Tag: Gaza

Egyptian activists in Ismailia : “Police is still stopping us and we attend to stay there till tomorrow”

Egyptian Committee Against the Gaza Siege: At 8am this morning (10th September), a first group from the Egyptian Committee Against the Gaza Siege, mainly Labor Party’s members, left Cairo in 4 micro-buses with food and medicine to go and try to break the criminal siege of Gaza.

Photos from www.newspalestina.blogspot.com

When they arrived at Ismailia, located at 100 km from Cairo and 30 km from the Suez Canal, the Sinai entrance, the Egyptian police stopped the convoy and took away the driving licences of the drivers, preventing them to go forward

More than 150 people got outside the buses with Palestinian and Egyptian flags and chanting slogans in support of the Palestinians.

A second convoy of 5 buses with around 200 activists left Cairo at 1 pm and has been also stopped at Ismailia.

Many people coming from Alexandria and many other towns have been stopped before reaching Cairo and some of them have been arrested

Police tightened up procedures all along the main road to the border town of Rafah, checking the identity of travelers and asking them the reason for their journey, but many of them driving individual cars managed to reach Al Arish were they are waiting their friends.

Now, the activists who were traveling in the buses are still in Ismailia and demonstrating in front of the checkpoint.

They are chanting slogans asking the lift of the Gaza blockade;

They said they will stay there till Egyptian authorities will allow them to go to Gaza, even if this will happen only tomorrow.

According witnesses, the police seized one of the buses full of food.

Dr Abed Elglil, the Kefaia leader, said in a phone call: “Police is still stopping us and we intend to stay there till tomorrow. Egyptian authorities are worse than Israelis authorities because Israel let get through the 2 Free Gaza Movement’s boats”

Indeed, the Egyptian government contributes to the blockade of Gaza by refusing to open the Rafah crossing point without Israeli approval, as it agreed in a 2005 deal with the Israelis.

Several national forces are participating in this action, including the Committee Against the Gaza Siege, Engineers against Detention, al-Karamah party, Labour Party, Nasserist party, Kifâya, independent lawyers, March 9 Movement, April 6 Movement and Muslim Brotherhood’s members.

ISM Rafah: Israeli navy vessels again open fire on Gazan fishermen

On Monday 8th September at least ten fishing vessels left Gaza City port and traveled out into the Mediterranean Sea up to 10 miles offshore.

ISM volunteers were onboard three of the boats. They were equipped with video cameras to record and document the aggressive actions of the Israeli naval gunboats towards the fishing vessels. As per the volunteers’ experiences on all previous outings, many of the boats were harassed and shot at by the Israeli gunboats. The soldiers on these gunboats are committing war crimes by shooting at unarmed fishermen who are just trying to earn a living and feed their families.

In the afternoon, between 2:30pm and 3:00pm, one gunboat approached three fishing vessels, which were about ten miles offshore, and began to circle one of them multiple times. Using VHF radio, the Israeli gunboat ordered the Gazan fishermen to alter course, saying that their boats were heading into a dangerous area. An ISM volunteer contacted the gunboat asking about the nature of the danger, but did not receive any answer. The gunboat then fired at the fishing vessels in the area with a machine gun and some kind of shells shot from the cannon. The volunteers immediately contacted the gunboat and requested that it stop shooting, stating that unarmed civilian fishermen and international volunteers were aboard the boats. The heavy shooting and shelling continued and one of the fishing boats was obliged to make an emergency call on VHF channel 16. The gunboat continued firing upon the fishing vessels for some time, despite the emergency call.

Most of the vessels were still at sea come sundown. This means that the fishermen were still at sea during Iftar – the time when observant Muslims break the Ramadan fast for the day. Israeli gunboats again attacked some of the vessels at this time.

Despite all the harassment and attacks by the Israeli navy, most of the fishing boats had a remarkably successful day, landing a large quantity of fish.

Ynet: Blair sister-in-law – “Gaza world’s largest concentration camp”

British left-wing activist Lauren Booth remains stuck in Strip after journey to ‘break’ Israeli naval blockade, equates situation to Holocaust, Darfur

By Noa Raz

To view original article, published by Ynet on the 11th September, click here

To view the Free Gaza Movement website click here

Unlike her brother-in-law, Quartet envoy to the Middle East Tony Blair, who frequently travels from Israel to the Palestinian territories and back, Lauren Booth has found herself stuck in the Gaza Strip.

The British left-wing activist arrived in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave as part of the dozens of ‘Free Gaza’ activists who set out on two boats from Cyprus last month with the intent of “breaking” the Israeli naval blockade imposed on the Strip. Booth is one of the 10 activists who chose to remain in Gaza while her companions set sail back to Cyprus.

Since then she has been stuck in Gaza, unable to exit through Israel or Egypt.

In a telephone interview with Ynet on Wednesday, Booth slammed Israel’s policies and called Gaza “the largest concentration camp in the world today. I was startled the Israelis agreed to this.”

Despite her current predicament, Booth said she has no regrets. “My children are the ones who are suffering, because I’m being prevented from leaving and they can’t see me. I don’t regret it, because I wanted to come here and help these children who are suffering on a daily basis,” she said.

Booth asserted that the current siege is not the result of the policies of the Hamas government. “There’s been a siege for 20 years already. Palestinians’ freedom of movement has been restricted since the 80s. This is an inexcusable outrage on an international level.”

She spoke of the situation in Gaza and said, “Yesterday, I visited mothers of children under the age of five. Nutrition here has deteriorated threefold over the last two years because it is impossible to bring food through the crossings. Unemployment has risen, so people can’t even afford to buy what food there is left.”

‘It’s as bad as Darfur’

When asked about Israel’s right to respond to incessant attacks emanating from Gaza, Booth evoked Holocaust-related rhetoric. “There is no right to punish people this way. There is no justification for this kind of collective punishment. You were in the concentration camps, and I can’t believe that you are allowing the creation of such a camp yourselves.”

“The Palestinians’ suffering is physical, mental and emotional,” she went on, “there is not a family here in which someone is not in desperate need of work, shelter or food. This is a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Darfur.

Booth said that while the media does focus on Gaza, its journalistic criterion remains deeply flawed.

“One Western person is stuck in Gaza and the media turns it into a huge story. A million and a half people are stuck in Gaza, and it’s a non-story. I am telling you, what is going on here is a tragedy. Whatever is being done, it’s not enough.”

One person Booth doesn’t think is doing enough, is her brother in law Blair. “I don’t think he has a real idea of what’s going on here. I think that the Israeli government is working very hard to keep him in the dark.”

Winter fuel shortage

Despite the morale boost from the sea-faring activists, Gaza residents are concerned of the impact the Israeli siege may have as winter nears, and are preparing for long months with limited amounts of fuel. Director of the Palestinian Energy Authority in Gaza warned of an exacerbation of the fuel siege during the cold season. The director said the amount of fuel currently being brought in to the Strip through Israel serves a mere 35% of the Palestinians’ needs.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Egyptian security forces prevented a convoy of local operatives from reaching the Rafah crossing and from there to Gaza.

Hamas slammed Egypt’s decision, and said that the security forces’ actions hurt the Egyptian nation’s feelings and those of the Palestinians.

Ali Waked contributed to the report

J-Post: ‘Israel is dividing Gazan, W. Bank populations’

By Dan Izenberg

To view original article, published in the Jerusalem Post on the 11th September, click here

In the past year, Israel has stepped up its policy of separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and forcing Palestinians registered in Gaza or wishing to visit Gaza to forgo their right to live in the West Bank, two human rights organizations charged Wednesday.

The organizations, Hamoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual and B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, held a press conference to mark the publication of a position paper entitled “Separated Entities – Israel Divides Palestinian Population of West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

According to the paper, since last year Israel has stepped up its measures, originally introduced after the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, “to institutionalize and perpetuate a new factual and legal reality of separation between residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while severing the interdependent social, economic and cultural ties between the two groups, infringing their rights and impeding the possibility that the Palestinian people will realize their right to self-determination.”

In the past year, Israel has introduced a new requirement for Palestinians whose registered address is in the Gaza Strip, demanding that they obtain a permit to be present in the West Bank. Those who do not have such a permit are defined as “illegal aliens,” as though the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were not one entity.

The permit must be obtained from the army and is valid for only three months. In order to be granted one, a Palestinian listed in the population registry as living in Gaza must prove that he has lived in the West Bank continuously for the past eight years, must be married and have children, must have security clearance and must provide humanitarian grounds for requesting the permit.

The policy has been exacerbated by Israel’s refusal for the past eight years to update the Palestinian population registry, which it controls, to record the moves of Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank. Therefore, by definition, any Palestinian who has moved to the West Bank since then is there illegally, or at best, temporarily.

Israel does not consider marriage between residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank sufficient cause for issuing a permit to the Gaza spouse to settle in the West Bank. Gaza brides who want to marry their husbands in the West Bank must deposit a large amount of money as a guarantee that they will return to Gaza after the wedding.

In one case, the state demanded that a woman deposit NIS 20,000.

West Bank residents who want to visit the Gaza Strip may only do so if they sign a commitment to remain there. In one case, a woman living in the West Bank asked for permission to visit her ailing husband in Gaza. The military authorities said they would not approve the request but added that “a single, one way permit to the Gaza Strip may be approved.”

In another case, a Palestinian originally from Hebron but living in Gaza returned to the West Bank when his mother’s leg was amputated. When he asked for a permit to return to Gaza, his request was rejected. At the same time, the army also refused to allow his wife and baby daughter in Gaza to join him in the West Bank. After a year, the army agreed to allow the man to return to Gaza if he signed a promise never to come back to the West Bank.

According to the report, Israel has forcibly removed Palestinians from the West Bank on the grounds that they were registered as living in Gaza and did not have permit to reside in the West Bank.

The organizations charged that recently, the High Court of Justice, in a series of petitions filed by Moked, has consistently upheld the state’s decisions.

An IDF spokesman was unavailable Wednesday night to respond to the claims made in the report.

ISM Rafah: Fishing in Gaza

Saturday 6th September, it was just 09:30 and we were only 4 miles out to sea, having barely left Gaza’s coastline behind, when the gunboat’s heavy machine gun opened up, spraying the wake around our hull with bullets.

There was no surprise. We’d just spent the previous 10 minutes watching as this Israeli gunboat harried another vessel from our fishing fleet. It would accelerate into an attack run, only to veer off at the last moment before collision, battering the fishing boat with its wake. It would pull alongside screeching threats and commands to stop over the megaphone. Throughout, its machine barked menacingly, peppering the air and water around the boat with bullets.

When our turn came, our skipper just stuck steadfast to his course, neither slowing down nor speeding up. The crew continues preparing the nets, only pausing briefly to consider the crack of the machine gun and the trajectory of the bullets that were coming their way. This morning they were going to fish.

They had to fish. How could they stop and turn back now? Why would they stop when they hadn’t even reached the so-called ‘6 mile limit’ (not some agreed perimeter, not some internationally recognized boundary, indeed not even a border which had ever been officially declared or communicated to them, but just an arbitrary and elastic space delineated with the threat of gunfire). And of course this gunboat was probably just toying with them as others like it had done so often before. These shots were most likely simply warning shots. Not like those which hospitalized 2 fishermen 3 days ago. Not like those that killed 14 of their colleagues in the last few years. Probably.

As expected, the gunboat got bored, perhaps even embarrassed with its failure to force some sort of response. It withdrew and began slowly patrolling slowly back and forth, as if nothing had happened. This respite was welcome but brief. In the early afternoon another gunboat appeared on the horizon, heading in our direction at full speed. It tore in and out of our fleet again and again, weaving between our boats as if flags in a slalom ski course. A few bursts from its machine gun and it left just as promptly as it appeared.

Before long and the light began to fade. All in our fleet were heading back to Gaza City, dragging their nets for the last time that day. We waited eagerly in anticipation of Iftar and the time when we could break our fast. Two of the men had already begun preparing the Ramadan supper, frying fish and prawns from that day’s catch. We gazed out across the sea, calculating how long it would be before the low sun finally met the horizon.

Suddenly another gunboat appeared with a definite menace apparent in its speed and course. Its cannon roared twice, the shells narrowly missing one of the leading boats, exploding in the water. Tracer bullets then pierced the dim light streaking across the sky just as the gunboat swerved again and went for another target. Its cannon roared a third time, and we tried to film, but the light was now so dim and the boat far away. But it mattered not. The fishermen insisted we stop, for the Ramadan supper was ready and their course was already set.