Gaza

Even though we might be made blind to the evil afoot, we will not be silent. This is the lesson of modern history. We will sing a new song as strangers in a strange land: Let My People Go. While the Egyptians, Israelis, and Americans conspire to keep us from seeing the conditions of life in the world’s largest prison (sorry, no visiting hours this month), there is a chorus, a voice, 43 nations rich, which is lifted in greater harmony and crescendo than ever before to call for raising the siege of Gaza and thereby increasing the security of Israel.

Operation Cast Lead was a massacre filled with thousands of heartbreaking stories. Each of the 1,400 persons killed represents an entire world. Yes, it is also a war crime to fire kassam rockets into Israel with the intention to kill civilians. Over 2,000 rockets and 1,600 mortar shells were fired into Israel in 2008 alone. Some among the Palestinian population use armed force to resist Israeli's military occupation and blockade of Gaza and the West Bank. According to international law, armed resistance against illegal occupation can be considered a just cause, as long as the rules of war are observed. However, as a person committed to nonviolence, I view the use of militarism by states or non-state actors to ensure security or resist occupation as a self-defeating strategy that promotes more violence and suffering and does not, in the end, result in well-being or peace for beleaguered populations. However, for those who believe in the use of military force as a viable option, Israel's response to kassam attacks went far beyond legal and ethical boundaries. The much maligned Goldstone Report proved beyond reasonable doubt that Israel intentionally targeted civilians and civilian institutions with deadly weapons. This is nothing new.

When I traveled to Cairo to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, I hoped to enter Gaza to contribute toward ending the siege and preventing future air assaults and invasions, such as the 22-day Operation Cast Lead that Israel launched against Gaza at the close of 2008.

I was also keenly looking forward to meeting a young Gazan who had greatly assisted my co-workers on a Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation to Gaza during last year’s Operation Cast Lead. At considerable risk to himself, this young man met members of Voices at the border, arranged housing, translated, and assisted in bearing witness to the devastation caused by the Israeli military assault. Due to the callousness of the Egyptian authorities, I was not able to meet this man or deliver much needed material aid to his community. Early this morning, my co-workers and I received an email from our friend in Gaza, saying that the Israeli military is once again bombing near the Rafah border. One Palestinian was killed and others were injured.

One of the acts of conscience which impressed the Egyptian public, inspired the Gaza Freedom March delegation, and echoed compassionately through exchanges with Palestinians in Gaza, was the act of thirty delegates to initiate a fast at the beginning of the gather in Cairo. Especially impressive was that these individuals were always at the front of actions over the five days we were in Cairo, and always warm and interactive with the Egyptian Police, the public, press, and international delegation. This is the statement they issued as we prepared to disband in Cairo.

As we gathered with candles under a full moon, directly overhead, at the edge of Tahrir (Freedom) Square, in Cairo, Egypt, the few hundred here welcomed the New Year with increased hope that a week together might offer the momentum to advance the cause of peace in the Middle East and the release of Gazan Palestinians in particular from the state of siege they have suffered most intensely throughout the year just ended.

This morning following our Gaza Freedom March planning meeting, we headed to Tahrir Square in Cairo.

We waited for the sign of a flag waving to let us know that it was time to get together on the right side of the square. A big crowd was already there. Mark Johnson [executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation] and I joined the crowd. I took my sign of “Free Gaza” out and started to chant “Free, Free, Gaza.” Then suddenly I noticed that the Egyptian police were attacking us. This was my experience:

The young Egyptian soldiers who arrive by buses to whatever site where we convene, bear no guns or batons and are quick to smile, though their superiors try to keep them somber and reserved. Passing out yellow pens labeled in English and Arabic with the logo of the Gaza Freedom March (GFM), and greeting them with the traditional greeting, Salaam Aleikum, they whisper their names, ask where we are from, and even signal sympathies for our efforts. They are quick to smile, and despite their sympathies also have reservations about the Gaza situation based in their own political context.

Mark Johnson and I arrived in Cairo late last night.  My first impression of Cairo: polluted!

This morning we got together with all the members of Gaza Freedom March in three different hotels. We decided to go to The Sun Hotel. Everyone was there; Father Louie Vitale, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Medea Benjamin, and most of the people who took the Fellowship of Reconciliation's civilian diplomacy delegations to Iran in the past several years. It was very good to be with all these wonderful colleagues and passionate people. 

There are many different faces and accents, there are groups from Japan, Italy, Spain, the Philippines, Mali, Turkey, England, France, and many others: all together almost 1,400 people from 42 different countries, to show their solidarity with our brothers and sister in Gaza. 

Palestine is a world without color.  It is Christmas and I thought, at least during these happy days, in Bethlehem, Jesses’ birthplace, happiness must be in the air.  But no, I was mistaken.  

Why should they be happy at all?  How could they be happy?   Could a person be happy while passing through checkpoints every day?  Could one be happy while being insulted at every moment of his/her life?  Can they be happy looking out of their windows and seeing the wall of injustice?  Can they be happy looking at their land and seeing someone else, with American tax money, building his own dream home.   Is it possible to see color in such an atmosphere?  Is it possible to live like a prisoner and be happy?

Crossing into Bethlehem the second time was considerably easier because President Abbas was not using the checkpoint on Saturday; his entourage had tied up traffic throughout the district on Friday much as an American President’s cavalcade would in New York or Chicago. And we were only crossing the wall to sit in the offices of Wi’am which have recently moved in to “new offices” (the building was constructed in 1889), which look directly at the wall.