This email came today from Dr. Bill Dienst, who stayed in Gaza when the boats left to go back to Cypress (see Free Gaza boat flotilla information below or on their web site: www.freegaza.org). The 9 who stayed in Gaza are working to help more Gazans leave for medical and other reasons, to end the virtual imprisonment of Gazan citizens in their own country. This is news you won't likely see in the U.S. media - let me know if you do!
Bill is a Family and Emergency Room physician for Omak, a town in rural Washington in the northwestern United States. In 1985, after an intensive summer course in Arabic, Bill took an extra year of medical school, and spent a half year in Egypt, the West Bank and Gaza volunteering with various Palestinian healthcare organizations, initially with the Palestine Red Crescent Society headquartered in Egypt. He has been to Palestine on trips sponsored by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, by Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility to Israel/Palestine and with the Palestine Medical Relief Society. Here is his report:
Good Morning from Gaza City,
The boats of SS Liberty and SS Free Gaza arrived safely in Larnaca Cyprus last night with some of the original passengers and 9 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip aboard.
About 9 of our original international passengers stayed on in Gaza to do media and other work.
Yesterday, British Journalist Lauren Booth and I attempted to exit via Eretz Crossing into Israel, accompanied by sick Palestinians needing specialty care not available in Gaza.
The Israeli border guards threatened to shoot us, but we advanced slowly with our arms raised holding our passports up high; We advanced right through the tunnel right up to the iron gate, but the Israelis would not open it. The US and British Embassy's gave us the Royal run around and would not help us.
So after a visit to Beit Hanoun to see the Al Athamna Family, who are still in a state of grief from the massacre of 19 members of their family by Israeli mortar shells 2 years ago, we headed back to Gaza City. So now we are waiting for the Egyptian authorities to let us out of Gaza through Rafah. They are under pressure from Israel to keep us trapped in here. Now I am getting a better appreciation of what it means to be a Palestinian from Gaza.
I will keep you posted as best I can. It has been a grueling, but very worthwhile month.
Love,
Dr. Bill Dienst, Gaza
http://www.FreeGaza.org
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Free Gaza boats arrive in Gaza
Today, Angela (see blog entry below for August 14) and all of the 42 human rights workers arrived in their two boats, Free Gaza and Liberty, greeted by hundreds of cheering Gazans.
From the FreeGaza Website: GAZA (23 August 2008) - Two small boats, the SS Free Gaza and the SS Liberty, successfully landed in Gaza early this evening, breaking the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. The boats were crewed by a determined group of international human rights workers from the Free Gaza Movement. They had spent two years organizing the effort, raising money by giving small presentations at churches, mosques, synagogues, and in the homes of family, friends, and supporters.
They left Cyprus on Thursday morning, sailing over 350 kilometers through choppy seas. They made the journey despite threats that the Israeli government would use force to stop them. They continued sailing although they lost almost all communications and navigation systems due to outside jamming by some unknown party. They arrived in Gaza to the cheers and joyful tears of hundreds of Palestinians who came out to the beaches to welcome them. Read more: http://www.freegaza.org/
The story was also reported by ABC news, which reported that "thousands" of Gazans greeted the boats: www.abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=5638134
See pictures of the demonstrators and their trip: Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/
From the FreeGaza Website: GAZA (23 August 2008) - Two small boats, the SS Free Gaza and the SS Liberty, successfully landed in Gaza early this evening, breaking the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. The boats were crewed by a determined group of international human rights workers from the Free Gaza Movement. They had spent two years organizing the effort, raising money by giving small presentations at churches, mosques, synagogues, and in the homes of family, friends, and supporters.
They left Cyprus on Thursday morning, sailing over 350 kilometers through choppy seas. They made the journey despite threats that the Israeli government would use force to stop them. They continued sailing although they lost almost all communications and navigation systems due to outside jamming by some unknown party. They arrived in Gaza to the cheers and joyful tears of hundreds of Palestinians who came out to the beaches to welcome them. Read more: http://www.freegaza.org/
The story was also reported by ABC news, which reported that "thousands" of Gazans greeted the boats: www.abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=5638134
See pictures of the demonstrators and their trip: Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Touring East Jerusalem with ICAHD
East Jerusalem is part of the West Bank, inside the Green Line, the boundary separating Palestinian and Israeli areas when the U.N. partitioned Palestine in 1947, the legal basis for the creation of the state of Israel. Although a formal peace agreement has never been adopted, many people view this boundary as a starting place for negotiating boundaries if there is to be a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
When we were in East Jerusalem, we took a tour with Angela, from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Angela took our tour bus around East Jerusalem and showed us the places where Israelis are destroying Palestinian homes because they do not have building permits, while at the same building new apartment blocks and settlements for Israelis. She showed us the rubble of Palestinian homes within view of the new Israeli police station recently constructed in East Jerusalem. She showed us the new condominium development, Nof Zion, being built in the Silwan neighborhood, where Palestinian families have lived for hundreds of years. She told us this development is being marketed to American Jews because Israeli Jews would never want to live in the middle of this Arab neighborhood. Angela showed us where the Wall has cut off Palestinian East Jerusalem from the road to Jericho, a neighboring town now under the authority of the Palestinian Authority.
Angela also told us she was planning a civil action—breaching the blockade Israel has imposed on Gaza. This week Angela and other Israelis, Palestinians and internationals—human rights observers, aid workers and journalists—are taking a flotilla of boats to Gaza to draw the attention of the rest of the world to the impossible situation of the people living in Gaza, cut off from food, fuel and any way of making a living. Look for news of their action: www.freegaza.org or on the Palestine News Network: http://english.pnn.ps/index.php
The boat flotilla is one action marking the 60th anniversary of the “Nakba” the “catastrophe,” as Arabs describe the 1947-48 removal of Arabs from their villages, the destruction of those villages and the building of towns for Jewish migrants from around the world on those lands. Today, more than five million refuges still wait to return to these homes, a right guaranteed to them by international law, a right which has never been addressed in peace negotiations. But still, today, Arab homes are being demolished—one four-story apartment building in East Jerusalem on July 28.
When we were in East Jerusalem, we took a tour with Angela, from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Angela took our tour bus around East Jerusalem and showed us the places where Israelis are destroying Palestinian homes because they do not have building permits, while at the same building new apartment blocks and settlements for Israelis. She showed us the rubble of Palestinian homes within view of the new Israeli police station recently constructed in East Jerusalem. She showed us the new condominium development, Nof Zion, being built in the Silwan neighborhood, where Palestinian families have lived for hundreds of years. She told us this development is being marketed to American Jews because Israeli Jews would never want to live in the middle of this Arab neighborhood. Angela showed us where the Wall has cut off Palestinian East Jerusalem from the road to Jericho, a neighboring town now under the authority of the Palestinian Authority.
Angela also told us she was planning a civil action—breaching the blockade Israel has imposed on Gaza. This week Angela and other Israelis, Palestinians and internationals—human rights observers, aid workers and journalists—are taking a flotilla of boats to Gaza to draw the attention of the rest of the world to the impossible situation of the people living in Gaza, cut off from food, fuel and any way of making a living. Look for news of their action: www.freegaza.org or on the Palestine News Network: http://english.pnn.ps/index.php
The boat flotilla is one action marking the 60th anniversary of the “Nakba” the “catastrophe,” as Arabs describe the 1947-48 removal of Arabs from their villages, the destruction of those villages and the building of towns for Jewish migrants from around the world on those lands. Today, more than five million refuges still wait to return to these homes, a right guaranteed to them by international law, a right which has never been addressed in peace negotiations. But still, today, Arab homes are being demolished—one four-story apartment building in East Jerusalem on July 28.
Free Gaza boats set sail
When we were in Israel and Palestine, we met Angela, who took us on a tour of demolished Palestinian homes and new homes being built by Israelis in Arab areas of East Jerusalem (see today's previous post). She told us she would be participating in an international demonstration to breach the blockade in Gaza, to publicize the damage that Israel's blockade is doing to Gaza. The group purchased two boats and they have now set sail. On Wednesday I got an update from the group:
"By the time you read this, our two boats, the Free Gaza and SS Liberty should be sailing from Chania's old port in Crete despite a gloomy forecast of storms ahead. Our captains have decided it is time to quit our dock for security reasons and so we are heading along the Crete coastline on our way to pick up the rest of our passengers who have been waiting patiently in Cyprus. We could be in for a rough ride, but without going into too much detail, we probably are more at risk by not moving. Israel has a history of using Mossad and Kidon to sabotage and destroy peaceful operations designed to help or show solidarity towards Palestinians. From Crete we will head towards larnaca, Cyprus to pick up the rest of our group and then we are bound for Gaza to break the medieval siege imposed by Israel".......(read more on their web site: http://www.freegaza.org/ or subscribe to the listserve to get updated email news of their progress: https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/gazafriends
"By the time you read this, our two boats, the Free Gaza and SS Liberty should be sailing from Chania's old port in Crete despite a gloomy forecast of storms ahead. Our captains have decided it is time to quit our dock for security reasons and so we are heading along the Crete coastline on our way to pick up the rest of our passengers who have been waiting patiently in Cyprus. We could be in for a rough ride, but without going into too much detail, we probably are more at risk by not moving. Israel has a history of using Mossad and Kidon to sabotage and destroy peaceful operations designed to help or show solidarity towards Palestinians. From Crete we will head towards larnaca, Cyprus to pick up the rest of our group and then we are bound for Gaza to break the medieval siege imposed by Israel".......(read more on their web site: http://www.freegaza.org/ or subscribe to the listserve to get updated email news of their progress: https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/gazafriends
Monday, August 4, 2008
Homes Demolished in East Jerusalem
If you want to see how the IDF demolishes homes, you can watch one filmed last week, perhaps the same demolition described in the post below: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=NYP7VvTJXto
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