FREE GAZA BOATS ARRIVE IN GAZA - Activists Break Blockade of Gaza - Special to The Washington Post by Linda Gradstein - Breaking the Gaza Blockade by Tim McGirk of TIME
The two boats of the Free Gaza protest group arrive from Cyprus, in Gaza City.
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.
Two small boats, 42 determined human rights workers, one simple message: “The world has not forgotten the people of this land. Today, we are all from Gaza.”
Tonight, the cheering will be heard as far away as Tel Aviv and Washington D.C.
QUOTES FOR PUBLICATION
“We recognize that we’re two, humble boats, but what we’ve accomplished is to show that average people from around the world can mobilize to create change. We do not have to stay silent in the face of injustice. Reaching Gaza today, there is such a sense of hope, and hope is what mobilizes people everywhere.”
–Huwaida Arraf.
Huwaida is Palestinian-American, and also a citizen of Israel. She’s a human rights activist and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. In 2007 she received her Juris Doctor from American University in Washington D.C. Currently she teaches Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Al Quds University in Jerusalem. Huwaida sailed to Gaza aboard the SS Liberty.
“We’re the first ones in 41 years to enter Gaza freely - but we won’t be the last. We welcome the world to join us and see what we’re seeing.”
–Paul Larudee, Ph.D.
Paul is a cofounder of the Free Gaza Movement and a San Francisco Bay Area activist on the issue of justice in Palestine. He sailed to Gaza aboard the SS Liberty.
“What we’ve done shows that people can do what governments should have done. If people stand up against injustice, we can truly be the conscience of the world.”
–Jeff Halper, Ph.D.
Jeff is an Israeli professor of anthropology and coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), a non-violent Israeli peace and human rights organization that resists the Israeli occupation on the ground. In 2006, the American Friends Service Committee nominated Jeff to receive the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize with Palestinian intellectual and activist Ghassan Andoni. Jeff sailed to Gaza aboard the SS Free Gaza.
For More Information, please contact:
(Gaza) Huwaida Arraf, tel. +972 599 130 426
(Gaza) Jeff Halper, tel. +972 542 002 642
(Cyprus) Osama Qashoo, tel. +357 99 793 595 / osamaqashoo@gmail.com
(Jerusalem) Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, tel. +972 547 366 393 /
Israel Allows Boats to Deliver Symbolic Shipment of Aid
By Linda Gradstein
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, August 24, 2008
JERUSALEM, Aug. 23 — Two wooden boats carrying dozens of human rights activists reached the Gaza Strip on Saturday afternoon after the Israeli navy decided not to hinder the challenge to Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian enclave. Thousands of Palestinians turned out to welcome the group, which brought token humanitarian aid, including hearing aids and balloons.
"It was really amazing — there were kids swimming out to see us and boats sailing out to meet us," said Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and the only Israeli Jew on board. "It took us a day and a half to get here, and most of the activists got seasick, but the people here were so happy when we arrived."
Halper, speaking by phone from Gaza, said the U.S.-based Free Gaza movement had worked for two years to arrange and finance the voyage.
He said he was surprised that the Israeli navy did not interfere with the boats, which left Cyprus on Friday. On board were 46 activists from 17 countries, including an 81-year-old Catholic nun and former British prime minister Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, Lauren Booth. Blair is currently the envoy for the Quartet, a group of Middle East peace mediators comprising the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.
Israel continues to control the territorial waters off Gaza and has sharply limited the amount of goods allowed into the strip since the Islamist Hamas movement, which Israel and the United States consider a terrorist group, seized power there last year. Israeli officials say that they have allowed food and medicine into the territory but that they hope to encourage residents to overthrow Hamas. Since June 19, Israel and Hamas have observed a cease-fire, although about 40 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aryeh Mekel said Israel had decided not to stop the boats from landing in Gaza to diminish media attention.
"We took away the drama," Mekel said. "They came, they were welcomed, but what will they do tomorrow? They were hoping for a long confrontation with Israel — now they won’t have it."
Mekel said that the decision did not set a precedent and that future cases will be examined on their merits. But Halper said he believed the Free Gaza movement had in fact broken the siege of Gaza.
"Now that we’ve come through, what’s the excuse to keep the third boat out or the 10th boat or the 100th? We did break the economic siege of Gaza," he said.
Halper said at least one of the boats will sail back to Cyprus in the next few days, adding that activists hope to take with them Palestinian students who have permission to study in U.S. universities but were unable to obtain exit permits from Israel. It is Halper’s first visit to Gaza since the summer of 2000, before the beginning of the second Israeli-Palestinian intifada. It is illegal for Israeli citizens to enter Gaza or the West Bank without permission, and he said he is likely to be arrested when he returns to Israel.
Activists on the boat had earlier complained that Israel was jamming the boat’s electronic equipment, an assertion Mekel called "a complete lie." Palestinian journalists who set out to meet the boats said they were forced to turn back after the Israeli navy fired warning shots at them. An Israeli army spokeswoman said no shots were fired at the boats.
Halper said that the Palestinians had asked for 9,000 hearing aids but that the group had the money to purchase 200. He said the frequent sonic booms of Israeli aircraft over Gaza had damaged the hearing of many Gazan children.
The Free Gaza activists said they hoped Saturday’s landing would improve the situation of the Strip’s 1.4 million Palestinians.
"We recognize that we’re two humble boats, but what we’ve accomplished is to show that average people from around the world can mobilize to create change," said Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American. "We do not have to stay silent in the face of injustice. Reaching Gaza today, there is such a sense of hope, and hope is what mobilizes people everywhere."
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1835521,00.html
Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008
Breaking the Gaza Blockade
By Tim McGirk/Gaza City
The Palestinians in Gaza don’t get many visitors. That’s because the Israelis have imposed an air, land and sea blockade since 2007 when Islamic militants seized control of the coastal strip on the Mediterranean, making it impossible for friends to just drop by. So when two vessels loaded with 46 peace activists arrived on Saturday, thousands of Palestinians lined the harbor in a party mood. Fishing scows honked their foghorns and swarms of kids swam out to the arriving boats just as the sun was turning the water to molten reds and gold.
It was a remarkable odyssey for the two battered ships of the "Free Gaza" movement, a U.S.-based pro-Palestinian group, which set out from Cyprus on Friday morning with few hopes of reaching Gaza. The activists, who hail from 14 countries, said that before they even set sail, they faced anonymous death threats, the mysterious drowning of one potential sponsor, and constant badgering by Israeli spies badly disguised as guitar-strumming hippies. "They kept popping up, everywhere," said Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, an organizer. "They were really annoying."
Once at sea, the activists — who include an 81-year old nun, a Greek leftist parliamentarian and the sister-in law of ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair — braved a squall and a bizarre communications blackout, which they say was caused by lsraeli electronic jamming, and which thwarted a rendezvous in heaving seas between peace activists and a ship of journalists.
The biggest danger they faced was possible arrest by the Israelis. Earlier, Israel had declared Gaza’s waters to be a "designated maritime zone" and warned the peace activists to steer clear or face arrest. At one point, says Palestinian-American law professor Huwaida Arraf who joined the activists, the radar picked up three vessels which were shadowing them from just over the horizon. The "Free Gaza" crew presumes the ships were Israeli.
But Israel chose to play nice, letting the peaceniks into Gaza on a once-only pass instead of acting the part of a high seas ogre. "They wanted a provocation at sea, but they won’t get it," explained Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron.
Now, Israel has to contend with a barrage of international media coverage of the two peace vessels sailing into Gaza harbor — and the publicity boon this will give to the Hamas militants who have ruled Gaza since June 2007 when they split with Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who governs from the Palestinian inland enclave in the West Bank.
Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Ismael Haniyeh, personally welcomed the activists.
Israel and Hamas are sworn enemies (the Islamic militants say they want to destroy the Jewish state) but nonetheless they agreed to a cease-fire in June that has largely held firm.The cruise into Gaza was bracingly celebrity-free. As Jeff Halper, the sole Israeli aboard the "Free Gaza" flotilla, says: "We didn’t have anybody famous. It was old-fashioned ‘people power.’ We just wanted to show what happens when ordinary people from around the world get together to try breaking this immoral siege on Gaza."
With international backing, Israel in 2007 clamped a strict economic boycott on the territory’s 1.5 million inhabitants, barring all but a minimum of humanitarian aid to the Hamas-controlled enclave. Some Palestinians at dockside grumbled that the activists should have brought in more relief supplies — they came only with 200 hearing aids for children and 5,000 balloons. But as Godfrey-Goldstein says, "We never intended for this to be a humanitarian mission. It’s about human rights in Gaza."
The next question: how will the peace activists get out of Gaza? The Israelis will probably allow them to sail back to Cyprus, without much shore leave in the Palestinian territory. It will be an especially circuitous and watery route home for Halper, who usually lives in Jerusalem. "It’s funny. From Gaza, I’m only an hour from home. I should be able to go home by bus, but instead I have to go back to Cyprus and then fly to Israel," says Halper. Still, the voyage home should be far less of an ordeal than it was running through Israel’s sea barricade.
