we must have been asked 100 or more times by demonstrators “When will Obama support the Egyptian people?”

I saw some news stories in the Arab world that the demonstrations have been organized by “outsiders.” If there is any truth in that, the “outsiders” are not very well organized. The signs are all hand written, and we watch people gather in small groups with cardboard and magic markers to decide what their signs should say.

Support is not universal, but it certainly is widespread. We have talked to men, an amazing number of women, children, students, lawyers, salesmen, printers, teachers, professors, engineers, farmers, social workers, policemen, soldiers, activists, Muslims, Coptic Christians, returned émigrés, etc. all with the united opinion that Mubarak has stayed too long, that the entire regime must change, and that the people should have the right to choose. It’s reasonable to assume that the supporters of Mubarak may have made themselves scarce in this environment. But we have talked to some shopkeepers and people dependent on the tourist trade who are not happy about the protests. Their opinions vary. Some support Mubarak as a strong hand that has protected Egypt from Israel, which they believe would like to invade. Others feel that the disorder has ruined the country. Some support the idea of change, but not the way it is being achieved.

Because of the curfew, which was imposed at 3 pm today, we had to go away from Tahrir Sq. to find an open restaurant. We found an excellent one about 10 blocks away, crammed with people. But other than the shops being closed and little traffic, there wasn’t much curfew observance.

Shopowners and others in the neighborhoods are out on the street all night to protect their area. The police have disappeared from the streets and, before they left, they let the criminals out of jail. At least 3 large prisons were emptied. In some cases, escaping prisoners were killed. (Some activists said these were the political prisoners but we don’t know). Two people told us they personally saw escaped prisoners still wearing their convict uniforms. However, after the first few days of pitched battles with police, in downtown Cairo we have seen no signs of new looting. And most of the neighborhood guards don’t seem to begrudge the revolution for their having to pull the all night shift.

A huge march is planned for tomorrow (Tuesday) – a “million man” march. But in Tahrir Sq. tonight the protesters who planned to spend the night numbered in the several thousands. There is a tent camp, blankets have been widely distributed, food is available, and the atmosphere is festive. Many people believe, especially after the Army’s announcement that it would not fire on peaceful demonstrators, that Tuesday is the day Mubarak goes.

People of all ages, classes, genders are together out in the square to hold the space for tomorrow’s demonstration. One group of young people began putting together a collection of all the varying slogans, reflecting the many differing opinions (El Baradei is okay, he is not okay, there should be Islamic government, there should be civil society government, etc.) united around a single goal – Mubarak and the current regime must go and people will stay protesting until that goal is achieved. Political discussion is constant, passionate, and civil. On our way back to the hotel with our friend Yasser, who kindly translated for us all night, we stopped to ask some neighborhood guards their opinion. They were very much against the protests, saying change was okay but not this way, and some saying “Mubarak is a good man.” But still there was a civil debate with Yasser.

People came together here in many ways.

The picture above is a group of Facebook friends from a number of smaller cities and towns at least 100 miles away from Cairo. These young women were staying by themselves all night in the square. When we left, they were entertaining themselves reading books on their Kindle.

Take a look at the number of women and families.

Take a look at how people organized to make it possible to remain in the square.

Take a look at the individual creativity. The picture on the bottom left is a man whose protest sign says he does not have a job, the money to get married, to get an apartment. On the bottom right, two young men are portraying the plight of the ordinary Egyptian – no job, no money, no healthcare, poor education, lack of public services, no freedom to speak or write, etc.

By Tuesday, the Mubarak forces began to stir themselves a bit. We decided to go down to the state television building on the Corniche to see if the Army was still holding off the pro-democracy protesters who had hoped to take it over. When we arrived, we saw a major shift. The army had created an much wider defensive perimeter, sealing off access from the side streets and closing off much of the area in front of the building along the Corniche. There was a demonstration of a few hundred young people off to the side. When we went over to talk to them, we realized this was a pro-Mubarak demonstration -- the first we had seen. The demonstrators were holding printed signs (much different than the scrawled cardboards of Tahrir Square) and chanting “We love Mubarak” and “Mubarak stay”. I asked one young man why he loved Mubarak. He could only say, “He is our father.” Asked why he was there, he said, “For state television to take pictures of us.”

That was the benign side of the Mubarak forces mobilization. The next morning, Wednesday, we saw the dark side. Early in the morning, Talaat Harb Square -- just four blocks from Tahrir Square -- began to fill with an angry, shouting mob. Initially about 50 men, many of whom looked like undercover police, surrounded by about 10 taxicabs circling the central statue of Talaat Pasha Harb (the founder of the Bank of Egypt). We tried to talk to them, asking why they were there and what they wanted. After a few formulaic replies of “Mubarak is our father” things started to get a bit tense and we walked away. Hours later, this same crowd, armed with stones, knives, and molotov cocktails ran down Talaat Harb St. to attack protesters in Tahrir Square.

I missed most of the buildup because I had taken a taxi out to Orouba, near the airport, to leave the materials I had planned to take to Gaza with a friend. I got back to our hotel a little before two, learned that Medea, Tighe and the others were just returning from a solidarity demonstration they held near the US embassy, and ducked into the neighboring internet cafe, down a little alley. Not ten minutes later, I heard shouting and people running down the street. The internet cafe owner began to pull down his steel shutters. Medea, Kit, Billy, Tim and Jase appeared in the doorway as the shutter was going down and ducked under it to come inside. Tighe had gone into the hotel.

This turned out to be an excellent division of labor. Tighe observed the street battle from the hotel balcony and called a blow by blow description in to us in the internet cafe so that we could post.

Here’s what he told us: Mubarak supporters began a battle by throwing stones at the human chain protecting the square and at people in the square. This seems to be coordinated by two men with walkie talkies. The crowd of thugs throws stones and then retreats back towards Talaat Harb Square. For the first twenty minutes or so, the pro-democracy protesters just formed a double line, with locked arms, to keep the thugs from breaking through. Their only protection from stones was heavy blankets thrown over their heads. Finally, The Mukhabarat (secret police) are on the roof across the street from our hotel, directing the street thugs by cell phone. They are motioning to Tighe to stop filming them. Molotov cocktails are now being thrown into Tahrir Sq. by Mubarak thugs. A tank has pulled up where Talaat Harb St. enters Tahrir Sq. It’s not clear what its purpose is, but both sides are using it as a shield. Finally, the pro-democracy protesters counterattacked with rocks. Tighe watches a dozen thugs beating a young man with a metal pole, then jump on another man who tried to protect him. Theres no question people are being seriously hurt here.

The battle raged up and down Talaat Harb St. and spilled into the little alley where we were holed up in the internet cafe. The owner had left a four inch gap at the bottom of the door and one young guy began shooting video through the tiny crack. Via his video, we see five or six men beating a boy lying on the ground. He tries to crawl under a dumpster for protection, but they drag him out and away. There is a pool of blood on the pavement.

For the moment, Mubarak has succeeded in his effort to sow chaos. He seems willing to set the country on fire to stay in power. Certainly the US gave him the green light for this by not insisting he step down.

By the late afternoon, the Mubarak thugs had been driven away. The street was littered with glass from the windows they smashed as they retreated and rocks.

When things calmed down we left the internet cafe and went around the corner onto Talaat Harb to our hotel. The protesters began building barricades to protect the entrances to Tahrir Square.

All the managers in our hotel were very pro-Mubarak, telling us that a strong hand was needed to keep Egypt from descending into chaos, complaining that the protests had ruined the tourist business, but there was only one -- the assistant night manager -- who was happy about the Mubarak thugs attacks on the protesters. He was thrilled -- a little brown shirt wannabe.

In the evening, we went out into Tahrir Square with two banners “The Whole World Says Its Time to Go Mubarak” and “Solidarity with the Egyptian People”.

Generally, I hadn’t thought I had much role to play in this revolution other than to document the actions and people’s demands. It’s their revolution. But these banners, which we carried around the entire square, made a huge difference. Hundreds of people had been hurt in the rock throwing melee and they clearly felt besieged as well. The banners were a very clear sign that the whole world is watching, and watching with sympathy and admiration for the protests. We were very warmly received and were joined by hundreds of people who began chanting, “Mubarak out”, “Down with Mubarak”, etc. sometimes in English, sometimes in Arabic.

The next morning, Kit and I left for the airport. We arrived quickly, with the interruption of just one checkpoint at the airport. To my surprise, the departure halls were not packed with people. Rather, it just looked like a busy day at the airport. Our plane, which had been specially scheduled by Delta, was almost empty -- a huge airbus with no more than 40 or so people on it. I was so happy that we hadn’t asked the US embassy for help in getting a flight. They were charging everyone they evacuated $400 and dumping them anywhere between Istanbul and London to find there way home. Why didn’t they use the Delta flight we took? Well, why didn’t they support the peaceful, pro-democracy protesters rather than the Mubarak kleptocrats?

The US never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity....

Back in the U.S. after an amazing front row seat in Cairo at the Egyptian revolution, I have had to translate my point of view from the street to the news stream. But I can’t help being informed by what I saw in the streets of Cairo and in Tahrir Square. It’s a parallel world out here, with mainstream media coverage of Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman as the U.S. approved man for the transition to democracy. Clearly an amazingly versatile politician, Suleiman -- Egypt’s chief torturer and leading advocate of autocracy -- has morphed into a bridge builder to the opposition. It must be time and distance that lets the press and the White House seriously propose this with a straight face. It certainly isn’t flying in Tahrir Square where the pro-democracy forces are adamant they will stay until Mubarak leaves. One chant was, “We won’t go until you go.”

The U.S. government never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The fastest and surest course to the “stability” that the U.S. seeks in the Middle East is political reform. But, when the opportunity arises to shuck an aging, repressive, kleptocracy in favor of a popular democracy, the worried looks and frowns come out. The backroom meetings begin. As Hilary Clinton famously said in an interview with Al Arabiya “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.” Indeed? Well, Hilary, we know it’s awfully hard to kick a friend of the family out into the cold. Maybe that’s why Mubarak’s own lawyer, Frank Wisner, was chosen as the U.S. envoy to “negotiate” with him.

And so our government has continued to do what it does so well --- deal only with the people it knows best, propping them up when they stumble over their own scheming greed. The people it knows best are the ones who created whatever problem/crisis is currently being faced. This is what brought us Goldman Sachs to manage the bailout of the financial system. It’s what brought us Halliburton to manage the occupation of Iraq. And now it brings us Omar Suleiman to manage the Egyptian governance crisis. It is a sclerotic approach that has attached the US to failed regimes over and over again.

The US blessed “transition” government in Egypt is trying to find ways to transition back to autocratic rule as fast as possible. This means continued arrests of activists, continued deployment of threatening thugs, meaningless stalling negotiations with the opposition, and efforts to isolate the pro-democracy forces of civil society in Tahrir Square. It’s a tactic that might work in the short run for the Mubarak kleptocrats. The disruption caused by the protests is a burden on all -- but least bearable for the middle and working class who live from paycheck to paycheck. Having had no political life for the last 30 years, Egyptians are not particularly politically sophisticated, and the state controlled media is working hard to create divisions.

But where will that leave Egyptian society? Just as in the occupation of Iraq, the US is a pursuing a policy that is likely to result in wiping out secular civil society. The only opposition that is organized to survive an onslaught by the secret police is the Muslim Brotherhood -- the bete noire of Obama and Clinton.

Everything I saw in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Cairo during the days of protest was concentrated in a passionate desire for freedom of expression and a desire for democratic, accountable government. And almost every single person I talked to believed this was what America stood for. “We just want the same rights you have,” was a frequent refrain. Almost no one was interested in a religious government. This may have been the least radical revolution we have witnessed. The protesters are simply asking for their human rights. If it doesn’t succeed, it will carry a lesson for everyone in the Middle East.

The US government’s willingness to back the Mubarak regime and its failure to recognize their legitimate demands has been baffling to the protesters. But the same players and the same foreign policy have kept the US standing shoulder to shoulder with oppressive regimes around the world. Just in the last twelve months -- Iraq, Honduras, Haiti -- every time the US has backed the kleptocrats against the democrats.

It’s way too early to give up on the possibility the protesters will prevail. Their support is so broad-based, their demands so legitimate, and their commitment to a grassroots movement so strong that they may succeed without outside pressure in pushing Mubarak out. The Egyptian revolution may proudly be able to say that it won on its own.

A Brief History of the Cairo Protests

2010-01-05T07:20:00.002-05:00

I am embarrassed that it has been impossible for me to post stories about The Gaza Freedom March while I was in Cairo. My own limited access to the internet, the constant harassment by the Egyptian police which hampered our ability to communicate with each other and to meet, and the need for repeated street demonstrations and other organizing efforts all soaked up huge amounts of time. I have copied below an excellent article that summarizes almost all the events of the Gaza Freedom March, and added a few annotations in brackets and italic, e.g. [annotation].

This was an historical event. 1,360 people convening from 43 countries to demand justice for Palestinians. Repeated street demonstrations targeting all the responsible state actors. Ongoing negotiations with government officials, US, French, and Egyptian that documented who is responsible for maintaining the siege of Gaza. I do not think there has been a global movement like this seeking justice for a single people since the international volunteer brigades that went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

We aim to maintain our global connections and work together to win justice for Palestine. To that end, many of the participants signed on to The Cairo Declaration, proposed by the South African delegation. You can read about that in the article below and it will be posted on this blog.

By Sharat G. Lin

04 January, 2010
Countercurrents.org

“Life is resistance.” French delegation of over 300 camping out in front of the French Embassy in Cairo behind a solid wall of Egyptian central police in riot gear.

Cairo: The international delegation of the Gaza Freedom March had originally planned to arrive in Gaza on 29 December 2009 to join a march against the Israeli blockade together with residents of Gaza on 31 December. Instead, most of its delegates remained in Cairo, having been blocked from going to the Rafah border by the Egyptian government, and found itself marching against the Egyptian blockade on Gaza instead.

The Gaza Freedom March sought to highlight the plight of the 1.5 million residents of Gaza on the first anniversary of the Israeli invasion of the densely-populated Palestinian territory by entering Gaza with humanitarian aid for water purification, school materials, medicines, and other much needed supplies. After Israel tightened its blockade on Gaza after the election of a Hamas majority in the elections of January 2006, Egypt has refused to give open permission for foreign citizens to enter Gaza through Rafah until the last minute. Organizers of the Gaza Freedom March had been hopeful of obtaining permission, but were disappointed when Egypt closed the Rafah border in December 2009 under intense pressure from Israel.

The French ambassador to Egypt, Jean Félix-Paganon, told members of the French delegation of the Gaza Freedom March that the Egyptian government was preparing to grant permission for the March to proceed to Gaza until the deal was rejected by Israel. With 1,360 delegates from 43 countries converging on Cairo, Egypt revoked the permit to hold a large meeting in Cairo and the permits for buses to take them to the Rafah border via El-Arish.[The Egyptian Foreign Ministry informally told the Gaza Freedom March organizers that no meetings of the Gaza Freedom March would be permitted -- that any effort to obtain meeting space would be blocked because no "permits" would be granted for a meeting of more than six people. The GFM organizers responded to this by holding meetings in public squares, and by creating a system of delegates to meet with as many as 150 people crammed into a hotel restaurant designed to seat 40.]

Protesting the Egyptian Blockade

In response, the Gaza Freedom March launched protests in the streets of Cairo on 27 December 2009. The day began with a silent action, tying letter cards expressing solidarity to the people of Gaza to the railings of the Qasr el-Nil Bridge. Many Egyptian passersby stopped to add their own messages of friendship to the people of Gaza and Palestine. When police finally broke up the vigil, they ripped the cards off, leaving only the strings by which they were attached.

In the late afternoon, a plan to sail in dozens of feluccas (traditional Nile sailboats) was aborted by police, who closed off an entire section of the Corniche el-Nil where the feluccas are docked. The purpose of going onto the Nile River was to float 1,400 candles in biodegradable cups in memory of the Palestinians who died in the Israel assault one year ago. Gaza Freedom March delegates held their candlelight vigil anyway along the busy Corniche el-Nil street.

The more than 300-strong French delegation had gathered in front of the French Embassy in Giza, expecting to board buses for El-Arish. When the buses failed to arrive because their permits had been pulled, the delegates in a courageous act of defiance sat down in the busy four northbound lanes of Murad Street and set up tents. Hundreds of riot police from the Central Security Force were mobilized to enclose the protesters and move them onto the footpath in front of the French Embassy. Not knowing what the police would ultimately do, there was a great deal of fear at the beginning of the action. At one point the security force cordon increased to three layers. However, the French ambassador was apparently supportive, discouraging Egyptian authorities from using force and pressing for permits to travel to Gaza. Towards the end, the security cordon was relaxed, allowing anyone to freely enter and exit the encampment. The encampment lasted continuously for four days.

French delegate, Amar Aknouche, said he decided to join the Gaza Freedom March because of the injustice in Palestine. He noted, “Israel is the only ‘democracy’ which goes and kills children and erects an apartheid wall. I came here to express my solidarity with Gaza.”

Other large delegations – U.S., Canadian, British, Italian, etc. -- approached their own embassies to appeal for support in pressuring the Egyptian government to open the Gaza border. The U.S. and Canadian embassies were particularly unhelpful because their governments had taken an official position of not dealing with Gaza because they classify Hamas as a “terrorist” organization. An additional special delegation went to the offices of the Arab League to seek its intervention. [The US embassy appears to have violated US law by refusing entry to US citizens seeking assistance from the consulate. Instead, Egyptian riot police were called, penned in the more than 100 people seeking the assistance of their government, and used some physical force against them. It is particularly shameful behavior for the US government to refuse to aid its own citizens in favor of the demands of a foreign country (both Israel and Egypt).]

Non-violent Civil Disobedience

Meanwhile, other Gaza Freedom March participants defied the lack of permits to travel to Al-Arish. Thirty arrived successfully and checked into a hotel, after which they were placed under house arrest. After diplomatic negotiations, they were allowed out of the hotel, but blocked from going to the Rafah border. Over several days another fifty delegates boarded commercial buses at different times in Cairo and successfully passed through the multiple checkpoints outside of Cairo and along the highway from Bur Sa’id to Al-Arish. However, they were all halted at the bus stand in Al-Arish or at the final checkpoint before entering Al-Arish. Police forced all foreign travellers, including those holding Palestinian passports, back towards Cairo under police escort at least up to the Suez Canal. Eight Europeans refused to go back, choosing instead to camp out at a checkpoint. A subsequent directive of the Ministry of Interior blocked all non-Egyptians from travelling east of the Suez Canal.

On 28 December, while negotiations continued with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for permits to enter Gaza, a new avenue was opened through the United Nations office in Cairo. A negotiating team led by Philippine parliament member Walden Bello met with U.N. officials, but to no avail. Bello confided, “I know it's a bit difficult right now with the situation here, but I don't think they will be able to keep us away from there [Gaza] forever.”

The negotiating team was supported by nearly a thousand delegates rallying in front of the World Trade Center Cairo where the U.N. office is located. The scene was abuzz for hours with chants of “We want to go to Gaza,” “Free Gaza,” “We shall overcome,” and many more. There was music led by guitarists and an accordion player. Meanwhile, organizing meetings in the various national delegations were constantly going on in the background.

Eighty-five-year-old Holocaust survivor, Hedy Epstein, used the occasion to announce her hunger strike to demand passage to Gaza. She explained, “I have come to a point in my life in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, especially the Gaza issue, where I think I need to do something else because what I have done so far has not really caught the attention of my own government or the governments of the world who are silent on this issue. And so I've decided to go on a hunger strike.” She was quickly joined by others.

As at the French Embassy, the rally was visually contained by a solid wall of black-uniformed members of the Egyptian Central Security Force. But the wall could not hide the banners, Palestinian flags, and chants that flew high above the security cordon. The young recruits frequently expressed sympathy and smiles with the delegates. One symbolically crossed his wrists, signalling that his hands were tied. The Central Security Force recruits carried no arms, and have not done so ever since a 1987 mutiny. However, police (some of whom are armed) did filter the crowd and remove three Egyptian nationals. They also removed one Palestinian American woman, punched her in the face, and then released her. Twelve international delegates remained camped at the World Trade Center overnight.

Many Egyptian passersby and people in buses and cars also signalled their sympathy by waving to the delegates, for the Gaza Freedom March was exercising a limited freedom of assembly and speech accorded to internationals that would not be permitted among Egyptians.

On 29 December, the Syndicate of Journalists invited the Gaza Freedom March to join their members at their trade union headquarters for a rally for Gaza that lasted into the evening. Some Palestinian and Egyptian speakers moved beyond lifting the blockade on Gaza to chanting “down with Hosni Mubarak” and calling for “revolution.” The combined voices of Egyptians and internationals sent a powerful message of unity and solidarity on Palestine and opposition to the Egyptian government’s role in upholding the blockade on Gaza.

Divisive Breakthrough

Code Pink organizer, Jodie Evans, used her personal contact with Suzanne Mubarak, wife of President Hosni Mubarak, and chairwoman of the Egyptian Red Crescent (ERC), to appeal for permission for the Gaza Freedom March to carry its humanitarian aid into Gaza. The response from Mrs. Mubarak’s office was positive with instructions to “help in any way possible.” After reviewing the details of the request, by the next day Mrs. Mubarak secured permission for 100 delegates and two buses to cross into Gaza on 30 December morning. Code Pink organizers were given only two hours to come up with a list of names.

The initial acceptance of the offer proved to be tactically divisive for both the Gaza Freedom March and for the Egyptian government. After raging internal arguments and Palestinian calls for “all or none,” the Gaza Freedom March belatedly, but wisely, decided to decline the offer and allow only Palestinians with family in Gaza, key media personnel such as a Telesur team, and a handful of individuals to deliver humanitarian aid to board the buses. [Most of the Gaza Freedom Marchers listed to go to Gaza got off the buses and declined to go once they learned that our Palestinian partners in Gaza felt the Egyptians offer to permit only a humanitarian delegation through should be declined.] Meanwhile, Mrs. Mubarak’s intervention reportedly enraged Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu al-Gheit for having undermined his ministry’s monopoly over political decision-making on the Gaza border crossing. He, in turn, tried to drive a wedge through the Gaza Freedom March by praising those selected (falsely as if by the government) to go to Gaza as “good and sincere,” while denouncing those remaining in Cairo as “hooligans” “acting against Egyptian interests.” Fortunately, that divide-and-rule tactic only served to unify delegates.

Free Gaza Square

On the day of the actual Gaza Freedom March from both sides of the wall (Gaza and Israel) to the Erez Crossing, 31 December 2009, delegates in Cairo planned to symbolically “march to Gaza” by walking peacefully in the streets of downtown Cairo. But because of the official ban on public political demonstrations, organizers adopted the tactic of initiating the march with “flash mob” and “swarm of bees” techniques. It worked for only about twenty minutes before the “swarm” became trapped between the traffic and hundreds of police.

In the ensuing melee, a solid wall of Central Security Forcers first began pushing demonstrators away from trapped buses, with officers attempting to ram the human wall from behind. Once the buses were cleared out of the way, police (not Central Security Forces) began grabbing delegates and throwing them onto the footpath. Some officers used fists to hit delegates, including several women. Two reported that their headscarves were ripped off. Seven delegates were reportedly injured. One American man had blood on his face that required treatment at the medical station set up by march organizers. He had been clubbed with a two-way radio by a plainclothes police officer. [After this incident, in which the Egyptian police beat old and young (a child of only 12 and at least one women in her 70s were injured), the US embassy appears to have told the Egyptian police they were not to club demonstrators. However, later demonstrations continued to be met with substantial physical force -- ex-clubs.]

Once confined to a 500-square-metre area of footpath, Gaza Freedom March delegates erected banners and Palestinian flags, and proclaimed the site “Free Gaza Square.” Within its confines they spoke about the political accomplishments of the week, and the unfinished tasks ahead. Challenged by the lack of democratic rights in Egypt, delegates were more determined than ever to break the siege of Gaza and challenge their governments’ acquiescence to the blockade.

Ali Abunimah, a founder of Electronic Intifada, observed, “Gaza is harder to visit than a prison. They are turning back all the buses. It is too bad we didn’t get into Gaza. But the most important thing is that Al-Jazeera has carried it [Gaza Freedom March protests in Cairo] throughout the Arab world.”

Another participant observed, “One positive development is that we raised more media attention about the plight of Gaza by demonstrating in the streets of Cairo that we would have by marching in Gaza” due to the comparative lack of media access to Gaza.

Late in the evening, hundreds of Gaza Freedom March delegates gathered once again in the open plaza in front of El-Mogamma, the monolithic state office building that houses the public entry point into much of the central government bureaucracy, to hold a candlelight vigil to celebrate the new year. They held candles and arranged more candles on the pavement to create the luminous word “Gaza” within a circle. People spontaneous began passing out sweets. The novelty of this action was immensely popular with Egyptian passersby who joined in the hundreds, swelling the crowd. Then plainclothes police moved in to filter out and sweep away all Egyptian nationals. Even simple collective celebration of the new year is a “luxury” not available to Egyptians. A double-row contingent of the Central Security Force also moved in, until senior commanders were told to back off, removing the contingent to a distant corner of the plaza. The state itself held no official new year festivity, as if fearing its own future.

The Cairo Declaration

In the new year, the Gaza Freedom March concluded with three important events. First, it convened an ad hoc convention to ratify the “Cairo Declaration” jammed into a small hotel restaurant. In a move spearheaded by the South African delegation, an international working committee drafted a document putting forth a globally-unified plan of action for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli apartheid and “to compel Israel to comply with international law.” With the concurrence of civil society representatives in Gaza and the West Bank, the document reaffirms commitments to “(1) Palestinian self-determination, (2) ending the occupation, (3) equal rights for all within historic Palestine, and (4) the full right of return for Palestinian refugees.” The historic document includes 128 initial signatories from 16 countries.

Second, the Gaza Freedom March hunger strikers held a press conference at the Syndicate of Journalists to conclude the official hunger strike, although a few vowed to continue their hunger strikes until they returned to their home cities. Over the course of the hunger strike, the number of participants had swollen to 27. Hedy Epstein said that she felt “strengthened” by her actions seeking justice for the people of Gaza.

There was the usual Central Security Force cordon. But it was plainclothes police that disconnected and took down the al-Jazeera video camera and escorted the cameraman away from the scene. In previous incidents during the Gaza Freedom March, three Egyptian journalists had been arrested for photographing demonstrations, and one was arrested in the midst of interviewing a Gaza Freedom March delegate. One Egyptian photojournalist asked me to send a photograph, saying that, “I would be arrested for taking photographs of the demonstrations. Egypt is no democracy.”

Third, a flash mob demonstration was organized in the afternoon in front of the high-rise building housing the Israeli Embassy. Demonstrators rapidly appeared from the south side of the traffic circle between the University Bridge and the Giza Zoo. For at least ten minutes, demonstrators swarmed throughout the crossroads and the end of the bridge before Central Security Force personnel in riot gear arrived to move them onto a narrow strip on the south side of the bridge opposite the Israeli Embassy. While there was little police intimidation inside the security cordon, aggressive harassment by plainclothes police outside the cordon was particularly severe. One French cameraman was physically threatened on the University Bridge even as he was walking away from the demonstration and showing his French passport.

Shortcomings and Accomplishments

Mass media coverage of the Gaza Freedom March in Cairo had reached around the world, even though many major western media networks refused give more than cursory attention. In Egypt, the events received front-page coverage in opposition newspapers like Al-Wafd, Al-Sharouq, al-Dastur, and the independent Al-Masri al-Youm and Daily News Egypt. But newspapers like the semi-official Al-Ahram, and government-owned Al-Akhbar and Al-Gumhuriya ignored the events as if they did not exist. Yet even the pro-government Egyptian Gazette could not avoid publishing a front-page photo of the demonstration at the Israeli Embassy. While avoiding day-to-day coverage, Al-Arabi and Al-Karama end up splashing headline photos of Gaza Freedom March activities in their weekend editions.

Except for the Syndicate of Journalists, the relative absence of Egyptian participation and solidarity with the Gaza Freedom March could have been interpreted by delegates as the result of either severe political repression or political indifference. But anti-government Egyptian activists pointed out that Gaza Freedom March organizers failed to reach out to them and establish coordination. In fact, Egyptian labour unions, students, and organizations of civil society have a long history of struggle in the streets of Cairo and other towns for democratic rights in the face of the overwhelming force of the state apparatus. Nevertheless, six full days of political demonstrations in Cairo by a large group of visiting internationals is without historical precedent.

The struggles in Cairo and the new construction of a steel wall deep into the earth at the Rafah border also highlight the fact that the Egyptian government has been bought by U.S. aid following the Camp David Accord of 1978, in this instance to help enforce the Israeli blockade.

Delegates of the Gaza Freedom March were defeated in their desire to travel to Gaza, but, as a result of the struggles in the streets and embassies of Cairo, they were more determined than ever that the blockade of Gaza by both Israel and Egypt must be lifted. Bitur Nabi Tammam of Bahrain saw the bright side, “Even if they don't allow us to cross, I think it has accomplished the purpose that from all over the world you see people left their families, left their homes, to come here to say 'freedom for Gaza,' 'freedom for Palestine,' 'open the gates!'”

Sharat G. Lin is president of the San José Peace and Justice Center and writes on global political economy, the Middle East, South Asia, and labour migration. He wrote this report from Cairo.

Kafka's Characters are Back in Charge

2009-12-29T06:59:00.000-05:00

I am beginning this trip under what should only be described as surreal circumstances. We spent weeks meeting with officials from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, answering all their document and information requests. Of course, they provided no real indication to us of whether or not we would be allowed to enter Gaza. The Foreign Ministry appears to be mainly a public interface and document processor for the secret police.

The secret police, who so kindly paid me a visit the last time I was in Al Arish, are a combination of domestic control and foreign relations arm. For example, the chief, Omar Suleiman, has been brokering efforts to get a prisoner exchange concluded between Israel and Hamas.

In any case, rather abruptly last week, the Egyptian foreign ministry told us that, due to “security concerns” resulting from tension at the border, the Rafah border would be closed until sometime after January. We asked people around the world to call their local Egyptian embassy to ask the government to permit the Gaza Freedom Marchers to enter Gaza. Thousands of phone calls tied up the switchboards. We know one consular officer alone received 1,500 emails.

We then were told that the Viva Palestina convoy, a 500 person group bringing large amounts of vitally needed humanitarian aid to Gaza overland, would be allowed to enter Gaza as they had planned, on Dec. 27. So much for “security concerns.” Great, we said, but what about us? Well, said the Foreign Ministry, they are bringing humanitarian aid. So are we, we said. No answer….

However, when Viva Palestina arrived at Aqaba, Jordan, a new obstacle was invented for them. The normal route from Aqaba to Egypt is to take the ferry to the port of Nuweiba. However, the Egyptian government refused to allow the convoy on the Nuweiba ferry. Viva Palestina was given the three choices of returning to a Syrian port and taking a ferry to the port of Al Arish, taking a ship around the entire Sinai peninsula and through the Suez Canal to Al Arish, or asking Israel to permit the humanitarian aid to go through the Israeli crossings. Of course, all three “alternatives” are impossibilities. First, the port of Al Arish does not have the capacity to receive freight. Second, Israel blocks almost all humanitarian aid from transiting its crossings. That’s why the Viva Palestina convoy is necessary. Third, the cost and time involved in any of these alternatives is prohibitive. Probably the key condition was that the convoy must get Israeli permission. An interesting admission of who is in charge.

By the way, this decision about Viva Palestina was communicated to us by Egyptian officials as “Viva Palestina will not be allowed into Gaza.” In the same meeting we were told the secret police’s position had “hardened”, that we would be denied entry to Gaza, that the permit for our orientation meeting in Cairo was cancelled, and that any protests or demonstrations in Cairo would be met with force. It’s difficult to say exactly what the Egyptian secret police definition of “demonstration” is.

The final twist in this bizarre story of siege is that the Palestinian news agency Maan published a story that the Rafah border would be open in both directions from Dec. 29 through Jan. 1. We have no confirmation of this from Egypt.

So will we get to Gaza? An experienced American embassy official told me earlier this year that it is almost impossible to figure out what is going on inside the Egyptian bureaucracy. In this case, I will hazard a guess. Egypt has been using a carrot and stick approach with Hamas for some time to achieve a prisoner exchange agreement that would free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. It seems likely that Hamas has now agreed to the exile of some 100 or more of those prisoners upon their release. In exchange, a four day border opening. However, as usual, Israel has a new demand to put forward in exchange for every concession. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is supposed to visit Cairo on Dec. 29, is saying an exchange is not imminent. He has also said that the release of Shalit will not end the siege, even though that was the ostensible reason for imposing it. So there may not be a four day border opening.

Even if the border is opened, my guess is that Egypt will continue to block our entry to Gaza. A non-violent protest organized by civil society simply does not fit the scenario design of the US and Israel. They much prefer to frame the conflict in terms of Hamas vs. Fatah, Palestinian violence vs. Israeli self-defense. If the US does not value the non-violent activism of civil society, it will not tell Egypt to let us in.

Words are cheap. President Obama, in his Cairo speech, promised a different approach to US relations to the Muslim world, and cited the non-violent activism of the civil rights movement as a model. In practice, however, the US has been mum as Israel has cracked down on non-violent resistance in the West Bank thru midnight raids, detentions, and torture. I would expect more silence as non-violent resistance in Gaza is deprived of crucial solidarity with international activists.

Back to Gaza at Year End

2009-12-13T21:53:00.001-05:00

At the end of the year I will be going back to Gaza, this time accompanied by 1300+ people from 42 countries around the world who are coming to protest the Israeli siege. A nonviolent march to the Israeli border is planned with the 1300 internationals to be joined by an expected 50,000 Palestinians. What is this woman doing, you may ask? How many times does she have to go to Gaza?

In return, I would ask, How long will our government continue to countenance and assist in the imprisonment and suffocation of 1.5 million civilians? The siege of Gaza has not been eased, civilians continue to be killed (farmers working in their fields near the borders, fishermen trying to pull some food out of the sea, and people in the smuggling tunnels struggling to bring cooking gas, food, and other of life's necessities into Gaza). Now, as you can see from the article quoted below, babies are being born half dead from their mothers' exposure to contaminated water.

Please wish me a safe journey, pass this story on to everyone you know, and ask your Congressional representatives why they are appropriating money to help Egypt build an 18 meter deep subterranean "fence" at the border to insure the success of Israel's siege. I'll be writing about what I learn.

“Who will save Gaza's children? Never mind Copenhagen, an environmental catastrophe is going on right now – contaminated water is poisoning babies in Gaza,” Victoria Britain, The Guardian, 12/9/09

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/dec/09/gaza-children-palestinian-babies

Excerpt: In Gaza there is now no uncontaminated water; of the 40,000 or so newborn babies, at least half are at immediate risk of nitrate poisoning – incidence of "blue baby syndrome", methaemoglobinaemia, is exceptionally high; an unprecedented number of people have been exposed to nitrate poisoning over 10 years; in some places the nitrate content in water is 300 times World Health Organisation standards; the agricultural economy is dying from the contamination and salinated water; the underground aquifer is stressed to the point of collapse; and sewage and waste water flows into public spaces and the aquifer.

The blockade of Gaza has gone on for nearly four years, and the vital water and sanitation infrastructure went past creaking to virtual collapse during the three-week assault on the territory almost a year ago.

What would it take to start the two UN sewerage repair projects approved by Israel; a UN water and sanitation project, not yet approved; and two more UN internal sewage networks, not yet approved? Right now just one corner of the blockade could be lifted for these building materials and equipment to enter Gaza, to let water works begin and to give infant lives a chance. Just one telephone call from the Israeli defence ministry could do it – an early Christmas present to the UN staff on the ground who have been ready to act for months and have grown desperate on this front, as on so many others.

Earlier this year, just one question face to face to the Israeli government, from Senator John Kerry after he visited Gaza, allowed pasta into Gaza. Who from Europe or the US will ask the Israeli defence minister the face-to-face question for the blue babies? Sarah Brown, the British prime minister's wife, would be the perfect candidate – an independent person who has the ear of the powerful, a mother who knows something about grief for babies. And she could be accompanied by Lord Mandelson in case there was any bullying.

The science on all this is unchallenged. Last September a UN report spelled it out in stark detail, including the regional implications for Israel and Egypt if the shared aquifer is not "rested" and alternative water sources found. The United Nations Environment Programme estimated that $1.5bn could be needed over 20 years to restore the aquifer, including the establishment of desalination plants to take the pressure off the underground water supplies.

Gaza's huge pale sandy beaches used to be society's playground and reassurance of happiness and normality, with families picnicking, horses exercising, fishermen mending their nets, children swimming and boys exercising in the early morning, but these days they are mainly empty, and not just because it is winter. Between 50m and 60m litres of untreated sewage have flowed into the Mediterranean every day this year since the end of the Israeli invasion in January, the sea smells bad and few fish are available in the three nautical mile area Palestinians are allowed in. This resource seems as ruined as the rubble of Gaza's parliament and ministries.

Yet Another Outrageous Congressional Pander to AIPAC

2009-10-27T12:12:00.006-04:00

Please call your Congressional representatives now and tell them to vote against H.RES. 867 that directs the President to do whatever is necessary to deep-six Judge Goldstone's UN report documenting the war crimes committed in Gaza. Congress expects to pass this "bi-partisan" legislation by Halloween. (How appropriate!).

The entire bill is here below, for your education and amazement.

111TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION H. RES. 867

Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally
any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘‘Report of the United
Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’ in multilateral
fora.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
OCTOBER 23, 2009
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN (for herself, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. BURTON of Indiana, and
Mr. ACKERMAN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred
to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

RESOLUTION
Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose
unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration
of the ‘‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission
on the Gaza Conflict’’ in multilateral fora.
Whereas, on January 12, 2009, the United Nations Human
Rights Council passed Resolution A/HRC/S–9/L.1, which
authorized a ‘‘fact-finding mission’’ regarding Israel’s
conduct of Operation Cast Lead against violent militants
in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008, and January
18, 2009;
Whereas the resolution pre-judged the outcome of its investigation,
by one-sidedly mandating the ‘‘fact-finding mission’’
to ‘‘investigate all violations of international human
rights law and International Humanitarian Law by . . .
Israel, against the Palestinian people . . . particularly in
the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression’’;
Whereas the mandate of the ‘‘fact-finding mission’’ makes no
mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks,
which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period
of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant
groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated
Israel’s defensive measures;
Whereas the ‘‘fact-finding mission’’ included a member who,
before joining the mission, had already declared Israel
guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by
signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in
the Sunday Times, that called Israel’s actions ‘‘war
crimes’’;
Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate gave serious
concern to many United Nations Human Rights
Council Member States which refused to support it, including
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic
of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine,
and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland;
Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate troubled
many distinguished individuals who refused invitations to
head the mission;
Whereas, on September 15, 2009, the ‘‘United Nations Fact
Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’ released its report;

Whereas the report repeatedly made sweeping and unsubstantiated
determinations that the Israeli military had deliberately
attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead;
Whereas the authors of the report, in the body of the report
itself, admit that ‘‘we did not deal with the issues . . .
regarding the problems of conducting military operations
in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by
soldiers and their commanding officers ‘in the fog of
war.’ ’’;
Whereas in the October 16th edition of the Jewish Daily Forward,
Richard Goldstone, the head of the ‘‘United Nations
Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’, is
quoted as saying, with respect to the mission’s evidencecollection
methods, ‘‘If this was a court of law, there
would have been nothing proven.’’;
Whereas the report, in effect, denied the State of Israel the
right to self-defense, and never noted the fact that Israel
had the right to defend its citizens from the repeated violent
attacks committed against civilian targets in southern
Israel by Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations
operating from Gaza;
Whereas the report largely ignored the culpability of the Government
of Iran and the Government of Syria, both of
whom sponsor Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations;
Whereas the report usually considered public statements
made by Israeli officials not to be credible, while frequently
giving uncritical credence to statements taken
from what it called the ‘‘Gaza authorities’’, i.e. the Gaza
leadership of Hamas;

Whereas, notwithstanding a great body of evidence that
Hamas and other violent Islamist groups committed war
crimes by using civilians and civilian institutions, such as
mosques, schools, and hospitals, as shields, the report repeatedly
downplayed or cast doubt upon that claim;
Whereas in one notable instance, the report stated that it did
not consider the admission of a Hamas official that
Hamas often ‘‘created a human shield of women, children,
the elderly and the mujahideen, against [the Israeli
military]’’ specifically to ‘‘constitute evidence that Hamas
forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives
against attack.’’;
Whereas Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings
of the investigation mission’s report by selecting and
prescreening some of the witnesses and intimidating others,
as the report acknowledges when it notes that ‘‘those
interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about
the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian
armed groups . . . from a fear of reprisals’’;
Whereas even though Israel is a vibrant democracy with a
vigorous and free press, the report of the ‘‘fact-finding
mission’’ erroneously asserts that ‘‘actions of the Israeli
government . . . have contributed significantly to a political
climate in which dissent with the government and its
actions . . . is not tolerated’’;
Whereas the report recommended that the United Nations
Human Rights Council endorse its recommendations, implement
them, review their implementation, and refer the
report to the United Nations Security Council, the Prosecutor
of the International Criminal Court, and the
United Nations General Assembly for further action;

Whereas the report recommended that the United Nations
Security Council—
(1) require the Government of Israel to launch further
investigations of its conduct during Operation Cast
Lead and report back to the Security Council within six
months;
(2) simultaneously appoint an ‘‘independent committee
of experts’’ to monitor and report on any domestic
legal or other proceedings undertaken by the Government
of Israel within that six-month period; and
(3) refer the case to the Prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court after that six-month period;
Whereas the report recommended that the United Nations
General Assembly consider further action on the report
and establish an escrow fund, to be funded entirely by
the State of Israel, to ‘‘pay adequate compensation to
Palestinians who have suffered loss and damage’’ during
Operation Cast Lead;
Whereas the report ignored the issue of compensation to
Israelis who have been killed or wounded, or suffered
other loss and damage, as a result of years of past and
continuing rocket and mortar attacks by Hamas and
other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets
in southern Israel;
Whereas the report recommended ‘‘that States Parties to the
Geneva Conventions of 1949 start criminal investigations
[of Operation Cast Lead] in national courts, using universal
jurisdiction’’ and that ‘‘following investigation, alleged
perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted’’;
Whereas the concept of ‘‘universal jurisdiction’’ has frequently
been used in attempts to detain, charge, and
prosecute Israeli and United States officials and former
officials in connection with unfounded allegations of war
crimes and has often unfairly impeded the travel of those
individuals;
Whereas the State of Israel, like many other free democracies,
has an independent judicial system with a robust
investigatory capacity and has already launched numerous
investigations, many of which remain ongoing, of Operation
Cast Lead and individual incidents therein;
Whereas Libya and others have indicated that they intend to
further pursue consideration of the report and implementation
of its recommendations by the United Nations Security
Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the
United Nations Human Rights Council, and other multilateral
fora;
Whereas the President instructed the United States Mission
to the United Nations and other international organizations
in Geneva to vote against resolution A–HRC–S–12–
1, which endorsed the report and condemned Israel, at
the special session of the Human Rights Council held on
October 15–16, 2009;
Whereas, on September 30, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton described the mandate for the report as ‘‘onesided’’;
Whereas, on September 17, 2009, Ambassador Susan Rice,
United States Permanent Representative to the United
Nations, expressed the United States’ ‘‘very serious concern
with the mandate’’ and noted that the United States
views the mandate ‘‘as unbalanced, one-sided and basically
unacceptable’’;
Whereas the ‘‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding
Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’ reflects the longstanding,
historic bias at the United Nations against the democratic,
Jewish State of Israel;
Whereas the ‘‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding
Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’ is being exploited by
Israel’s enemies to excuse the actions of violent militant
groups and their state sponsors, and to justify isolation
of and punitive measures against the democratic, Jewish
State of Israel;
Whereas, on October 16, 2009, the United Nations Human
Rights Council voted 25–6 (with 11 states abstaining and
5 not voting) to adopt resolution A–HRC–S–12–1, which
endorsed the ‘‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding
Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’ and condemned Israel,
without mentioning Hamas, other such violent militant
groups, or their state sponsors; and
Whereas efforts to delegitimize the democratic State of Israel
and deny it the right to defend its citizens and its existence
can be used to delegitimize other democracies and
deny them the same right: Now, therefore, be it
1 Resolved, That the House of Representatives—
2 (1) considers the ‘‘Report of the United Nations
3 Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’ to be
4 irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consid5
eration or legitimacy;
6 (2) supports the Administration’s efforts to
7 combat anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, its
8 characterization of the ‘‘Report of the United Na9
tions Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’ as
1 ‘‘unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable’’,
2 and its opposition to the resolution on the report;
3 (3) calls on the President and the Secretary of
4 State to continue to strongly and unequivocally op5
pose any endorsement of the ‘‘Report of the United
6 Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’
7 in multilateral fora;
8 (4) calls on the President and the Secretary of
9 State to strongly and unequivocally oppose any fur10
ther consideration of the ‘‘Report of the United Na11
tions Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’
12 and any other measures stemming from this report
13 in multilateral fora; and
14 (5) reaffirms its support for the democratic,
15 Jewish State of Israel, for Israel’s security and right
16 to self-defense, and, specifically, for Israel’s right to
17 defend its citizens from violent militant groups and
18 their state sponsors.

Green Survival Strategies and the Brownfield Consequences of Military Attacks

2009-07-18T12:03:00.001-04:00

A meeting with the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees, an umbrella group for grassroots farmers’ organizations, and centers for women and children, gave us some insight into the survival strategies of Palestinians under siege. Many of these involve green strategies like water conservation, community gardens, eating local. [As much as I admire the ingenuity, and appreciate the green strategies, I certainly would prefer to see them adopted voluntarily and not under the duress of a siege.]

PARC includes 15 local organizations and hundreds of volunteers. It works on the rehabilitation of agricultural land, on microfinance, on water and environmental protection, and on capacity building and advocacy.

The need to rehabilitate agricultural land is pressing. Years of occupation and armed incursion have destroyed much of Gaza’s arable land. In the most recent invasion, the Israeli army almost completely destroyed the agricultural land east of Rafah. Not only were the irrigation pipelines destroyed, as happens everywhere the Israeli army invades with land forces, but tanks and bulldozers were used to plow up substantial swaths of land – destroying the soil, animal herds were slaughtered and wells were destroyed.

In addition, the Israeli settlements, which were evacuated and destroyed in 2005, plundered the agricultural land. The acquifers were drained and became saline. The soil was exhausted by intensive farming. Of the 60,000 dunams occupied by Israeli settlements only 20,000-25,000 are now cultivatable. These are farmed with 4,000 greenhouses, and use intensive agricultural techniques. This has increased the number of greenhouses in Gaza by about 1/3.

PARC’s larger rehabilitation programs were disrupted by the invasion, but it continues to rehabilitate house gardens – helping families add drip irrigation and compost to improve the productivity of the land around their homes. It encourages the purchase of locally grown products – giving some of the 80% of Gazans who are unemployed a source of income, and distributes excess production free to displaced families. PARC microfinance projects focus in part on food processing.

Of course, the blockade has prevented the importation of seeds. Farmers are now producing their own seeds.

Israeli policies have also affected the water supply. Gaza depends on rainfall and the run off from the heights of Hebron to provide water and fill its acquifers. Israel has built reservoirs to capture the run off from the heights of Hebron before it reaches Gazan acquifers. PARC has projects to capture and reuse gray water and to increase the collection of rainwater.

The War on Gaza Isn’t Over – The Fishermen

2009-07-18T12:02:00.001-04:00

Gaza’s fishing fleet has hundreds of boats.. The blockade has whittled it down to hundreds, but most of those boats are beached or remain at anchor in the harbor. Maritime law dictates a minimum legal boundary of 12 miles offshore for every country. The Oslo agreements, signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, gave Gazan fishermen the right to fish up to 20 miles from shore. By 2000, Israel, as part of was attacking fishermen who ventured beyond a 6 mile limit. More recently, as part of the response to Hamas' election, Israel announced a 3 mile limit. This, in itself, is enough to crush the fishing industry. Much of the fishing industry depends on migrations of fish that are at least 6 miles offshore. So, for example, between March and May, the height of the fishing season, is when huge schools of sardines pass offshore. The sardine catch within the 3 mile limit is less than 30% of what the fishing fleet would take if it could fish within Gaza’s internationally recognized 12 mile limit. In addition, the high price of diesel fuel – which must come in through the tunnels – makes fishing marginally economic. Nonetheless, the fishermen have not entirely given up their trade. They must pay for their boats and feed their families. Each day, a few fishing boats go out to try to fish. In mid May there was a demonstration of 25 boats, demanding their right to fish.

Here is what they meet. Israel has six gunboats patrolling the 25 mile Gaza coastline. According to the both the head of the fishermen’s union and to a fishing boat captain, Hassan, with whom we talked at length, fishing boats are targeted with both water cannons and live ammunition. Since 2000 15 fishermen have been killed and more than 200 wounded. Since the Israeli attack on Gaza, attacks on unarmed fishermen have been stepped up.

Even more common is piracy. The Israelis abduct the fishermen and steal their boats. The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled these boat thefts illegal. In November, the court ordered the release of two impounded boats, and the release of imprisoned fishermen and internationals. Despite this, in March, 16 fishermen were abducted and boats were impounded. In one case, fishermen were abducted leaving a child alone in a boat at sea. In another, two children were abducted. Typically, the Israelis attack the boat, force the fishermen to strip and to jump into the sea to swim to the gunboat. Then they are handcuffed and blindfolded. If the boats are returned after being impounded, typically they are heavily damaged, with the engines removed. If the fishermen refuse to follow the orders of the Israeli Navy pirates, their boat may be rammed. In one case, the side of a trawler was ripped off. In the case of the Free Gaza movement boat Dignity, the boat was rammed and damaged so badly it had to be evacuated. Since 2005, six fishermen have been killed, 30 injured, and over 300 abducted.

The Israeli Navy is not attacking to enforce its arbitrarily declared 3 mile limit. All the actions described above have taken place inside the 3 mile limit. In one case, a fishermen was kidnapped only 50 meters from the beach. The Israelis also fire on the beach and at swimmers. We heard that someone was killed on the beach not long after we left.

For a good look at what life is like for fishermen in Gaza, see Fishing under Fire at www.vivagaza.org. It is almost incomprehensible to me that any nation’s army can be given orders to fire at unarmed civilians pursuing their normal occupations. It is even more incomprehensible that this is not news. I cannot find any mention in searches of the press of the pirate acts of the Israeli Navy.

What the UN people on the ground say about Gaza

2009-07-18T12:01:00.004-04:00

A meeting with John Ging, who is the chief of operations for UNRWA in Gaza, was illuminating. He simply stepped outside the propaganda spawned by the history of failed diplomacy, and spoke directly from his own experience. His starting point: Palestinians have the same international right to protection as anyone else. The standard for Israelis and Palestinians should be the same. That’s a simple idea, and one that is hard to argue with. The only way to get around it is to argue that the entire population is engaged in hostilities towards Israel. This we know is not true. As Ging put it, “The people are not hostile, the conditions are. Hostile conditions are creating hostility.”

Neither, he said, can you argue that the Palestinians are defeated and can therefore be treated as a conquered people. People are not defeated until they give up. Palestinians have not given up, they have not abjured their international rights, nor have international bodies said they should. (UN resolutions all refer to the 1967 borders and preserve the right of return.).

Ging talked about how counterproductive many US and EU policy measures have been – separated from reality. (He calls this “the deficit of truth.) The blockade is forcing Palestinian society into dependency, causing Hamas to gain power while the rest of civil society atrophies, cut off from its ability to provide for itself. The Palestinian Authority, which instructed its officials in Gaza to refuse to work after the Hamas takeover, has also contributed to civil society’s collapse. Hamas was forced to replace government workers – bureaucrats, teachers, planners, engineers, etc. – with its own, inexperienced people. They have worked hard, but their competency is more religion than government. The result is a drift into conservatism, (and I might add, bitterness and depression among the more highly educated population).

U.S. Congressional visitors, Ging said, who are focused on humanitarian issues, have largely missed the point. In fact, focusing on humanitarian aid simply prolongs the situation. [It fails to acknowledge the fundamental issue -- Israel has no legal right to besiege, bomb, and blockade Gaza.]It is about justice, human dignity, and people’s right to protection from military force. Those are the issues which must be addressed to make any progress.

To do so, national reconciliation is an imperative, but it is not possible to insist Hamas agree to a series of political preconditions to achieve unity. Hamas’ logic is simple: Why repeat the mistake of Fatah, which recognized Israel and got nothing in return? In my opinion, there are several other flaws with the demand to "recognize" Israel. Israel has not "recognized" Hamas, or even the right to a sovereign Palestinian state at all. Israel also has not defined its own borders, so what exactly is being recognized. Finally, Israel demands it be recognized as a Jewish state, a demand which leaves out about 25% of its population.

A Detailed Account of the Impact of Israel's Attack

2009-06-07T20:15:00.002-04:00

Our meeting with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights is the best orientation to the impact of the Israeli attack. PCHR meticulously documents everything, and deals quite fearlessly with both internal and external violations of human rights.

PCHR estimates that, during the Israeli attacks, 2,500 tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza. That equals 3 kilos of explosives per meter. (They have a massive display of weapons fragments in their office, with all too many bearing indications that they were made in the USA).

The hostilities began during the change between the morning and afternoon shifts in Gazan schools. That means that more than 500,000 students were in the streets when the bombs began to fall.

The bombing targeted the civilian infrastructure of Gaza – Al Quds hospital was bombed with white phosphorus, 4 schools were bombed, 5 kindergartens were bombed, the Ministry of Finance, and Ministry of Ex-Prisoners [of Israel] were bombed. Virtually every police station and many fire stations were demolished. The central police station and police academy were bombed just as the most recent graduating class were receiving their diplomas. 200+ new policemen were killed here alone. The Parliament building was destroyed. The industrial zones of Khan Yunis and Al Foukheiry were flatted – first by bombs, then with D-9 bulldozers (sold to Israel by Caterpillar). Some of UNRWA’s shelters for refugees were bombed. The vast majority of those killed were unarmed. Israel targeted police stations as part of “the infrastructure of terror” despite the fact that, under the Oslo agreements, police are explicitly identified as civilians.

There has been no change since March, when I was in Gaza last, in the availability of construction materials. Nothing is coming through the border crossings, and what comes through the tunnels is way to expensive for any extensive reconstruction. The government has begun, in a few places to remove rubble, but very little heavy equipment is functioning. A lot was destroyed by the Israelis during the invasion. PCHR estimates that 55,000 people remain homeless from the most recent Israeli invasion and another 20,000 are still waiting for the government to help them reconstruct homes demolished in previous incursions and the occupation. Certainly our trip organizer, Faten Qishta, is a case in point. Her family’s home in southern Rafah, near the border, was demolished by the Israelis in 2004. The entire family worked nonstop until they were able to get enough money to build a new, smaller home elsewhere in Rafah. However, they still are waiting for the assistance they are owed by the government to rebuild their demolished home. When they finally get it, they will build a second house so that Faten’s brother can marry. The enormous destruction of homes, in addition to all the other misery it brings, has delayed many marriages because there is no place for a new couple to live. `

The borders have also effectively have been closed for patients needing any advanced medical care. I spoke to my friend Douhaa, a doctor at Shifa hospital, who told me that, before the siege, standard cardiac operations like implanting stents were available in Gaza to patients. Now, however, the equipment cannot be maintained and the medical supplies are unavailable, so patients needing cardiac stents are sent to Egypt. Once they arrive in Egypt, they wait up to four weeks for treatment. This makes it highly likely that a cardiac blockage will deteriorate into a complete stoppage and the patient will die while awaiting treatment. But the chances are the patient will never be allowed into Egypt at all. Less than 15% of the patients in Gaza that the World Health Organization estimates would need treatment were allowed into Egypt last month. Care for renal failure faces exactly the same problems. Gaza has plenty of qualified doctors. They just have no equipment. Medical equipment like portable x-ray machines has been held at the border for almost a year. Gaza is also very short of supplies to treat malnutrition, while the incidence of malnutrition is increasing with the intensification of the siege.

Before the border closures, 9,000 separate items were imported into Gaza. Now, the “easing” of the siege has increased the number imported from 9 to 40.

PCHR is now preparing a legal fight against the siege. They have dozens of volunteers working with them, both in Europe and the US, using the extensive documentation they have developed on patients being denied care, students denied scholarships and education abroad, and people denied work. In September 2005, The Palestinian Authority and Israel signed a Terminals Agreement that codified how the border should operate and established a European monitoring group to report on its effectiveness. After 5 months of handling 450 incoming shipments/day and 500 outgoing shipments/day with positive reports from the European monitors, Israel abrogated the agreement and destroyed the monitoring system.

Israel Annexes More of Gaza

2009-05-30T01:03:00.009-04:00

Last week Israel dropped leaflets warning people living along the eastern border that Israel decided the 300 meters next to the border (on the Gazan side naturally) should be a no man’s land. During the invasion, they had already added automated watch towers along the border fence. These are gold domes that, when activated, open up like a flower and fire machine guns. They are remotely controlled, fired by soldiers watching a computer screen. Just another step in turning war into a video game. It makes it so much easier to kill people.

We learned that, although Israel states the "buffer zone" of annexed land is 300 meters, it depends on the topography and acquifers. In some areas, it is as much as 1500 meters (about a mile). Farmers tending their fields outside, but near, the "buffer zone" are also being shot at.

We visited with a farming family, the Abu Rijelas, living near the border. Their house is about 350 meters from the border. 300 meters from the border is a road which all the schoolchildren must use when they walk to or from school. In addition to worrying about their children being shot on the way home from school, the Abu Rijelas have other things to worry about. Two years ago, the husband was kidnapped by the Israelis, and sentenced to 6 years in jail. His wife has only spoken with him twice since then. This was a family of tough, smart women. The oldest daughter is at the university, studying communications, and the mother has returned to the university to study psychology. Their house had been damaged by a missile strike during the Israeli attacks, and they said, the fields were full of fragments of white phosphorus. When we walked around outside, we quickly found one, scraped it with a stick and it burst into flame. This kind of debris should make plowing and planting a scary exercise even if automated machine gun towers weren’t shooting at you. The Abu Rijelas also lost their wheat crop when the Israelis fired incendiary shells onto their land, setting the fields on fire. They felt lucky their house wasn't burned as well.

Israel also used the invasion of Gaza as an opportunity to demolish forty homes near the border and plow under all the orchards in front of them. Forty demolished homes equals about 400 homeless people, I would guess about 10% of the population of the little farming village. It’s difficult to imagine how this wanton destruction could possibly be justified.

The farmers association, the Center for Rural Improvement, has made a videotape document the conditions entitled "Eye on the Border. ISM has been accompanying farmers as they attempt to farm their fields. This deters, to some extent, the wanton firing on farmers. The farmers have been trying to plant wheat or very quick growing crops like peas or spinach, hoping to harvest them before even more land is annexed. A farmer was killed at the end of January. Further information can be found at "Farming Under Fire".

Although Gaza appears to be intensively farmed, with almost every open space planted with something, the farmers' association we met with, the Agricultural Development Association (PARC) estimates that a60% of the agricultural land in Gaza is unusable -- either polluted by chemicals like white phosphorus, bulldozed, or in areas where farmers will be shot by Israelis if they farm.

Rafah - Destruction Continues

2009-05-29T02:08:00.003-04:00

Next we visited the border areas of Rafah. It is absolutely impossible to imagine or believe what is going on there without seeing it. Foremost is the massive scale of the destruction of residential housing by the Israelis. By 2004, more than 4,000 homes were demolished by Israel to create a corridor between the Egyptian city of Rafah and the Gazan city of Rafah. Faten showed us where her home had been before it was destroyed in 2004.. She said this was the first time she had returned --- it was too painful for her to see the rubble. If you stop to think about it, the destruction of 4,000 homes (Palestinians have large multistory dwellings for their extended family) is equivalent, I think, to the destruction of perhaps two hundred city blocks in New York City. As you walk by the rubble, you can still see half buried possessions, people living in ruined homes with their facings ripped off, children fearlessly playing everywhere in the rubble. The destruction did not end in 2004. As Israel has continued almost daily bombing of the tunnels, it has also bombed more homes at the border,

We stopped to talk to one man who said, “The war is not over. We are waiting for World War III.” I’m not sure exactly what he meant. It certainly was not that he was expecting Palestinians to attack. He was expecting and waiting for some apocalyptic event.

The other sight that has to be seen to be believed is the tunnels. These tunnels are not secret. They are not hidden. The openings are right in the open – perhaps covered by a tent or a shed. And they are not scattered here and there. The border is simply one tunnel next to the other. Fuel trucks rumble up and down the dirt road that runs by the tunnels, picking up smuggled gasoline to take to gas stations. (Gasoline, other than for the main power plant in Gaza, has not been permitted across the legal border since November).

You have to stop to ask yourself, “What is going on here? Why is Israel bombing tunnels in a desultory fashion (two or three a day), when they can easily see them and could eliminate them with carpet bombing? If they really believe the tunnels are smuggling weapons into Gaza, wouldn’t they eliminate them?”

Something else is going on here. First, the tunnels are Gaza’s lifeline. Without them the entire place would grind to a halt - -no cars, no cooking gas, no cement, no paper, etc., etc. because all these items and many more are banned by Israel from crossing legally. In fact, only 40 items on a constantly changing list are permitted.
Second, Israel would like to force Egypt to take full responsibility for Gaza. So they prefer that Gaza’s needs be supplied from Egypt, not through the Israeli crossings. Meanwhile, Egypt is already flooded with refugees from Darfur, from Somalia, from Eritrea, from Iraq, etc. etc. The prospect of adding another 1.5 Palestinians to the mix is not appealing.
The tunnel economy is undermining Gaza’s civil institutions. The 80% of the population that is unemployed and dependent on UNRWA relief coupons cannot buy at the highly inflated prices of smuggled goods. The tunnel owners are becoming a new Mafia with shiny motorbikes, etc. It would be hard for them to quit smuggling and take low wage jobs if the borders were opened and the tunnels were no longer needed. What activity will they turn to to maintain their lifestyle? The tunnel economy is also robbing Gaza of its educated youth. It is estimated that 20,000 students are working in the tunnels to support themselves while in school. Hamas taxes the tunnel traffic, earning revenue. Will they be able to replace it? Finally, a report in The Guardian indicates that the tunnel economy has spawned shady investment scams, bankrupting desperate people seeking to invest in any money making scheme. That is probably the ultimate proof of the tunnel economy's destruction of the real economy.

Rafah -- Survival Strategies for Palestinians

2009-05-29T01:49:00.003-04:00

The first morning in Gaza, we returned from Gaza City to Rafah to spend time at the Lifemakers Center – the children’s center Fida Qishta and her sister Faten founded. Our drivers took the coastal road – a real treat. Absolutely no traffic, beautiful seascapes most of the way. Even here, however, there was plenty of evidence of destruction… the occasional large home destroyed, factories, workshops, and farm buildings flattened. Also, near Deir Balah, you cross a bridge over Gaza’s open sewer (the parts for the sewage treatment plant have been held at the border forever). Raw sewage must be pumped untreated into the sea, polluting all the coastal waters.

The sea was completely void of fishing boats, and we could see why. On the far horizon, the roostertail of a patrolling Israeli navy boat. The fishermen have been saying that the shooting is worse now than it was during the Israeli invasion in January.

Rafah is crowded and poor, without the newer apartment construction that Gaza City saw post 2000 in preparation for self-rule. The Lifemakers Center is in a small building, and is very basic, but it was a joy to watch the teaching. It serves children from about 6 to 16, teaching them English and math. Formally it is open three days a week, but practically some children are there every day. Tuition is $1/month if the parents can afford it.

Only one of the three classrooms was in use while we were there because this is the exam period for schoolchildren. The children at the center were working on practicing their English letters and spelling by playing guessing games. Then they all introduced themselves and answered some questions in English. The classroom was packed with children 7-12 years old who were, remarkably, able to concentrate and maintain order for almost an hour. That was the achievement of skilled teachers. We had a little chaos after that with all the children vying to use the classroom camera to take pictures with us.
We taught them to sing We Shall Not Be Moved. Again, the teachers explained to them what it meant, and in less than five minutes, they were singing it mostly by themselves.

After the singing, we asked the children to go around and tell us what they wanted to be. Every answer was ambitious but practical --- doctor, surgeon, civil engineer, teacher, etc. I thought about Omar Hallak, a Palestinian who grew up in the refugee camps in Lebanon, and is on the big CODEPINK delegation. He said when he told his father he wanted to be an astronaut, his father told him --- Don’t dream. You are a Palestinian. You can’t be an astronaut.

Rafah is a very traditional, conservative city and two of the teachers wore niqab (a face veil). Our group had a very interesting discussion about this afterward because I don’t think any of us ever had an opportunity to interact with a fully veiled woman. I cant say we reached any consensus opinion, but many preconceptions were challenged. What impressed me was how quickly it was possible to see through the garb to the human being, her intellect, teaching skills, and warmth towards the children.

The Lifemakers Center is just one example of a Palestinian civil society that Israeli attacks have just not been able to erase. Throughout Palestine there are strong communities where people believe deeply that they can and must maintain and develop their society -- done through voluntary associations that operate on less than a shoestring.

Mind Games at the Border and then, finally in Gaza

2009-05-28T15:00:00.005-04:00

We were in high spirits when we arrived at the Gaza border post. The Canadians, who had put in four arduous days at the border, went thru first, then the 38 students. We called Faten to tell her we arrived, but it took about 15 minutes for our taxis to come. That was just enough time for the border officials to realize that, in their excitment, they had forgotten to do all their forms and procedures for the others. The full searchlight of security shone full upon us, albeit very politely. Forms to fill out, need to wait for a security escort, and, finally, the border health official saying he would send a doctor to our hotel to "examine" us. We drove from Rafah to Gaza City with a police escort, horns blaring, that did not stop at any intersection. This was more than a little embarrassing! Fortunately, they seemed to have lost interest in us after the first day. When the public health doctor arrived at Marna House, our hotel, to "examine" us a few days later, we got by with an interesting discussion about public health in Gaza -- no stethoscope ever appeared!

Headlong into a Kafkaesque World

2009-05-27T17:32:00.002-04:00

After spending the morning acknowledging the State Department’s travel warnings about Gaza and waiving our consular rights, we left Cairo. The five hour bus ride was quite relaxing for us. In fact, the entire day was more like a tourist trip than a mission to Gaza. Not quite so relaxing for our driver. He was in fear that he would be stopped for driving us – so afraid, it seemed, that it was very, very hard to persuade him to make a rest and lunch stop. At the first checkpoint after the bridge over the Suez canal, we did pick up a police escort. It might be my imagination, but it seemed to me checkpoints in the Sinai were much more numerous than they had been in March. We arrived in Al Arish about 5:30. We drove into the narrow street where the Sinai Star hotel is and, right behind us three big tour busses pulled in. The Canadians and the students returning from a day of protest at the border! The students, who had been camping out, decided they needed showers and beds for the night. The Canadians, who have been waiting three days at the border to cross, need shelter from the sun. It was terrific to see our friends.

In the middle of the night, the fun begins. A little after two a.m., the phone in my room rang. It was one of our delegation, asking me to come downstairs to meet the Egyptian secret police. Thereon followed a Kafkaesque conversation indeed. Two Arabic speaking members of the Canadian delegation were already there, along with three unnamed Egyptians, who told me they were there to tell me we had no clearance to cross the border. They were extraordinarily reluctant to identify themselves in any way, although one of them finally produced a badge that said “Police Officer”. Very enlightening. One of the others told me it was forbidden for him to identify himself!
They proceeded to make up one story after another about what and where the issue was with our crossing the border to Gaza – our embassy, the Foreign Ministry, the “national intelligence service, etc. My favorite was their suggestion that we call the Egyptian Ambassador to Gaza at 2 a.m. to clear matters up.

Bottom line – don’t go to the border, but if you do, don’t protest.

We decided it was all a bad dream, loaded up the buses in the morning and headed for the border. Just past the outskirts of Arish, we came to a checkpoint. There were three truckloads of riot police waiting, along with an assortment of other uniformed types. The police told us the road to the border was closed for “military exercises” and we could not proceed. Once we turned back to Arish, all the various uniforms packed up and left. I guess the “military exercise” was “how to close a border.”

Meanwhile, our CODEPINK friends back in Cairo were meeting with the relevant individual in the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. They watched him fax yet another clearance to the secret police, and get a response that we were all cleared to go to the border. Back down into the buses. My 2 a.m. secret police pal showed up to watch us go, all smiles and giggles, saying everything is okay now (while his boss glowered in the background).

It was still hard for us to believe there wouldn’t be another snag along the way. When we got to the Egyptian border’s gate, there was one. The police asked us to gather all the passports, and for the nationalities of the people in the group. When we got to Palestinian, they said, “Let us see the passport.” It was Aysha Al Ghoul (the sister of Abdallah who came with us from Cairo in March and was not able to exit Gaza when we left because his papers were not in order. Aysha had the same kind of problem. She had been studying in Tunisia, came to Cairo to go home at last year’s end, and lost her passport. The Palestinian Authority issued her a new one but it did not include the Egyptian visa stamp that had been lost with her old passport. She thought since she was leaving the country, it would not be a problem. But because she is Palestinian, it is always a problem. (The Border Police paid absolutely no attention to the expired Egyptian visa of an American member of the student delegation). Sadly, Aysha went back to Cairo while we went on to Gaza – her home country she is not allowed to enter.

Update on Delegation

2009-05-24T16:15:00.003-04:00

Our entire group is now in Cairo and will be leaving tomorrow afternoon for Al Arish. But first, to satisfy Egyptian (and Israeli -- what do they have to do with it?) rules, we must line up at the American Embassy, pay them $30 and sign away our rights to consular services in Gaza. Thank you America for being there for us when we really need you!

The Canadian delegation that arrived in Al Arish two days ago still has not crossed the border to Gaza. Phone calls and papers are flying, but the key to all of this is publicity. Who is keeping smiles from the faces of children in Gaza?

Doctors Held Hostage to Politics

2009-05-24T15:27:00.003-04:00

Think about this and tell me if you see the connections.

1. Egypt is the main provider of advanced medical services to Gaza -- particularly cardiac surgery and cancer treatment. According to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund there are hundreds, if not thousands, of children who need cardiac care which is not available in Gaza. Until late March 2009, a committee of the Palestinian Authority determined who was eligible to apply for exit to Egypt for care. The World Health Organization estimates 800 to 1,000 patients in Gaza each month need treatment abroad. Near the end of March, the Hamas government of Gaza (which runs the hospitals) decided this should be a government function and took over the decision making. Egypt, which is pressuring Hamas to join a unity government with the Palestinian Authority, stopped permitting anyone from leaving Gaza for medical treatment. Israel has also rejected all applications. People died without care. The dispute was resolved but, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Territories (OCHAopt), only 90 patients in need of treatment were allowed to cross the border in April compared with 325 in March.

2. Dr. Sonia Robbins, a UK reconstructive surgeon, with a long history of humanitarian work in Palestine and Egypt, along with 8 other medical workers, has been denied entry to Gaza (5 British, 3 Belgian, and 1 Greek). Some of the group has been waiting 50 days to cross. (The border was officially open for two days last week, and other groups have been crossing into Gaza on a case by case basis). Dr. Robbins' group brought with them equipment to create a cardiac surgery unit at Shifaa hospital. This would drastically reduce the need for medical treatment abroad.

Today group of 100 Italian human rights activists was permitted to cross the border today. They invited Dr. Robbins group to join them. Border officials removed the doctors from the Italians' bus. The doctors are now in the fourth day of a hunger strike to protest Egyptian authorities refusal to allow them to cross into Gaza.

Would Egypt prefer to keep control of all advanced cardiac care as a negotiating card with Hamas?

Latest News on the Cairo front

2009-05-23T16:55:00.005-04:00

Thank you all for the many, many calls that have been made to Congress, and the State Deparatment in support of our delegations going to Gaza. We know they have generated Congressional inquiries, and raised the visibility of the blockade of Gaza.

Today, the members of our group who have already arrived, went shopping for the children of Gaza -- helped tremendously by the uncle of one of our group members. We plunged into the souk -- noisy, crowded, vibrant, bright alleyways where it appears almost anything can be purchased. It was very, very clear that the heart of the Egyptian people has been touched by the plight of Gaza. As soon as we explained the purpose of our shopping, prices came down, and shopkeepers scoured the market for what we needed.

The first of our four delegations, a group of Canadian citizens, arrived at the Rafah border today and spent the day haggling with the border police over what papers were needed to cross. They also spent time in solidarity with the group of doctors on hunger strike. The Canadians will be returning to the border tomorrow morning and hope to cross then.

A Pawn in the Geopolitcal Game -- But What About the Children?

2009-05-21T15:54:00.008-04:00

After an amazing March trip to Gaza with CODEPINK, I agreed to organize a group from New York to join in a series of delegations under the umbrella of CODEPINK going to Gaza the last week in May and the beginning of June. Truthfully, organizing this trip has been a stressful, but extremely rewarding experience. I began worrying that I had very few contacts in Gaza and have ended up having far more opportunities for meetings than we have time. People who signed up for the trip heard about it through email chains so I really didn't know any of them (except for two Wespac Middle East Committee members who climbed aboard at the last minute). We met for dinner and planning last Friday, and I got to know a wonderful group of people who I will be excited to work with in the future.

I decided to come to Cairo early to make sure there were no loose ends. Not to worry -- there are plenty of them! I arrived late this morning, taxied into Cairo (ripped off by the cab driver but even then it was very little money), checked into the Pension Roma -- a clean and tidy old-style pensione, and went out to get an Egyptian SIM card for my cellphone.

Upon my return I learned that the bus company we are using told the Canadian delegation (which is scheduled to leave tomorrow morning for Al Arish) that the Egyptian police told them they were not allowed to transport foreigners to anywhere near the border. Then I learned that a delegation of British doctors, who were going to Gaza to establish a cardiac surgery unit at Al Shifa, the major hospital, were on a hunger strike at the border because they have not allowed to enter and have waited a month. I spoke to Dr. Sonia Robbins by phone who said, "We're not political activists, we're doctors ... but someone has to do something about this." She also told me the Egyptian police were turning people back at the checkpoints in the Sinai. There is also a group bringing a large amount of medical relief supplies (the Hope Fleet) whose arrival at Port Said (about five hours away from Al Arish)has been delayed. Twelve EU parliamentarians are waiting for the fleet at Port Said. On the other hand, Dr. Robbins also told me that some Irish doctors had been allowed to cross the border. She could not explain why they were permitted to go in and her group was not.

So, we have a lot of work to do. Much of this must be done in the U.S. because our embassy here in Cairo is closed until Monday morning, the day of our planned departure from Cairo to Al Arish. Here, I will stay in touch with the Canadian delegation to see what their experience is tomorrow when they leave Cairo, and I will work with the student delegation (about 45 people)to see what we can do here.

The Destruction

2009-03-29T23:04:00.017-04:00

How can a description of a trip to Gaza not mention the destruction? Truthfully, what I saw was so upsetting I was not sure how to write about it. It's hard to imagine. The Israeli invasion cut two swaths of destruction -- one north, one south -- across Gaza from the Israeli border to the sea. Each is perhaps 1/4 or so miles wide. In the south, I saw agricultural land completely destroyed. Tank and bulldozers plowed under the topsoil and everything that grew on it. I thought of the Romans who sowed salt in the lands of Carthage. It will take a long time before anything grows in the areas I saw.

In the north, where I had much more opportunity to look around, apartment buildings, homes, factories, mosques, and schools were all erased or collapsed. Whole neighborhoods were disappeared.

The rest of the work of destruction was much more discriminating. I saw three types of targeting:

Factories broadly were destroyed. An entire industrial zone was flattened. Tile factories, glass factories, cement plants -- anything that might be used for rebuilding was targeted. I saw two large dairies that were destroyed. In addition, throughout Gaza, individual factories and workshops were bombed. I know Israel claimed it was targeting areas that manufactured missiles, but I'm sure the cows in those dairies were surprised to learn they were enemies of the state of Israel.

Civil institutions were targeted and destroyed. Every police station was bombed. (The Israelis did this in the West Bank in 2002, with the predictable result that the Palestinian Authority was unable to govern and to control militants). The Palestinian Parliament building was bombed. The American International School, Gaza's finest high school, was destroyed. Several medical clinics and hospitals were bombed.

And, of course, many mosques were destroyed. These were promptly re-established in tents.

Homes outside of the collective punishment corridors of the north and south were randomly targeted. Some belonged to members of Hamas, a number appeared to have been randomly selected. Many of these were hit with missiles launched from drones. There is some testimony that drone operators in Tel Aviv were ordered to target any buildings where they saw someone on the roof. (This from The Nation: "That Israel's drones essentially treated anyone on a Gaza rooftop as a target was apparent most of all to its own solders. 'They told us not to go up on the roofs because everyone who goes up on the roof is going to be taken out' an IDF medic stationed in the Zaytoun area on the outskirts of Gaza City during the campaign told Human Rights Watch. His comrades made clear, he said , that if he went up on the roof of a Palestinian home, 'somebody from the air will take you down.' " Homes in Palestine have flat roofs where laundry is hung and children play. Others appear to have been bombed almost randomly. The family I stayed with in Beit Hanoun lived in a large home in an orange grove. The houses on either side of them, perhaps 30-50 yards away, were bombed flat. They told me that no one in those homes had anything to do with Hamas.

The worst destruction, however, is of a generation. The children everywhere were shellshocked-- traumatized and very solemn. Teachers and counselors are working very hard now, with very limited resources, to try to help. They have a big job.

We saw many many -- I would say thousands probably -- of people living in tents. Tents seem to be the one relief supply that is available in sufficient quantity. It was the saddest thing I saw in Gaza. Not because people lost their homes. Natural disasters cause that all the time. But people have the opportunity to rebuild, even without substantial aid and assistance, we humans make, find, struggle to create a home for ourselves and our family. In Gaza, Israel's attack has returned tens of thousands of people to the place their parents struggled up from -- the tents of the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from the cities and villages of their land. And now Israel, the U.S., and Egypt are conniving in a horrific blockade to insure they cannot rebuild. The people in tents will stay in tents for the forseeable future.

Pictures

2009-03-23T21:27:00.002-04:00

I took far too many pictures to post on this blog. You can click on Picasa to see them.

Ibtisam's Story

2009-03-17T09:57:00.004-04:00

Palestinians have long been the most educated Arab population in the world. It is easy to explain why this is so. They have no land, their factories are constantly threatened with destruction, they cannot attract foreign investment in their economy. They cannot easily emigrate. The only possibility they have for a better life is to educate themselves and then export this human capital. For them, this is an experience as painful as what our 19^th century ancestors experienced when their children emigrated to America. They ache for the possibility of a better life for their children, but they know that, if they are able to achieve that, they may never see their children again. In the 19^th century, we were separated from our ancestors by almost impossible ocean journeys. In the 21^st century, Palestinians are separated from their children by the Israeli occupation and siege. It is very difficult to get permission to leave, and even more difficult to get permission to return.

Ibtisam is an educated Palestinian woman. She is a university graduate, well respected in social work and women’s rights. Unlike most Palestinians, she has traveled widely to attend conferences and at the invitation of governments, including the U.S. State Department. Her husband is a civil engineer, employed by the Palestinian Authority. Her two oldest children are doctors, the next is studying computer sciences at the university, and the two youngest are still in school. Everyone in the family from the 10 year old up speaks, reads and writes English very well. In other words, they are like you.

But they are not like you. Ibtisam hopes to attend a conference on women’s issues in Ramallah this month. But she has no idea if she actually will attend, because she cannot leave Gaza without the permission of the Israelis – something which is rarely granted. Her oldest daughter, a doctor, works as a volunteer in a hospital. After completing her internship, she is unemployed -- along with 200 other qualified doctors in Gaza – because the government has no money to hire enough medical professionals to serve the population. Her oldest son, a doctor, is underemployed in a local health clinic, with no possibility of developing a specialty practice. Her husband, although receiving a paycheck, cannot work because he worked for the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas. Even if Hamas decided to employ him, he would not be able to work because Israel has embargoed all construction materials and destroyed all the factories inside Gaza capable of manufacturing them.

This family is part of a large Palestinian intelligentsia that is being destroyed by Israeli policies of occupation, closure, and siege. Who would you rather have run a country – religious fundamentalists with no knowledge of the broader world, or a well educated, well traveled intelligentsia? Israel, with its refusal even to grant exit visas to Fulbright scholarship winners from Gaza, has made its answer clear. They prefer the fundamentalists and a failed state. . Is this in our interest?

Some Thoughts from Hamas

2009-03-14T22:07:00.004-04:00

I could hardly claim to be an expert on Hamas, but, since the U.S. has decided to have no contact with them (and therefore know nothing about them), here is an addition to the little information we have.

We met with Huda Naim, a woman who is a member of the Palestinian Parliament, for Hamas. Her responsibilities in Gaza include sitting on the government’s committee for human rights. She understands English well, but spoke to us in Arabic – translated for us by an Egyptian American member of our delegation.

She has five children, and a master’s degree in social work. She became involved in politics initially through the student unions at the university, and then founded a public relations firm.

Everything that follows is a paraphrase of her narrative.

Hamas initially was organized to provide the social services that were sadly lacking for the Palestinian people, and is the Palestinian version of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1987, it declared itself a resistance movement to the Israeli occupation and broadened its activities beyond social services. After the signing of the Oslo accords in xxx, Hamas decided it had to place more emphasis on political activities in order to participate in the nascent Palestinian Authority. The main reason for this was that, outside the government, Hamas was unable to stop negotiations that were leading to the loss of more and more Palestinian land.

Hamas is not against negotiations in principle, but rejects the current form of negotiations. Hamas sees the “peace process” as just a vehicle for the erosion of Palestinian rights and lands. They believe there is now nothing left for a viable two state solution.

Hamas also felt it had to become involved in politics because the internal corruption and cronyism of the Palestinian Authority was beyond redemption.

It had boycotted the 1996 parliamentary elections, and had no other opportunities for political office because all municipal positions were appointed until 2005. In the 2005 elections, all the political parties agreed to establish a quota for women’s seats in order to insure women’s participation in the government. For these elections, the country was divided into three regions, with elections held in one region at a time. In the first regional election, Hamas women won more than 90% of the seats in the women’s quota, and Hamas men won a large majority of the seats as well. This was a complete surprise to the Fatah Party, who controlled the Palestinian Authority. They were so surprised, they simply seated the winners. When the regional election was held for the second district, the same thing happened. The Palestinian Authority challenged the results, and there has been no resolution of those challenges. In the face of Hamas’ popularity, the regional elections for the third district were never held.
The U.S. had urged the Palestinian Authority to hold new parliamentary elections. When the results were announced – that Hamas had won the majority of the vote in fair, democratic elections – the U.S. cut off relations on the night of the announcement. There were no talks with Hamas, no discussions about what Hamas would do in the government. Hamas was both surprised and hurt by this reaction. They do not believe they have posed any opposition to U.S. policies other than their opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. They were equally shocked that Europe simply followed in the U.S. footsteps.

Hamas has repeatedly tried to open negotiations with the West and sees itself as a moderate Islamic party that can interpose itself between the West and the radical Islamists. It sees itself as a moderate, tolerant party. Hamas has done nothing to impose Sharia, or to interfere with the rights of others.

Asked about the shooting and killing of Fatah members after the takeover she pointed out that, once Hamas took power, the Palestinian Authority ordered all its security personnel to stay home and not report to work. Hamas was forced to deploy a police force very quickly, with inadequate training. They have been working on training and improving that police force ever since. She also agreed that Hamas has its extremists, but that it is very difficult to stop them without showing some tangible benefit for abstaining from extremism.

She said that the youth of Gaza are deeply depressed and bitter. They do not believe they have any prospects for a normal life. We can do without food, she said, but the loss of an entire generation is terrible.

Hamas is working hard for a unity government because it is needed to keep Fatah from completely surrendering all the interests of Palestinians, but believes the Quartet has stopped the formation of such a government by demanding that Hamas specifically recognize Israel. Hamas has agreed to a long term truce, to accept all previous agreements and to accept a state based on the 1967 borders, but this is not enough for the U.S. and its allies. She said that this is not possible politically for Hamas. She likened it to demanding Netanyahu recognize Hamas before beginning any talks.

Asked about the Hamas charter and whether it wanted to destroy Israel, she said you must distinguish between our charter and our actions. Our actions have always been pragmatic and supported a resolution within the 1967 borders.

Asked about suicide bombers, she responded that it is not right to isolate this issue. Israelis have been attacking and killing Palestinians for 60 years, and after the Oslo accords these attacks simply increased.

Asked about her views on the new U.S. government, she said she has some hopes for Obama, but believes Hillary Clinton will remain an obstacle to peace.

Ahmed Abd'Allah's story

2009-03-09T19:28:00.004-04:00

Ahmed Abd’Allah lives in Jabaliyah refugee camp. He was an English teacher. He now runs the Jabaliya Rehabilitation Society, the works with handicapped people. This is his story, in his own words.

I have never had a happy day, have never had a moment free from trauma – beginning with 1948 war. Over and over again, I have been frightened by war. This last attack was the most frightening. I expected to be killed at any and every moment. There was no where to run. There was no safe place.
44 people were killed at Al Fakhoura school as they ran to the UNRWA school for safety. There was no food , no flour, no water, no electricity for the 22 days of the invasion.

In the 1948 war, as my family fled their village, the refugees were bombed and my entire family was killed. Only my mother and I survived our injuries. I still have the bullet fragments in my legs. My family’s bodies were taken by relatives to be buried. My relatives thought I was dead, too. They only realized I was alive when I cried as I was put into the coffin. They took me out and put me on the ground by the coffins. Before the burials were complete, the Israeli army approached and my relatives fled, leaving me behind on the ground. I was discovered by a deaf woman who was did not realize the danger of the Israeli Army because she could not hear. I was kept by relatives and moved six times, until reunited with my mother in Gaza after a year or more after she got out of the hospital in Egypt where she had been taken for treatment. We received no international aid – we lived in holes, caves, and sheds. My own wounds were untreated for more than a year. When I was taken to the doctor, he wanted to amputate my legs immediately, but my relatives refused. We lived by collecting animal droppings and selling them as fertilizer. We slept under trees until UNRWA provided a tent. I thought it was a palace. I was chosen to be sent to UNRWA school because I was the cleanest boy in the area. But my clothes were rags, so I had to be given clothing to wear to school. I became an English teacher in UNRWA schools. My mother insisted I marry to replace her lost family. I had other plans for my life, but I could not say no to her. My wife and I had exactly the same number of children as my mother lost – 5 sons and 3 daughters. We gave them different names, but my mother called them by the same names as her lost children. When my mother died, she left me three things: the key to her lost house, the title deeds to her lost land, and a piece of her lost husband's shirt.

All my children are well educated with advanced degrees. But to get employment, my oldest son had to move to the West Bank. I haven't seen him for 11 years. I cannot go to see my grandchildren because the borders are closed.

This is the reality of the Israeli occupation in Gaza.

We are not terrorists. We are the victims of terrorists.

As a schoolmaster, my job included teaching my students to forgive and forget. Unfortunately, each attack undoes that work. The Israelis want security, Palestinians want freedom. It is a simple exchange. We look for justice – just implement the UN resolutions that have already been passed. Life is too short to waste it on destruction.

We accept Israel as a state, we wish they would accept the Palestinians as a people. I would hope for one state with justice for all its citizens, but if the Israelis insist on a Jewish state, fine. I will be a good neighbor. But give me my own state.

He made everyone of us cry.

Gaza from a Mental Health Perspective

2009-03-09T18:46:00.000-04:00

In the evening we heard from the Gaza Community Mental Health Center, a very professional and well respected organization in Gaza that confronts the psychosocial issues of the occupation. We heard from Hasan Zyada, a psychologist at the center and from Husam El Nounou, the Public Relations Director.

El Nounou said there was absolutely no safe place during the attacks. Certain targets were obvious ones, but others appeared to be random. (Some other people have said they believe pilots just emptied their bomb racks in order to be able to return to their bases). There was no electricity, no gas, no food. The bakeries were not operating. Food stores had no inventory. These conditions put children at extreme risk. They just don't have the psychological flexibility to cope.

El Nounou himself had to leave his house as the Israeli Army neared. He moved to his in-law's house. The Israeli soldiers invaded his home neighborhood and everything was destroyed – homes, shops, playgrounds, and infrastructure including the electricity and sewer systems. Cars were flattened by tanks. The area now looks like an earthquake struck. He cannot come up with a reason for why this area was attacked – it was not a rocket launching area, it was not an area of armed resistance. He felt the destruction just seemed to be motivated by a desire for revenge.

Dr. Zyada felt the social consequences of the attack are very critical for Palestinians in Gaza. He had a powerful argument as to why such attacks simply lead to extremism and social disorder.
The attacks cause (naturally) feelings of helplessness and powerlessness, leading to sadness and depression. People's ability to think creatively is damaged. Since every effort to find a way to deal with the situation fails, there is no reward for trying new approaches.

Children cling to their parents. They are afraid to leave the house or their parents, or to sleep alone. They have nightmares and night terrors, and show signs of hyperactivity and attention deficits. The extreme danger and fear intrude into their thoughts constantly. After the war, many just try to avoid their thoughts and feeling, through constant TV watching for example. Levels of aggression increase due to anger and the desire for revenge. But this anger, of course, can’t be directed against the enemy, so it will be displaced towards other children and their parents. The mourning process for the dead and maimed is cut short by the constant attacks and deprivation.

Most important, children see that their parents can’t protect them or provide their basic needs. This means children look for other sources of protection – typically God, or the fighters and extremists. The Israeli occupation creates its own enemies, he says, through the checkpoints and the attacks.

Palestinians also feel acutely their abandonment by the international community. Rather than the international community meeting its responsibility to help the Israelis and world Jewry recover from their holocaust traumas, the anger has been displaced towards Palestinians. Palestinians are not responsible – they are the victims of the holocaust victims -- but the international community needs to help Israel heal. Recovery means Israel must recognize its responsibility for the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. If the Israelis don’t recognize their responsibility, they cannot be a mature society.

Dr. Zyada did not seem to be immune to despair himself. He said he sometimes feels psychosocial intervention is wasted, because the Israeli attacks will just recur. The most important way to improve mental health in Gaza is to end the siege. The siege is clearly not doing anything to protect Israel. Before the siege, the range of the rockets being fired into Israel was 10 km. After the siege began, the range increased to 40 km. The siege created thousands of tunnels to just supply the basic necessities of the population, but also provide cover so long range rockets could be brought in.

Part of the feeling that Palestinians have been abandoned by the international community is that they were misled by the big lie that they could choose their government in a democratic election.. They held a fair, free election and have been punished for their choice of Hamas. How can they believe in democracy again?

He, like many others, said that humanitarian aid does not mean much in an environment where Palestinians are besieged and face an enemy like Israel that can act with impunity.

GCMHP did a survey to assess the extent of the post war trauma. 95%+ of the population saw or heard the attacks. 70%+ suffered specific traumatic events. 70% of those suffered from some form of PTSD. That means we are looking at 750,000 people suffering some symptoms of traumatic stress disorder.

Part I of our Monday in Gaza

2009-03-09T18:44:00.001-04:00

We started the day in the Jabaliya camp, 100,000 people living in 4 square kilometers. It is densely populated and hard hit during the Israeli attacks. Andrew Courtney had told me to be sure to look up Ahmed Abd’Allah if I was in the camp. With all those people, I couldn’t imagine how to find him. I asked a man I know who lived there and he had never heard of him. Forgetting about Andrew’s advice, I visited a children’s center where some art therapy is done for children with traumatic stress disorders. Some of it was very disturbed – chaotic, incoherent and dark. Almost all of it was focused on war. I just got a very bad feeling there.

We walked through part of the camp towards the Youth Sports Center which was our next stop. We had crowds of kids trailing us, trying out their few English phrases. I guess first they learn, “Hello, how are you?”, then “What is your name?”. That seems to be about it. Our cloud of child hangers on generated a lot of noise, so a man stepped outside to talk to us, speaking very good English. I asked his name, and, of course, it was Ahmed Abd’Allah. I invited him to come this evening to speak to our group, and will share his comments in a separate post

At the Sports Center, we met a Mahmoud Abu Rexa, a man with 10 children whose house had been bombed flat. He was unemployed (as are more than 80% of the Gazan work force). Unfortunately, he rented a house owned by a Hamas member. It was not of solid construction, and he knew there was no place for the family to remain safe in the house, so they left after houses nearby that belonged to Hamas members were bombed. He had no relatives to move in with, so went to a school. The school officials eventually gave every family $100 and told them to leave so that classes could resume.

About that time, Hamas was giving anyone whose home was destroyed 4,000 euros. But, he said, the Hamas member who owned the destroyed house arrested one of Mahmoud’s sons, essentially holding him hostage to prevent Mahmoud from applying for aid so he could register for it himself. So no job, no money, no house. He is now living in two small rooms of the Sports Center – each about 10x12, with his 10 children.

From Jabaliya, we went to a restaurant to hear John Ging, who is the chief of operations for UNRWA. He is very impressive. Seems quite the opposite of a UN bureaucrat. A few quotes:
“We are here with a decent civilized people who have been driven into destitution and uncivilized behavior. They are trapped.”
“It’s not about ringing food aid, it’s about making a human connection with people who have been isolated and about seeing through propaganda for yourself.”
“Effective action has been absent despite some positive statements.”

He said that extremism has grown in Gaza since the Israeli attacks but the vast majority of people still resist it. He also said UNRWA has had extreme difficulty getting the goods and materials needed for their projects. It is hard even to get paper for the UNRWA schools, and thousands and thousands of tons of donated aid are piled up in El Arish in Egypt awaiting passage across the border.
The second lunch speaker was from the office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. (I do not have her name). She said their work has three parts: redress for victims, accountability for perpetrators, and protection of the vulnerable. In the case of Palestine, she said, the issue has been impunity. In the Israeli attacks, civilians were deliberately targeted, the use of white phosphorus in aerial bursts was a clear violation of international law, and the Israelis also deliberately targeted civilian institutions like schools and mosques, another violation of international law.

After lunch, we met with a woman, Sofia, who was the principal of a girls high school and a lecturer on women’s issues at Al Quds University. Her husband works for the Palestinian Authority (which means he is associated with Fatah). She has nind children. Her house was hit by a large missile which penetrated from roof to the cellar and started a fire. She had taken the children downstairs before the missile strike, but the smoke from the fire filled the whole house. Two young men, about 20 years old, pulled the family out of the house. As they ran from the house, Israeli soldiers shot at them. They ran 4 kilometers, with the woman carrying her four youngest children. They took shelter in an UNRWA school, with about 50 people in each classroom. From there they went to the home of a friend who already had 40 refugees staying in their house. They stayed there two weeks, and finally were able to move in with her mother-in-law. (This did not sound like a very good situation either). They have not been able to find a house to rent. Hamas has taken all the empty houses for their own members who need new housing. They have received no compensation for the loss of their home because they do not belong to Hamas.

It seems to me that when the US and the EU refuse to permit aid to come in to Gaza, they are not punishing Hamas. They are punishing everyone who does not join Hamas.

In addition to losing her home, she also lost her job as a school principal – entirely for political reasons. Hamas wanted to put its members in charge of secondary schools (these begin at age 17 – i.e., voting age), so they provoked a strike by the teachers’ union. They reorganized the school staffing, transferring teachers to areas distant from their homes. When the teachers’ union struck in protest, Hamas did not allow them to return to work.

Again, in my view, this is just an example of Hamas consolidating its authority in Gaza. The longer Hamas remains outside a unity government, the longer these shenanigans will go on. It is baffling that the U.S. appears to be sabotaging these unity talks by imposing conditions rather than encouraging them. (Israel’s interest in sabotaging them is obvious. Netanyahu doesn’t agree to the conditions that the U.S. wants to impose on Hamas, so he would rather not have any peace talks).

Celebrating International Women's Day

2009-03-08T18:37:00.004-04:00

Today, International Women’s Day, we had a presentation on UNRWA’s Gender Division program. This is a program for women that has been funded by Norway. They have built 25 locations for women’s centers. One was bombed by the Israelis, so 24 are really operating. The purpose is to create a social forum for women, provide gyms, libraries, and computer centers. Palestine has always been a fairly traditional society, and the cultural conservatism that conflicts create hasn’t helped things. (A woman I know who used to live in Gaza told me a story that illustrates this. She was leaving the house one day when her mother complained that she was not dressed modestly enough. I don’t think I have ever seen her without Islamic dress, so I don’t know what problem was. She said, “Mom, look at that picture on the dresser.” There was a picture of her mother in shorts walking on the beach in Gaza in the 1960s).
Now 2,500 women participate in the programs. Each center has a local committee of both men and women, which is to insure local acceptance of the programs.

The Gender Division is also working to establish a radio station, based on their community surveys where women said they needed a voice and access to information. They have a location, plans for a studio, and the equipment they need, but not enough funding yet to actually launch. People in our group pointed out the Israelis have bombed a number of Palestinian radio stations to take them off the air. They responded, “we have to try to meet the needs of the community.” Of course, this is a huge problem with all investment in Palestinian civil society. The Israelis have repeatedly destroyed major investments, particularly those of the European Union, and dismiss all complaints.

The crushing isolation of the 18 month siege is a theme running through everything. The head of the Union of Cultural Centers talked about how essential it is to link Palestinian women with groups around the world, that they can’t accomplish objectives if they remain isolated. My host family has two grown children licensed to practice medicine, but one of them has no job and cannot go elsewhere to look for one. She volunteers at the hospital. One of our delegation is a Palestinian student who has been studying in Cairo for three years. He has not been able to come home to visit his family for the entire time. Because of our delegation, he was able to cross the border. His family said they did not go to bed, they sat and watched him sleep. Even more interesting is a young Palestinian woman that I met, from a rural area, who is attending Al Quds University in Gaza. When I asked her if she would like to travel if she could, she said, “No. I love my country too much,” as if she were afraid that if she left, it wouldn’t be there when she wanted to come back. That’s not crazy. That’s the experience of Palestinians who have had the Israelis take away their Palestinian identity cards because they stayed out of the country too long.

Gift baskets from us to women's centers

Our group split up to go to the various women’s centers for a Women’s Day program. I went to Mawasi, a fishing village right at the Egyptian border. Of course, the fishermen are not fishing much because the Israeli Navy shoots at them if they go more than two miles offshore. Also there is no gasoline. Driving from Gaza City to Mawasi along the beach road the entire way, I saw only three fishing boats in the sea – two were skiffs that were being rowed, one was a larger, diesel powered boat. But there were fishing boats and nets laid up all along the beach.

beached fishing vessel and nets

Of course, no gasoline also means no traffic, so we got to Mawasi very quickly. The women’s center is a nice, well equipped building – really the only significant community institution in the village. The school is a collection of converted cargo containers.
The women’s day celebration was held in the courtyard, where tarps had been set up for shade, and a Bedouin style tent was the stage for performances. About 80 women were there, of all ages. After a welcoming speech, we broke up into groups for conversations with the women. My group was problematic because the translator – the elementary school English teacher – wasn’t too fluent. Mawasi wasn’t too much affected by the recent war, but for the five years before Israel evacuated its settlements, Mawasi was a closed military zone. That means the village was entirely surrounded by a fence, and residents could only enter or leave with a special permit. That is pretty much all that I learned.

On to the performances. The women recited poetry, some of which was written by one of the younger women, danced, sang, and performed a comedy about a man with three wives (I can’t say I really understood what was going on). Then came the main event which was a mock Bedouin wedding. This was really an excuse for a lot of dancing. There were no escapees—we were all hauled up on stage and had a great time. Afterwards we had time a lot of time to talk to the people who spoke English. As a rural community, they feel largely abandoned. But the women were remarkably optimistic about their own situations, saying they see a lot of changes for the younger generation – later marriages, fewer children, more women finishing high school and going on to university.

In the evening, we had a huge dinner – 80 people – our delegation, our host families, and some of the ISM from Rafah. After dinner, ISM spoke about their experiences during the Israeli attacks. Most of what they did was accompany ambulances. They held a press conference, which was covered by Al Jazeera, warning the Israeli government that the ambulances would be accompanied by international volunteers. This was to try to prevent the Israelis from targeting ambulances. Nonetheless, 13 ambulance drivers were killed and 25% of the ambulances were destroyed by tanks, missiles or bombs. All these ambulances were clearly marked in ways that were visible from the air and to surveillance drones. Bombs were dropped right by the ambulances, and everyone felt they were a target. As Ewa Jasiewicz, who rode with the ambulance crews said, “You prayed more than five times a day.” One ISM volunteer was killed by a flechette from a tank. When his family set up a mourning tent, it too was shelled, and 4 people were killed. The Israeli army spokesperson justified targeting ambulance personnel by describing them as “combat paramedics.” I guess that means the Palestinian Red Crescent is a “combat organization.” Riding on Fire in Gaza

Another horror was surveillance drones. In these cases, someone sitting in Tel Aviv in front of a computer screen pushes a button and a missile is launched. Many, many civilians were killed by surveillance drones while they were out trying to get food, or when they were trying to escape a house which seemed likely to be bombed. (For example, the Israelis bombed three houses that were owned by someone identified as a high ranking Hamas official. Of course his family only lived in one. The others were just unlucky tenants.

Here is another story – from Ibtisam, the mother in my host family. During the Israeli attack, the Red Crescent thought it too dangerous to bring food supplies to Beit Hanoun where she lives. She organized a group of volunteers to go into Gaza City during the three hour ceasefire that took place each day for civilians to get food. Back in Beit Hanoun (at least an hour and half round trip, using up half the ceasefire), she began distributing food. An Israeli soldier told her that he had decided the ceasefire would be only two hours and it was over. The old people still had not gotten their food and she asked for 15 more minutes. He refused and she went to the commanding officer, who agreed she could have 15 minutes. The first soldier then told her he would only allow her 10 minutes and that she had to stand a young boy – 10 years old – in front of her. He said if she was not done in 10 minutes he would shoot the boy. He did shoot him, both in his hand and in his legs. Then the Israelis refused to allow an ambulance to come pick him up. Ibtisam, who works for UNRWA, made numerous calls and finally was able to get an ambulance cleared to come to pick the boy up so he would not bleed to death. Many others were not so lucky.

Tomorrow another story from Ibtisam and, hopefully, some pictures. I've got 'em, but the internet infrastructure suffered a lot from the bombings – like everything else, and it is running very, very slowly tonight.

Gaza! We made it!

2009-03-07T16:22:00.005-05:00

We set off pretty early this morning from El Arish to go the border, arriving by about 10:30 am. This is a sad border crossing. It is a large, attractive complex, but it is essentially unused. The border has been entirely closed for the last 18 months, and was largely closed for the last 3 years or so. So all the facilities (exchange, restaurant, duty free) are dustry, empty shells.

We pulled up to the border gate, collected passports from everyone, handed them over and waited…. The Egyptians were very polite, but they have their procedures. I won’t bore you with how long it took, or how many times one person’s passport disappeared. Suffice it to say, we waited. We entertained ourselves with singing and taking multiple pictures with the Egyptian Red Crescent Society, who were very proud to be involved in this humanitarian (as the Egyptian government has characterized it) effort. Although the Red Crescent is an arm of the government and is chaired by Mrs. Mubarak, I think their feelings were quite genuine. The average Egyptian has been forced to simply sit and watch while their Gazan neighbors starved and slept in tents.

After our lengthy wait (which was largely self-inflicted by the size of our delegation, but also by the inexperience of the border guards in dealing with large groups), we walked out the other end of the Egyptian border crossing about 2:30 pm, and piled into unairconditioned buses that run thru no man’s land to the Gaza border. At the Gaza crossing things were a little different. I can’t say the passport control agents were very practiced at their job either, but while we waited we were treated to a warm welcome from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and from Issa Ali al Nashar, the mayor of Rafah. All the while many cameras were clicking away.
The mayor talked about the Israeli attack, telling us that we will see that the bombs, missiles and tanks flattened all the civil society buildings including post offices, playgrounds, food storage sites. There was no effort to spare civilians, he said. Everywhere the army was, was a killing zone. He also pointed out that U.S. aid largely goes to build up the security appartus, with very little for constructing civil society, and that after the 2006 election of Hamas to head the government, the NGOs had been forced to halt many building projects already underway. I later saw some of these, including a large addition to Al Shifa hospital which is uncompleted.

We drove from Rafah to Gaza City – a half hour drive mostly through the agricultural land along the border. There was plenty of evidence of destruction with huge swaths of agricultural land simply bulldozed – burying the top soil and making the ground effectively sterile. We saw factories that had been leveled and many others heavily damaged, and, of course, demolished homes.

We also passed acres of producing greenhouses for growing tomatoes and flowers. The flowers, especially, were grown for export to Europe. Nothing is exported now, of course, but it is clear that opening the borders would make an immediate difference to the economy.

At the Al Quds Hotel in Gaza City, we were greeted by UNRWA, who had invited us, and, after a discussion about the history of the Palestinian conflict, went off with the hosts we are staying with. In our case, we took a taxi to Beit Hanoun, where we are staying with the Zahanis, a family of seven. They live in a large, beautiful house out in “the green zone”. This area – largely fruit trees – was 1,100 square meters before the Israeli attack. Now it is 1,000 square meters, and a number of homes were destroyed. Our family’s home escaped almost intact, but there was no question about the terrifying impact of the aerial attacks.

This is a lovely family. The husband is a civil engineer, the wife runs a community based women's organization. The two oldest children, brother and sister twins 24 years old, are doctors. The next, also a daughter, at 19 is in her final year of studies to be a software engineer. The next daughter is 14 and the youngest, a boy of 10. All of them speak very good English.

I did manage to grab a very quick meeting with Fida Qishta, who many of youmet when she spoke at a Wespac event -- just long enough to hand off to her the suitcase of school supplies and digital cameras the Wespac Middle East Committee raised funds for. I will learn more from Fida when I see her later in this trip.

Tomorrow, in daylight, our visit will really begin, but check back on this space for pictures, which I will post when my internet connection improves.

Arrival in El Arish

2009-03-06T16:35:00.001-05:00

After a six hour ride thru Sinai, we arrived at El Arish, just a few miles from Rafah and the border. There are a number of checkpoints between Cairo and El Arish – I think because the area near the border is considered a military zone, and Egyptians who don’t live there require a permit to go there. At the first checkpoint, there was a major confab between our assigned Egyptian security agent and the checkpoint police. It turned out that, because there is a contingent of internationals, including 10 Americans, camped out at the Rafah border demanding entrance to Gaza, they were afraid we were going directly to the border to support them. We explained to them we were going to El Arish. They demanded particulars – like the names of the hotels we were staying in – but eventually were satisfied that we would not skip directly to the Rafah border. (I have no idea why that was the big issue for them, rather than that we definitely planned to go to the border the next day).
We crossed the Suez canal, filled with large container ships, and drove on to Sinai. The Sinai is almost all erg desert – looking just like the movies. Along the highway, there are small villages, and some oases, but we saw very few people and very little activity. The villages mostly seemed linked to natural gas producing facilities. We entertained ourselves on the bus with Egyptian music and a little, very amateur belly dancing -- in which we were joined by our Egyptian security agent once the cameras were turned off.
El Arish is a seaside resort town that, in addition to tourism, used to be supported by trade with Gaza. Since the siege began 18 months ago, the local economy has really suffered.
It is amazing, when you think of yourself as one of a small, hardy band of peace activists, to discover yourselves celebrities. Everyone in El Arish seemed to know about us. My first clue was when I walked out of the hotel, and an older women stopped me with a question in Arabic. I don’t know what she asked, but she included the word Gaza in her question. I wasn’t sure I heard properly, but then we passed a barber shop with a sticker saying “Long live Gaza.” As we walked by, the barber came out to greet us. Then we stopped to shop in a Bedouin store, and, when we told the woman there we were going to Gaza, she said, “Of course, I know that.”
The delegation went to dinner at a Bedouin restaurant, and then retired to an outdoor tent room for tea. There we were greeted by El Arish reporters and notables who were there for a political discussion. They asked plenty of hard questions.
I cannot convey how angry Egyptians, at least in Sinai, are about the Gaza war and the U.S. role in supplying weapons and giving Israel the green light to attack. Their ability to protest is sharply limited by their own government, but there is no mistaking their anger. Their first question was – did you come with humanitarian aid or do you respect the political rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, i.e., why don’t you respect the free and democratic election of Hamas?

The next question was -- Are you like the U.S. government and the European Union that furnish Israel with weapons, and then offer humanitarian aid to rebuild what has been destroyed? The subtext was, "we are not beggars. We need our political rights more than anything else."

The third question was – what is wrong with your press? Why does it not report what is going on here? It is hard for an American, coming from the land of freedom and democracy, to explain why our press is not free, why reporters cannot do their jobs. The best we could was say there can be a substantial difference between the stories a reporter reports and what gets published in the newspapers. But we also said that the reporting of individuals, through blogs and personal accounts makes it increasingly difficult for the mainstream media to completely ignore stories.

I think Cindy Corrie won everyone's heart when she said that we are going to Gaza to witness what is happening there, and to use that information to change our government’s policy. It was clear everyone there had immense respect for the Corrie's loss of their daughter and their ongoing commitment to Palestinian self-determination.

The conversation moved further to the need to open the borders, to respect the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and to end the occupation.
When we got back on the bus we were joined by two journalists who told us they had been at the border, and that fifty internationals had succeeded in crossing – including 10 Americans who had camped at the border until allowed across! (Thanks to all who called the State Department and U.S. embassy in Egypt demanding they be let through).

Arrival in Cairo

2009-03-05T14:54:00.003-05:00

Our delegation is now coming together in Cairo -- about half the expected 59 people have arrived, with the arrival of the rest imminent. We hoped to spend our afternoon doing a little paperwork at the U.S. Embassy and then taking a look at the pyramids. Instead, we spent our afternoon in the subterranean reaches of the U.S. Consular services section abjuring our consular rights as U.S. citizens.

What does this mean? Well, if we do not agree that the U.S. has no responsibility for our safety, the U.S. will not forward our names to the Egyptian police at the Rafah border. If the Egyptian police do not get clearance from the U.S., they will not permit us to cross the border.

So.... it took 2 hours for the overworked consular section to advise us of the dangers of travel to Gaza (mostly Israeli military activity) and for us to sign an affidavit that we understood we were on our own. Result -- a notarized piece of paper but no pyramids.

Right now there is a group of medical personnel from Ohio trying to cross the border. The nine of them went through the same procedure but, according to the Egyptians, the U.S. embassy failed to forward the paperwork to Rafah. Will this happen to us? Who knows? The delegation has been very carefully planned, with an invitation from the UN Relief and Works Agency to come to Gaza, with all the names provided to the Egyptian embassy in Washington (for Egyptian security checks) well in advance, and with a visit with the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, as well as the consular waivers described above.

It is worth noting that Senator Kerry, and Congressmen Baird and Ellison, who recently visited Gaza, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her recent swing through Egypt, Israel, and the West Bank called for the borders to be opened.

Meanwhile, we are bringing 1,000 gift baskets for Gazan women with us in celebration of International Women's Day. At the request of people in Gaza, these are baskets full of toiletries, tea, scarves, etc. Everything has been bought in Egypt and when Egyptians learned of its purpose, they donated much of the material or provided it at very nominal cost. This generosity and support of relief for Gaza even extended to the bus providers (who wanted to provide buses and drivers for free for the 6 hour drive to El Arish and then on to Rafah), and to signmakers who painted five huge banners for us.

We leave tomorrow morning for El Arish.

Thanks to Wespac for helping Gaza's children

2009-03-03T11:31:00.003-05:00

I'm excited to report that, with the help of the generous contributions of the Wespac Middle East Committee, I will be bringing 3 good digital cameras and more than 150 markers for artwork to Fida Qishta and the Lifemakers' Centre in Rafah, Gaza. There is a wonderful piece about Fida in Laila El-Haddad's blog "Raising Yousuf and Noor". Fida is still doing great work, including her reporting of Israel's Gaza invasion in The Guardian and her reporting of possible war crimes, also in The Guardian.

Keep an eye on this space. I may be asking all of you to make some phone calls if we run into difficulties crossing the border.

Code Pink Press Release on Gaza Delegation

2009-02-28T10:55:00.003-05:00

Here is Code Pink's press release discussing the Gaza delegation I am joining:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Feb. 23,2009 CONTACT Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder, 415-235-6517, Jean Stevens CODEPINK national media coordinator, 508-769-2138

50 International Delegates to Arrive in Gaza with Gift Baskets for Gazan Women

Vow to Camp on Border if Blocked, Demand its Opening

WHAT: 50 international delegates to campout out at Gaza border until allowed inside; plan to meet with women's groups, call for end to blockade

WHEN: March 6 to March 12, 2009

WHERE: March 6, leaving Cairo, March 7, Rafah, Egypt border crossing into Rafah, Gaza

WASHINGTON -- A 50-member international delegation will attempt to cross the Egyptian border into war-torn Gaza early next month, carrying 2,000 gift baskets to pay tribute to the women of Gaza on International Women's Day, March 8.

Set to depart Cairo March t, the impressive delegation -- which includes acclaimed author Alice Walker, former State Department official Ann Wright, CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin and 47 others from around the world -- expects Egyptian authorities will allow them to cross into Gaza March 7. The delegation, organized by the U.S. women's peace group CODEPINK and coming at the invitation of the Gaza Gender Initiative of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is the first delegation of its size and kind to attempt to enter Gaza since July 2007, when Israel imposed the blockade.

If Egyptian authorities deny the group's entrance, the group will camp out at the border until they get in, said delegation organizer Benjamin. Hundreds of aid workers, lawyers, and convoys carrying humanitarian aid have been denied entrance by Egyptian authorities at the Rafah border.

Once inside Gaza, the delegation will spend several days meeting with Palestinian women's groups, delivering aid to relief groups and witnessing the devastation from the 22-day Israeli invasion.

"We have not, as a planet, been seeking to change the world so that this insanity cannot continue," said delegate Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet. "Going to Gaza is our opportunity to express solidarity with the people there, to demonstrate the concern we feel each day for the suffering endured. To remind the people of Gaza and ourselves that we belong to the same world. We can bring our witness, one of life's strongest gifts."

The delegatino will pay tribute to the women of Gaza on the United Nations' International Women's Day, http://www.internationalwomensday.com/, which calls on the world to focus on the needs and contributions of women. CODEPINK felt inspired to dedicate the day to Gaza women just two months following the devastating Israeli assault on the occupied land that killed more than 1,300, including 437 children, and injured more than 5,000

On February 20, CODEPINK put out a call https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/424/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4489

to its members to help fund $10 gift baskets for the women of Gaza. In two days, the group collected enough donations to take gift baskets to 2,000 women.

"We have been overwhelmed by response toward our initiative," Benjamin said. "We thought we'd take 15 people on the delegation to Gaza and we have 50. We thought we'd take 200 gift baskets, and we're taking 2,000! American women feel tremendous compassion toward the women of Gaza and are ready for a U.S. policy based on respect for the human rights of all people in the region."

Benjamin and Wright returned from a trip to Gaza earlier this month where they witnessed the terrible devastation (read Wright's piece on her trip on Air America here http://airamerica.com/blog/2009/feb/13/ann-wright-israeli-smashing-gaza-and-international-silence

They found Gazans anxious to have foreign delegations visit, witness and learn about their plight and push for an end to the blockade.

"The Israeli attack came after 18 months of a crippling blockade that had already left the Palestinian population hungry, sick, weak, and suffering from a catastrophic situation," Wright said. "We must not only provide massive humanitarian aid, but lift the blockae that is keeping the people of Gaza under siege."

For more information and interviews, please call Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder at 415-235-6517 or Jean Stevens, CODEPINK media coordinator, at 508-769-2138.

Getting Underway

2009-02-24T11:50:00.002-05:00

While the motive force of the Israeli attacks on Gaza -- purposeful malevolence -- cannot be compared to the indifferent violence of Mother Nature, the scale and scope of destruction and death wrought on Gaza reminded me of Hurricane Katrina. (Of course it is not a natural disaster, but a disaster man-made, paid for by the U.S. and Europe, that keep Israel oversupplied with weapons and support its military industrial economy.) The response of the US, Israeli, and Egyptian governments as well -- reinforce the blockade, keep the borders closed -- bore an all too uncanny resemblance to the Bush administration's dispatch of troops and Blackwater mercenaries to New Orleans with orders to shoot to kill.

With this week's donors conference, we are moving into the next phase of "disaster" relief -- pledge lots of money for reconstruction, and bicker endlessly about how it will be spent and who gets to spend it.

Americans reacted to the non-relief, non-rebuilding efforts of the Bush administration with a massive grassroots rebuilding effort with tens of thousands of volunteers going to New Orleans to get the rebuilding process underway. This effort did not rebuild all the lost homes, but it did impede government's recovery agenda of population transfer, and deconstruction of vast, primarily African American populated areas of the city.

Gaza needs the same type of effort. We need a grassroots effort to open the borders and get reconstruction underway.

I am joining Code Pink's delegation to Gaza as a first step in that process -- to offer eyewitness testimony on the situation, and to learn how the people and civil society organizations want to rebuild.