International Movements Breaking the Siege on Gaza
:"While the world's most powerful and influential states stand back and
watch the complete collapse of Gaza's economy and livelihood of its
population, citizens around the world are joining Palestinians in various
forms to break the siege on Gaza."
by Suzanne Morrison
CommonDreams.org: July 28, 2009
Since June 2007 the Israeli government has imposed almost complete closure
over the Gaza Strip. The siege prevents nearly all movement of people or
goods to and from the coastal region with only minimal amounts of
humanitarian provisions inconsistently allowed in. With the exception of a
small amount of carnations allowed out earlier this year, there has been a
virtual ban on all exports from Gaza since 2007. [1] A quick socio-economic
glimpse of Gaza includes agricultural losses totaling US $30 million and
more than 40,000 jobs for the 2007/2008 season, the suspension of 98% of
industrial operations, and more than 80% of Gaza's population is now
dependent on humanitarian aid from international aid providing agencies. [2]
Closure of Gaza and the West Bank has intermittently been imposed since
1991. While Israel prevents movement and access in the name of temporary
security measures, the regularity and extent of these mechanisms,
particularly since the Oslo process, represents an institutionalized policy
of closure. Israel's current siege on Gaza reflects an unprecedented and
severe application of the closure policy. In the past year internationals
have tried to break the siege on Gaza by bringing critical medical supplies
and other humanitarian goods into Gaza.
While the world's most powerful and influential states stand back and watch
the complete collapse of Gaza's economy and livelihood of its population,
citizens around the world are joining Palestinians in various forms to break
the siege on Gaza.
In August 2008 the Free Gaza Movement sent the first boat into the Gaza port
in 41 years. Since the first boat set sail, the Free Gaza Movement has sent
seven more boats to Gaza with vital supplies, medical staff, journalists,
and prominent individuals such as Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of Tony Blair,
1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan, Palestinian Legislative
Council member Mustafa Barghouti, and Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire. The
Free Gaza Movement plans to send more boats to Gaza in the future.
For over 30 days the International Movement to Open the Rafah Border has
maintained a persistent presence on the border of Egypt and Gaza to demand
an opening of the border and end to the siege. They call on any person or
group to join them "until the definitive opening of the border between Gaza
and Egypt."
Viva Palestina is an aid convoy initiated by UK Member of Parliament George
Galloway. In March of this year Viva Palestina took over 100 vehicles filled
with humanitarian supplies from the UK to Gaza. Galloway and Vietnam veteran
and peace campaigner Ron Kovic recently organized a US-led Viva Palestina
convoy. The convoy entered Gaza through Rafah Crossing with 200 Americans
including former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and New York Councilmember
Charles Barron. Viva Palestina is planning another convoy from the UK in
October 2009.
After a successful delegation in March that coincided with International
Women's day, Code Pink organized two delegations to Gaza earlier this
summer - one through Rafah Crossing in the south and one through Erez
Crossing in the north that brought vital supplies to the people of Gaza.
The Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza, coordinated by Norman
Finklestein and other leading academics/activists, is organizing a March on
Gaza for January 1, 2010. According to a website promoting the march, "when
nations fail to enforce the law, when the world's leaders break the law, the
people must act!"
In addition to the larger acts of international popular resistance against
the Israeli siege on Gaza, there are a host of smaller initiatives lead by
Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals that work in tandem to these
efforts.
Total success of any one group has been difficult, given the immense amount
of opposition from the Israeli and Egyptian governments (and the powerful
states that support them). Members of each group have suffered in various
ways from bureaucratic hurdles, arrest, detention, deportation, etc. as the
Egyptian and Israeli states hope to suppress and otherwise intimidate
peoples of conscious. While breaking the siege on Gaza requires more than
delivering humanitarian aid, collectively the international popular
movements represent a very real threat to Israel's closure policy.
The longer the siege lasts, the larger the popular resistance to it appears
to become. Over two years after its implementation, the movements to end the
siege are larger and stronger than ever before. What is clear by all these
acts of popular resistance is that people of the world are prepared to do
what states are either unwilling or too inept to do - break the siege on
Gaza!
1. PALTRADE, "Gaza Strip Crossings Monitoring Report," Monthly Report (June
2009).
2. World Bank, "Moving Beyond the 'Movement and Access' Approach" West Bank
and Gaza Update (October 2008), 15 and OCHA Special Focus, "The Closure of
the Gaza Strip: The Economic and Humanitarian Consequences" (December 2007).
Suzanne Morrison lived in Gaza in 2005-2006 and is currently a master's
candidate at the American University in Cairo. She is completing her thesis
on the role of international institutions in Palestinian state formation.
She can be reached at: suzanne_m@aucegypt.edu.
***
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23152.htm
The West Widens the Fatah-Hamas Split
Palestinian unity is essential for any peace deal - but the US,
Britain and the EU are playing a central role in preventing it
By Seumas Milne
The GuardianUK: July 28, 2009
It should be obvious that no settlement of the Israel-Palestine
conflict is going to stick unless it commands broad support or acceptance on
both sides. That is especially true of the Palestinians, who have shown time
and again that they will never accept the denial of their national and human
rights. The necessity of dealing with all representative Palestinian leaders
was recognised by Britain's parliamentary foreign affairs committee
yesterday, which called on the government to end its ban on contacts with
Hamas.
But despite the parade of top American officials visiting Israel and
the Palestinian territories this week to drum up business for a new peace
conference, the US, Britain and European Union continue to play a central
role in preventing the Palestinian national unity that is essential if any
deal is going to have a chance of succeeding. Far from helping to overcome
the split between Fatah and Hamas, the US, Israel and their allies in
practice do everything they can to promote and widen it.
In his speech last month in Cairo, Barack Obama acknowledged
Palestinian support for Hamas - who won the Palestinian elections three
years ago - but insisted that only by accepting conditions he knows it will
not accept can the Palestinians' elected representatives "play a role". The
only settlement scenarios now envisaged by the US administration are based
on a deal with the unpopular Mahmoud Abbas, which cannot command Palestinian
national support.
Not only that, but the US, Britain and EU continue to require, fund
and facilitate a security crackdown against Hamas activists in the West
Bank, which makes the necessary reconciliation between the two Palestinian
parties increasingly far-fetched.
A new report (pdf) for the London-based Middle East Monitor highlights
the scale of detention without trial in the West Bank - more than 1,000
political prisoners are reportedly held in Palestinian Authority jails - and
extrajudicial killings, torture and raids on Hamas-linked social
institutions by security forces trained, funded and organised by the US with
Israel's blessing.
The repression is justified by reference to the commitment to "end
terrorism" in the 2003 road map. And the central role played in building up
the security forces to carry it out (at a cost so far of $161m from
congress) is played by Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton, US security
co-ordinator for the Palestinian Authority, a man increasingly regarded as
the real power in the West Bank, whose slogan is "peace through security"
(pdf).
Dayton is advised by a team of British officials, as well as a British
private security firm, Libra, closely tied to the Foreign Office. Libra has
also been busy working for the occupation forces and interior ministry in
Iraq, where sectarianism and human rights abuses have been rife.
Naturally, all the governments and security firms concerned say they
abhor torture and human rights violations and focus their training on
overcoming them. But, as Dayton himself makes clear, the priority is "to
allay Israeli fears about the nature and capabilities of the Palestinian
security forces".
Privately, official sources have tried to rubbish the Middle East
Monitor dossier, partly on the basis of the involvment of the Muslim Council
of Britain leader Daud Abdullah. But a survey compiled last month by the
independent Palestinian human rights group al-Haq, as well as earlier
reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, tell a similar
story.
The Hamas-led administration in Gaza is also held responsible for
significant human rights abuses, if on a smaller scale. But as the dispute
over attendance at next week's long-awaited Fatah conference in Bethlehem
has shown, the Islamist movement is prepared to release its Fatah prisoners
if the PA frees Hamas detainees in the West Bank. And that needs an American
and Israeli green light.
Which only underlines the fact that until the US and its followers
stop trying to divide-and-rule the Palestinians, allow them to choose their
own leaders and negotiate their own differences, hopes of serious progress
in the Middle East under Obama are bound to be unfulfilled.
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