Donna Mulhearn
via FreeGaza.org
1 January 2010

He wasn’t like the other boys I met here in Gaza today. This boy, balanced on a piece of concrete jutting out of a high mound of rubble, had his arms folded and just looked at us.

Other boys run towards you and cry “Hallo mister” and they laugh, make funny poses for the camera and carry on. But the boy on the rubble was still. He stared in silence. His face defiant. His large, dark eyes piercing. He stood as though he was waiting. Waiting for us to do something perhaps, to say something. Just waiting.

Continue reading →

Ali Abunimah
1 January 2010

Today I leave Cairo after four intense days with the Gaza Freedom March. We did not fulfill our goal of reaching Gaza and being with the Palestinian people there. That was surely painful and disappointing. But that is not the measure of what happened. To talk about the siege of Gaza in the abstract is one thing, but to actually come to Egypt and find that Gaza is harder to visit than a prison is like a bucket of cold water.

The Egyptian government may be efficient at few things, but it is highly efficient at maintaining the siege. Buses hired to take all the marchers to Gaza were prevented from showing up. Those who tried to get to Gaza under their own steam were turned back or detained at their hotel in Al Arish. It was very very frustrating. But whatever frustration we felt is one millionth of the frustration of the besieged Palestinian people in Gaza. So perhaps in some way it is better then that we did not get in, because Egypt gave us a small taste of what it serves every day to people in Gaza — and a small taste of what Egyptians face when they challenge their government’s policies.

[Read the report | link to photo]

31 December 2009: All along the idea for the Gaza Freedom March was that there would be a march inside Gaza once the delegation arrived, and a concurrent march to the Erez checkpoint on the Israeli side of the checkpoint. Although most of the Gaza Freedom March delegation did not go to Gaza from Cairo, the marches still took place. The photo above is the from the Erez checkpoint, and here is a report we just received about the Gaza march: [Read the report]

Ma’an News Agency: Mouad Khatib, 24, from Haifa, explains the message of an protest against the Gaza blockade at the Erez crossing on 31 December, 2009

h/t Palestine Video

To mark a year to the war of Gaza and in the demand to remove the blockade from Gaza Strip

Thursday, 31 in December, opposite Erez Checkpoint

[read more]