Cairo, Sinai Desert, Al Arish, Egypt

Fri., May 29, 2009

We carry our backpack luggage from our hotel to a downtown parking lot where two big tour buses are parked, along with two carloads of Egyptian Internal Security Officers who stand silently, watching us and occasionally using their cellphones. We mill around for half an hour, waiting for stragglers. Tighe Berry, a Code Pink leader from California, who calls himself “the Propman” and is the one who is in charge of the playground equipment, is everywhere at once, climbing on top of the buses, lashing down the equipment, assuaging nervous bureaucrats on his cellphone and negotiating with the IS agents. We sing.

Finally, we mount up and move out in a convoy with IS and Tourist Police officers with AK 47’s in pickups, and unmarked cars of higher officers, in front and behind us.



We eat lunch on the road from last night’s leftovers. As we cross the Suez Canal, Carl Scheiren, retired administrator from the American University in Cairo, speaks to us of the importance of the Canal to Egypt and the way it has changed hands. Monia Mazigh, a human rights activist from Canada, tells us of her two year struggle to free her husband Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, after he suffered “rendition” by the U.S. to Syria where he was tortured and imprisoned.

Everybody on the trip is interesting. Most are some sort of political activist. Some are traditional pacifists, others radical leftists. Many are retirees, veterans of anti-war, civil rights, gay rights, feminist, environmental and other struggles. There are notables like Norm Finkelstein, the professor denied tenure at Hunter College and DePaul University because of his criticism of Israel and Roane Carey, Managing Editor of The Nation. Phil Weiss, of the blog Mondoweiss, joins us later.

In the late afternoon we arrive at Al Arish, an Egyptian coastal town close to the Gazan border. We will bed down here as there are no hotels in Rafah, and attempt entry tomorrow. A group of us wander through back alleys from one of the hotels to get to the beach. Trash swirls in the off shore breeze. Most of the hotels and beach homes are empty, victims of the downturn in tourism. I plunge into the Mediterranean in an uncrowded stretch of beach and discover why it’s uncrowded. I’m covered with seaweed. It’s like swimming in minestrone. I move down the beach where I join crowds of locals cavorting in clearer water.

That night, after a nice fish dinner near the sea, we repair to a mock Bedouin tent on the grounds of the restaurant where we sit on cushions and listen to Norm Finkelstein relate his thoughts on the illegalities of the Israeli/Egyptian blockade of Gaza.

Norm went over some “facts on the ground” about the Israeli attacks on Gaza of Dec., 2008 and Jan., 2009. 1400 Gazans, 60 % civilians, (120 women, 450 children) were killed. 6000 were injured. 80% of agriculture and industry was destroyed. 40 mosques were badly damaged. This is versus 13 Israeli dead, 8 by friendly fire. 3000 missions flown. No planes lost, no tanks lost. Hamas had only small arms. He says this was not war. It was a massacre.

Norm asks why Israel engaged in such a blatant crime. Not the Qassam rockets of Nov. 5, 2008. Israel admits it broke the cease fire with a bombing raid on Nov. 4, 2008 killing several Gazans. This was US election day and the raid received little or no coverage. Israel’s Defense Minister, Barak, admitted that Hamas fired rockets in response to Israel’s raid. Hamas agreed to restore the cease fire (the blockade itself was in violation of the cease fire agreements). Israel ignored the offer.

Nor was the reason just the Knesset election either, although, he says, killing Arabs is always good for votes in Israel. Norm believes it was for deterrence credibility, following Israel’s defeat by the Hezbollah in Lebanon. They want the Arabs and everyone else to fear them as one fears a mad dog, capable of attacking anywhere, anytime.

He points out that the illegality of Israeli action towards Palestinians in general and Gazans in particular, under International Law as set forth in decisions of the International Court of Justice, the Rules of War, the Charter of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention and the Resolutions of the United Nations, is one of the least contentious issues in modern Middle Eastern history. Israel is clearly guilty of massive violations of all of the above, e.g.. acquisition of territory by conquest, disproportionate violent reaction to minimal provocation, deliberate breach of cease-fire agreements, collective civilian punishment for Palestinian transgressions, use of banned or partially banned weapons such as white phosphorus, “DIME” projectiles, cluster bombs, deliberate or reckless attacks on civilians and civilian targets such as schools, hospitals, mosques, residential dwellings, ambulances etc. Every NGO agency that has studied this history has concluded that these violations are well established, e.g. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Dugard Commission.

Further, he points out, Gaza has been attacked repeatedly in other IDF campaigns named variously “Summer Rain” and “Autumn Leaves” And, of course, there is the illegal blockade since March , 2006.