Tag: International law

PCHR strongly condemns Israeli plans to confiscate 12,000 donums of Palestinian land in order to link the Illegal “Ma’ale Adumim” and “Qedar” settlements

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

4 May 2009

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the Israeli Ministry of the Interior’s decision to expand the illegal West Bank settlement of “Ma’ale Adumim” and to confiscate 12,000 donums (12 million square meters) of Palestinian land.

In the context of policies aimed to establishing a Jewish majority in occupied East Jerusalem – thereby consolidating its illegal annexation – the Israeli Minister of Interior, Elli Yishai, decided to adopt the recommendations of a special committee established by his ministry to link “Qedar” settlement with the larger “Ma’ale Adumim” settlement, east of Jerusalem. Under the Israeli Ministry of Interior’s plan, at least 12,000 donums of Palestinian land will be annexed to “Ma’ale Adumim”, linking it with the smaller “Qedar” settlement, which is located nearly 3 kilometers to the east. A few months ago, the Israeli media unveiled another plan to construct 6,000 new housing units in “Qedar” settlement. The implementation of these plans will disrupt geographical contiguity between the north and south West Bank, and will isolate Jerusalem from the West Bank as a whole. These decisions fundamentally undermine the viability of any future Palestinian State.

Israeli occupation authorities have recently started to establish a new settlement neighborhood in the densely Palestinian-populated al-Sawahra area, southeast of Jerusalem. They have also continued to undermine Palestinian construction in the city, in an effort to impose forced migration on the Palestinian population. Dozens of Palestinian families have been ordered to evacuate their homes under various pretexts, related to, inter alia, the lack of construction licenses and the construction of homes on lands allegedly owned by Israeli settlement associations. Recent orders targeted two floors constructed atop the Armenian Church in the Old Town, which was built more than 150 years ago.

International law explicitly prohibits the annexation of land consequent to the use of force (Article 47, Fourth Geneva Convention), a principle confirmed in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter. International humanitarian law is unambiguous in this regard: occupation does not imply any right whatsoever to dispose of territory. Annexation is straightforwardly illegal.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention also explicitly prohibits the transfer and settlement of parts of the Occupying Power’s population in occupied territory. PCHR wish to highlight the underlying purpose of this provision, as noted in the authoritative commentary to the Geneva Conventions: “It is intended to prevent a practice adopted by during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population for political or racial reasons or in order … to colonize those territories. Such transfers worsened the economic situation of the native population and endangered their separate existence as a race.”

The United Nations estimate that there are currently between 480,000 and 550,000 illegal settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

PCHR strongly condemns all Israeli policies and measures aimed at consolidating the annexation of occupied East Jerusalem, and:

1) Emphasizes that East Jerusalem is an integral part of Palestinian territories that have been occupied since the 1967 war.

2) Asserts that measures taken by Israeli occupation forces following the occupation of the city, especially the Israeli Knesset’s decisions on 28 June 1967 to annex the city to Israeli territory and on 30 July 1980 declaring that the “complete and united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel”, and the decision to expand the boundaries of Jerusalem, violate international law and United Nations resolutions.

3) Stresses that all decisions, plans and measures implemented by Israeli occupation authorities in the occupied city do not alter the legal status of the city.

In light of the above:

1) PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties, individually and collectively, to fulfill their legal and moral obligation under article 1 of the Convention to ensure Israel’s respect for the Convention in the OPT.

2) PCHR believes that international silence serves to encourage Israel to act as a state above the law and to continue violating international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

3) PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately act to force the Israeli government to stop all settlement activities in the OPT, especially in occupied East Jerusalem.

4) PCHR calls upon the European Union and/or its State members to activate article 2 of the Euro-Israeli Association Agreement, which affirm Israel’s respect for human rights as a condition for continue economic cooperation. PCHR calls also upon State members of the European Union to boycott Israeli goods, especially those produced in illegal Israeli settlements established in the OPT.

The complicit silence continues

Haidar Eid | The Palestine Telegraph

1 May 2009

Millions of people looked forward to Barack Obama’s presidency with a sense of pride and hope. But Obama’s first 100 days have raised critical questions about the limits of what we can expect from a Democrat in the White House–and what it will take to get the change we want.

What do you think of Obama’s 100 days? And what does the left need to do now to move the struggle forward? We asked a group of writers and activists for their answers to these questions. This commentary is from Haidar Eid, a professor, a resident of Gaza City, and a leading activist in the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel’s apartheid.

I NEVER had high expectations for Barack Obama, because he still represents the Democratic Party, which is a part of the American establishment. Obama’s victory in the presidential elections did not produce a change in the nature of American imperialism.

I think the difference between the Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. is similar to the difference between Likud and the Labor Party in Palestine.

I thought, even prior to his taking office, that Obama’s role would be to bring about a new fiction–or rather renew the of fiction–of a two-state solution in Palestine-Israel. That is, to breathe new life into the idea that one state for Jews and another state for Palestinians will bring peace to the region.

In essence, that isn’t different from what George W. Bush and, before him, Bill Clinton stood for. The only difference that I see is that the Bush administration saw the annihilation of the Palestinian resistance as part of what Bush called the “war on terror.” In his words, “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Because most of us belonging to Palestinian resistance and civil society organizations were not with George Bush, we were defined as terrorists–indeed, as all resistance to imperialism is throughout history.

The Bush administration enabled Israeli crimes in Palestine and Lebanon through financial, military and moral support. The first 100 days of Obama have witnessed the same thing. I don’t see any difference, in fact, between what Israel is committing in Palestine, and in particular in the Gaza Strip, and what the American military has been doing in Iraq.

I would expect Barack Obama, for example, to immediately withdraw American troops from Iraq. We know that this is not going to happen. He made it very clear that he is going to keep some 50,000 troops in Iraq.

Israel is still using Apache helicopters made in the U.S. Israel is still using F-16 jet fighters. Only yesterday, on April 18, there was an aerial strike on the neighborhood of Deir El Balah in the Gaza Strip.

Although the Bush administration allowed Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak to undermine the Annapolis meeting by focusing only on Israeli security, the same thing is happening with Barack Obama and George Mitchell, his envoy to the Middle East.

The point of reference in any negotiations or any statements made by the American administration about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israel’s security. By doing that, Obama and his administration are effectively marginalizing the whole issue of Palestine, and unfortunately setting the stage for renewed Israeli assaults against a starving Gaza. Gaza has already been transformed into the largest concentration camp on Earth.

BARACK OBAMA visited one of the northern Israeli settlements in 2006, shortly before Israel attacked Lebanon and killed more than 1,200 people. Obama stayed for more than a week. Later, he made a visit to Ramallah, where he spent just 45 minutes with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas–afterward, he refused to attend a press conference with Abbas.

Then he visited the Israeli town of Sderot. He had a lot to say in sympathy with the Israelis of Sderot. Sderot was a Palestinian village before 1948, the people of which were ethnically cleansed. Of course, he never mentioned that–or said a single word of sympathy with the Palestinians of Gaza.

The Obama administration, including George Mitchell, are filled with nothing but empty rhetoric when it comes to addressing the illegal settlements policy of Israel in the West Bank. They know very well that Olmert, after the Annapolis meeting, immediately authorized a massive building program for new Jewish housing units in eastern Jerusalem and the expansion of other settlements in the West Bank.

This is a violation, of course, of the letter and the spirit of the so-called two-state solution, which I personally call the two-prison solution.

What we need from Obama is to show seriousness in dealing with the newly elected Israeli government, which is a fascist government and which proves that Israeli society by and large is lurching ever further rightward. It is what Israeli professor Israel Shahak has referred to as the Nazification of Israeli society.

Obama needs to adopt the same attitude toward Israel that the U.S. administration adopted toward apartheid South Africa at the end of the 1980s. In spite of the massacres, the war crimes and the crimes against humanity that have been committed in the Gaza Strip, there has been no serious condemnation of Israel issued from the White House.

On April 17, there was an incident in Bil’in, in which a Palestinian youngster was shot dead. On the same day, another Palestinian was shot dead in Hebron. That was at the same time Mitchell was visiting Tel Aviv.

But unfortunately, the complicit silence from Obama’s White House continues. This has accompanied the cutoff of medicine, food and fuel to a starving Gaza. Patients in need of dialysis and other urgent medical treatment are dying every single day. A majority of us here in Gaza are badly undernourished. But not a single word of condemnation from the Obama administration.

Every single person who is a little bit familiar with Middle East issues must realize now–and Barack Obama seems to be a smart guy–how cynical it is to wait until a two-state solution has been rendered impossible by Israeli colonization of the West Bank, by the looting and pillaging of Gaza, by the construction of the apartheid wall, and by the expansion of so-called Greater Jerusalem to say the time has come for peace.

Like every U.S. president since 1967, Obama has supported and is still supporting Israel in creating conditions that made the two-state solution impossible, impractical and unjust.

If Obama hopes to gain any credibility as a peacemaker, he needs to reverse the policies of George Bush and strongly oppose the policies of the fascist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman.

He should take the lead of Venezuelan President Huge Chavez, with whom he shook hands in Trinidad. Venezuela and Bolivia both severed diplomatic ties with Israel after its assault on Gaza earlier this year. But so far, these first 100 days have been a great disappointment to us Palestinians.

THE WAY civil society organizations in the U.S. opposed apartheid South Africa and pressured their own government to sever its diplomatic with South Africa is the model that the U.S. left should now pursue with respect to Israel. Join hands with us in besieged Gaza and demand the immediate withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from Gaza and the West Bank.

We must also demand that Israel abide by international humanitarian and human rights law, and refrain from imposing collective punishment on Palestinian civilians, as per numerous covenants of international law and United Nations resolutions.

We should demand that Israel release all detained Palestinian ministers, legislators and political prisoners. There are more than 12,000 Palestinian political prisoners. Because of the mainstream media coverage, I know that every single American knows the name of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, but I don’t think many know the name of a single Palestinian prisoner among the thousands–which, by the way, includes hundreds of women and children.

We should demand the implementation of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s apartheid wall–to cease building it and make reparations for any damage caused during its construction. We should also demand that the United Nations insure that Israel fulfills its obligations in terms of international law.

After the experience of the genocidal war against the civilians of Gaza, in which more than 1,500 Palestinians were killed, 90 percent of whom were civilians, including 443 children and 120 women, we need an international protection of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

This is an urgent task. We cannot wait. Every single day, we hear of people dying. Just yesterday, my own cousin, who is 42 years old and has been suffering from leukemia, was not given a permit for an Israeli, Egyptian or Jordanian hospital. She passed away yesterday, leaving seven children.

It is time for the American left to demand that Israeli generals, Israeli officers and Israeli soldiers be indicted for war crimes before the ICJ, for using phosphorous bombs against civilians and for other atrocities.

If Barack Obama wants to show his liberal world view and understanding of racism, I think he should sympathize with the suffering of Palestinians. He must realize it is time for us to have civic democracy in historic Palestine after the return of more than 6 million Palestinian refugees living in the diaspora in miserable conditions.

The kind of strategy and tactics used by the American left during 1970s and ’80s against apartheid South Africa are essential for pushing for these demands. Our allies are all oppressed people in the U.S. and around the world. When it comes to the U.S., this is a society that has suffered racism in the 20th century, that has many marginalized groups, but that is also multiethnic and multicultural.

The same tools that were used in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s in order to obtain rights for the African American community in the U.S. should be used to support the Palestinian cause. We need to approach churches, mosques and other kinds of associations to promote a culture of resistance.

We should demand the economic, political and cultural isolation of Israel. I know that this won’t happen immediately–exactly like in the case of white South Africans, who were welcomed in the U.S. for a long time. But through an international movement, they were eventually ostracized, especially in the realms of sports and culture.

Israel needs to feel that it is paying a price for its war crimes against Palestinians, especially during the Gaza massacre. The American left needs to understand this, to start changing its understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict–from a conflict over territory and Palestinian independence to a conflict about Palestinian liberation.

That is why the American left should adopt as its platform support for the one-state solution, support for equal rights and support for making Israel/Palestine into a state for all its citizens. The two-state solution means racism–the Bantustanization of Palestine.
I have had discussions with American liberals and leftists who still believe that a two-state solution is the only viable solution.

But the lessons we learned from Gaza 2009 are the same lessons we learned from Sharpeville 1960–that this struggle is a struggle for liberation, it’s a struggle for civic democracy, it’s a struggle for the transformation of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine into a true and real democracy, which ultimately means the return of Palestinian refugees.

This currently does not constitute a fundamental part of discourse on the American left. But this is essential for the transformation of Israel into a state for all of its citizens, regardless of race and religion.

Haidar Eid is a grassroots activist and professor based in the Gaza Strip

The Israel boycott is biting

Nadia Hijab | Agence Global

30 April 2009

On May 4, protesters will greet Motorola shareholders, already disgruntled by the company’s losses, as they arrive for their annual meeting at the Rosemont Theater in Chicago, Illinois.

The protest, organized by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, is part of a drive to “Hang Up On Motorola” until it ends sales of communications and other products that support Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land.

Inside the meeting, the Presbyterian, United Methodist and other churches will urge shareholders to support their resolution, which calls for corporate standards grounded in international law. Doing the right thing could also reduce the risk of “consumer boycotts, divestment campaigns and lawsuits.”

Although Motorola executives deny it, such risks must have played a part in their decision to sell the department making bomb fuses shortly after Human Rights Watch teams found shrapnel with Motorola serial numbers at some of the civilian sites bombed by Israel in its December-January assault on Gaza.

The US protests are part of a growing global movement that has taken international law into its own hands because governments have not. And, especially since the attacks on Gaza, the boycotts have been biting. There are three reasons why.

First, boycotts enable ordinary citizens to take direct action. For instance, the New York group Adalah decided to target diamond merchant Lev Leviev, whose profits are plowed into colonizing the West Bank. During the Christmas season, they sing carols with the words creatively altered to urge shoppers to boycott his Madison Avenue store.

The British group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine teamed up with Adalah NY and others to exert public pressure on the British government regarding Leviev. The British Embassy in Tel Aviv recently cancelled plans to rent premises from Leviev’s company Africa-Israel.

There are other results. Activists in Britain have targeted the supermarket chain Tesco to stop the sales of Israeli goods produced in settlements. In a video of one such action — over 38,000 YouTube views to date — Welsh activists load up a trolley with settlement products and push it out of the shop without paying.

All the while, they calmly explain to the camera just what they are doing and why. They talk away as they pour red paint over the produce, and as British Bobbies quietly lead them away to a police van.

The result of such consumer boycotts? A fifth of Israeli producers have reported a drop in demand since the assault on Gaza, particularly in Britain and Scandinavia.

The second reason boycotts are more effective is the visible role of Jewish human rights advocates, making it harder for Israel to argue that these actions are anti-Semitic.

For example, British architect Abe Hayeem, an Iraqi Jew, describes in a passionate column in The Guardian exactly how Leviev tramples on Palestinian rights, and warns Israeli architects involved in settlements that they will be held to account by their international peers.

In the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has led an ongoing campaign to stop Caterpillar from selling bulldozers to Israel, which militarizes them and uses them in home demolitions and building the separation wall.

The third, key, reason for the growing success of this global movement is the determined leadership of Palestinian civil society. The spark was lit at the world conference against racism in Durban in 2001. In 2004, Palestinian civil society launched an academic and cultural boycott that is having an impact.

In 2005, over 170 Palestinian civil society coalitions, organizations, and unions, from the occupied territories, within Israel, and in exile issued a formal call for an international campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) until Israel abides by international law. The call sets out clear goals for the movement and provides a framework for action.

In November 2008, Palestinian NGOs helped convene an international BDS conference in Bilbao, Spain, to adopt common actions. This launched a “Derail Veolia” campaign. That French multinational corporation, together with another French company, Alstom, is building a light railway linking East Jerusalem to illegal settlements.

The light rail project was cited by the Swedish national pension fund in its decision to exclude Alstom from its $15 billion portfolio, and by the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council in its decision not to consider further Veolia’s bid for a $1.9 billion waste improvement plan. There were active grassroots campaigns in both areas.

Other hits: Veolia lost the contract to operate the city of Stockholm subway and an urban network in Bordeaux. Although these were reportedly “business decisions” there were also activist campaigns in both places. The Galway city council in Ireland decided to follow Stockholm’s example. Meanwhile, Connex, the company that is supposed to operate the light rail, is being targeted by activists in Australia.

The “Derail Veolia” campaign has been the movement’s biggest success to date. Veolia and its subsidiaries are estimated to have lost as much as $7.5 billion.

As one of the BDS movement leaders, Omar Barghouti, put it, “When companies start to lose money, then they listen.” Perhaps governments will too.

Nadia Hijab is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington D.C.

End Palestinian demolitions in Jerusalem, UN tells Israel

Rory McCarthy | The Guardian

1 May 2009

The United Nations has called on Israel to end its programme of demolishing homes in east Jerusalem and tackle a mounting housing crisis for Palestinians in the city.

Dozens of Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem are demolished each year because they do not have planning permits. Critics say the demolitions are part of an effort to extend Israeli control as Jewish settlements continue to expand. The 21-page report from the UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs is the latest round in an intensifying campaign on the issue.

Although Israel’s mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, has defended the planning policy as even-handed, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in March described demolitions as “unhelpful”. An internal report for EU diplomats, released earlier and obtained by the Guardian, described them as illegal under international law and said they “fuel bitterness and extremism”. Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later unilaterally annexed it, a move not recognised by the international community.

The UN said that of the 70.5 sq km of east Jerusalem and the West Bank annexed by Israel, only 13% was zoned for Palestinian construction and this was mostly already built up. At the same time 35% had been expropriated for Israeli settlements, even though all settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.

As a result Palestinians in east Jerusalem had found it increasingly difficult to obtain planning permits and many had built without them, risking fines and eventual demolition, the UN said. As many as 28% of all Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem were built in violation of Israeli planning rules.

“Throughout its occupation, Israel has significantly restricted Palestinian development in east Jerusalem,” the UN report said. It said 673 Palestinian structures had been demolished in the east between 2000 and 2008. Last year alone 90 structures were demolished, leaving 400 Palestinians displaced, the highest number of demolitions for four years. Similar demolitions are carried out regularly by the Israeli military across the West Bank.

The UN said it was particularly concerned about areas facing mass demolition, including Bustan in Silwan, just south of the old city, where the threatened destruction of 90 houses would lead to the displacement of 1,000 Palestinians.

Families who lose their homes are faced with the choice of moving into crowded apartments with relatives or renting new homes. They face “significant hardships”, including having their property destroyed and struggling with debts from fines and legal fees, the UN said.

A 2007 survey, quoted in the UN report, found that more than half of the displaced families took at least two years to find a new permanent home and often moved several times in the process. Children missed out on school and suffered emotional and behavioural problems for months, with poor academic records over the longer term.

The authorities in Jerusalem challenged the UN report and denied “the accusations and numbers throughout”. Israel’s Jerusalem municipality accepted there was a “planning crisis” but said it was “not just in eastern Jerusalem but throughout all of Jerusalem that affects Jews, Christians and Muslims alike”. It said the mayor would present a new plan for the city.

“Recent events indicate that the Jerusalem municipality will maintain, and possibly accelerate, its policy on house demolition,” the UN report said. “Israel should immediately freeze all pending demolition orders and undertake planning that will address the Palestinian housing crisis in east Jerusalem.”

Last week, Barkat, who won election five months ago, rejected international criticism of demolitions and planning policy as “misinformation” and “Palestinian spin. There is no politics. It’s just maintaining law and order in the city,” he said. “The world is basing its evidence on the wrong facts.The world has to learn and I am sure people will change their minds.”

Barkat said he wanted to improve the life of all the city’s residents, Jewish and Arab, but that he was committed to maintaining a Jewish majority. Jews make up around two-thirds of the city’s population.

The UN said nearly a third of east Jerusalem remained unplanned, meaning there could be no construction. Even in planned areas there were problems, including the number of small privately held plots, poor infrastructure and few resources.

Although the number of permit applications more than doubled between 2003 and 2007, the number of permits grants remained relatively flat, the UN said. There was a gap between housing needs and permitted construction of 1,100 housing units a year. “Due to the lack of proper urban planning, the under-investment in public infrastructure and the inequitable allocation of budgetary resources, east Jerusalem is overcrowded and the public services do not meet the needs of the Palestinian population,” the report said.

Shades of Checkpoint Charlie at Rafah crossing

Haidar Eid | Electronic Intifada

Palestinians wait to cross into Egypt at the Rafah Crossing in the southern Gaza Strip
Palestinians wait to cross into Egypt at the Rafah Crossing in the southern Gaza Strip

On Monday 30 June, Gaza was abuzz with the sudden announcement that Egypt would open Rafah Crossing — the only gateway for 1.5 million Palestinians who have been imprisoned here for almost two years — for three short days. Although I had good reasons to use the crossing to leave Gaza, I was unsure about pressing my luck to escape, if only for a short while. Past experience has made me graphically and painfully aware that thousands of my fellow Gazans would also try to capitalize on this very rare opportunity suddenly available to us.

On the one hand, I had also already asked my university to add my name to the list of academics who intended to travel to Egypt to further their studies as I had accepted an invitation to a conference — to be held at University of Brighton — in London in September. Moreover, I wanted to be with my wife who is in South Africa, and whom I have not seen for almost two years as a result of the siege. On the other hand, the story of failed attempts to leave Gaza through Rafah Crossing is an agonizingly familiar one to every family in Gaza.

Nevertheless, the temptation was too great and hope triumphed over experience. At 2pm, on Monday, I called the university’s public relations officer. I was told in two short sentences to be at the Rafah crossing at 2am on Tuesday morning. The reason for this strange departure hour was not explained and I did not question it. If one wants to leave Gaza after two years, one simply follows orders.

My mind went immediately to the myriad tasks that must be completed in preparation for a journey: money, packing, goodbyes, tickets — how would all this happen in less than 12 hours? I was not prepared at all and the banks were closed. I allowed myself 10 minutes to think about the steps I should take to ensure that I would be at Rafah Crossing — 40 kilometers from my home at the end of badly damaged and unlit roads at 2am the next morning.

I then remembered that the bank manager is my neighbor; when I called with my unusual request outside of normal banking hours, he was so helpful that getting the money I needed turned out to be the easiest step. I then called my niece to help me pack and prepare for my unexpected journey. Dozens of phone calls were made, but I did not call my wife because I did not want to raise her hopes only to have them dashed as has happened so many times during this siege of Gaza. I, myself, did not have high expectations but I wanted to try because in Gaza one never knows for sure. It could go either way.

I made another call to our public relations officer just to find out what I was supposed to do on arrival at the crossing. “Wait with the other academics,” was the answer. At around 11pm on Monday night, a colleague called to tell me to delay my departure until morning. His sources at the crossing had informed him that our names were not on the list sent to them by the Egyptians. He suggested I wait for more instructions in the morning. I did not sleep that night. In the morning, I got a call from another colleague, who was also leaving Gaza with me as he had to attend a conference in London. He suggested, on the advice of the public relations officer and another colleague who has contacts on the Palestinian side of the crossing, that we go to Rafah and wait for someone to help us enter the crossing because “our names are on the list.”

We left Gaza City at about noon and drove straight to Rafah. Our taxi was stopped by Palestinian policemen at a mobile checkpoint five kilometers before the crossing. We were asked to leave the taxi and wait along with other people. I was encouraged to see only a few people — perhaps the list was being used and we would be able to leave after all.

As it is almost impossible to go anywhere in Gaza without bumping into familiar faces, true to form, I immediately saw my cousin, whose wife has cancer, waving at me. He said he had been at this checkpoint since the night before! Needless to say, this was not good news. My colleague and I then called our friend who has contacts on the Palestinian side. He told us to wait there because one of the policemen at the checkpoint would be informed by his senior to allow us to walk to the crossing. That call never came.

Our contact himself then called to get our exact location because he was on his way to fetch us. What relief! Three hours later, we were still waiting and the mobile checkpoint was disbanded. We decided to drive to the crossing itself.

That is when reality hit us: tens of thousands of people were waiting there, children, old people, women, and worst of all, terminally ill people, all sitting under the baking hot sun of this semi-desert area. My heart sank! But we had to try our contact again — how could we not, when the crossing itself was so tantalizingly mere meters away now? And if we passed, what freedoms awaited us: bookshops, movies, theatre, chocolate, friends, fuel, food, fruits and of course, in my case, my long-suffering partner. Our contact gave us more hope by asking us to move closer to the electronic gate and ask a policeman named Bassam to let us in.

The next problem on this long journey was trying to reach the gate through the masses of people jealously guarding their spots on the way to the gate. Finally we got to the gate which is where we realized that it would not open for us. The authorities would not open to let a small group of academics through — list or no list — simply because the waiting crowd would surge through the gate en masse. In any event we never did find Bassam to open the gate for us.

But we waited. The heat became even worse, children cried, and the sick and the elderly sat desperately on the ground — they could no longer stand and would have to sit on the ground to wait for the gate to open. I decided to join them because it was clear that the wait would be a long one.

Worse news was to follow: our names were not on the list — and the crossing was, in fact, closed! We had to wait outside until somebody allowed us to go inside the Palestinian hall to spend the night there. I was so tired and felt ill. I was also desperate for a toilet as none had been made available to us for all these hours.

Next to me was an old woman talking on her cellphone about the pain she was in. Next to her was the family with seven daughters, all on their way to Jordan. Opposite me was an ambulance with a cancer patient — they had been waiting there for 12 hours. The place was so hot and sticky. After three hours I felt a sudden sharp pain in my stomach; I stood up to lean against the wall while yellow circles danced in front of me and a humming began in my ear. Then, everything went blank. I must have fainted. When I opened my eyes, people were giving me water, chocolate, cheese and asking me to eat and drink. Some pronounced it a diabetic episode, others were convinced it was low blood pressure. I was sure it was sunstroke. Whatever it was, I resolved to go back home right away.

On my return home, I was so relieved to see my bed — and my flat felt like Paradise! That night I wanted to cry; cry for myself, for my dignity; cry for the old woman sitting next to me; cry for my cousin’s wife; cry for the patient in the ambulance and for the 50,000 desperate people at the gates of Rafah Crossing.

The horror at the crossing continued after I left. Many people spent the entire night there, only to be told the following day that the crossing was still closed and that they should leave. It took me almost two days to feel physically better, but every single muscle of my body still hurts. I am angry and sad and do not have the words to express the depth of my feelings about this experience.

The situation that the tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children faced at the Rafah border crossing this week was inhumane and unconscionable. Nothing can justify this. Most rushed to Rafah Crossing in as short a time as I did with similar stories of frenzied activity and hope. More than 3,500 of them are terminally ill patients in urgent need of medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals. Others hold residency permits in other countries and have been trapped in Gaza for at least a year. Some are academics and students, traveling abroad to attend conferences or further their studies.

So, instead of giving them a chance to do these very ordinary things: go to a hospital, study, go to a conference or work, go back to other homes and other loved ones, the failure to open the Rafah Crossing, instead, increased their misery. Many of them spent three sleepless nights hoping to be allowed to cross into Egypt. Like me, many fainted, or suffered from dehydration and sun stroke. The failure to open Rafah Crossing reminded them of their imprisonment and their lack of human rights; it reminded them that they move at the whim of others and it reminded them that the siege of the Gaza Strip has still not been broken.

All the people who were at the Rafah border are civilians. Under the Geneva Conventions they are entitled to freedom of movement and protection from collective punishment.

During the Cold War, much was made of Checkpoint Charlie as the dividing line: we have a new Checkpoint Charlie today and it is called Rafah Crossing.

Haidar Eid is an Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University-Palestine.