10 Days in the Cairo Corral

Who isn’t horrified by the situation in Gaza. It has been called the largest Open Air Prison in the world, a ghetto, or simply a violation of human rights, by more organizations and journalists and bloggers than I can name. To summarize quickly, Gaza is a 25 mile long narrow strip of land along the Mediterannian sea that Israel captured from Egypt in June of 1967.
The people who live there did not consider themselves Egyptians however, they called themselves Palestinians. The land was only part of Egypt since 1948 when the United Nations partitioned Palestine and created the state of Israel. The claim to the land is disputed, but as far as I can see, Palestians and Israeli Jews are very closely related. They are both descended from the Semetic tribes in the area, both are highly literate educated people, their languages Hebrew and Arabic are very similar, and in a reasonable world they should be cousins if not brothers and sisters. This was not to be.
The creation of Israel was the culmination of an over 50 years of effort to colonize the area by European Jewish investors and religious zealots. The existence of an indigenous population was sometimes denied, sometimes ignored and never considered a barrier.
Israel quickly became a client state of Europe and the United States and very quickly started to remake the area into a modern post World War 2 middle class state, complete with malls, freeways, bill boards, and fast food restaurants. Just like the American Indians, the people who lived on the soon-to-be profitable land had to be pushed out. The difference here is that the neighboring states found an ally in the other major cold war power, the USSR and very quickly the area became a battle ground for international diplomacy to the detriment of the people who lived there.
Flash forward to 2006, the Soviet Union has fallen, Egypt and Jordan have been brought to varying degrees into the US/NATO fold and the Gazans are told that Israel will no longer occupy them, and they can elect their own government. Of course when Gaza elected Hamas, to all appearances a group of fanatical ultra religious thugs and terrorists, Israel could not just sit by. The decision was to starve them out,withhold any money that was in International Banks, or due to them. When Hamas, in 2008 responded by lobbing some inaccurate and poorly made rockets into Israel, then Israel bombed them into rubble killing thousands.
A pro Israel, Jewish Judge named Goldstone was asked by the United States to investigate the situation, and he found gross violations of International law and human rights. Many Israeli solders are now unwilling to travel outside their country for fear of being arrested and charged with war crimes.
Amidst all of this, and much more, the siege continues, and on the one year anniversary of the bombing, international peace activists from all over the world decided to go to Gaza, march with the people of Gaza to call for peace. I decided it was time for me, as an American Jew to go and see if this madness could be understood and help do my part for peace.
As Gaza is bordered by Israel (the number one rec ipient of US Aid) and Egypt (the number two reciepient of US Aid), the decision was made to go to Egypt. The peace organization Code Pink, stepped up and agreed to manage and lead the US contingent and received some assurance that Egypt would let the peace marchers into Gaza. We knew anyway that Israel would not. As they say, you pays your money, you takes you chances, so I sent some money to Code Pink, bought a plane ticket and headed off to Cairo.
The first thing you notice after you get off the plane in Cairo is the smell. The whole thing smells like exhaust fumes. The second thing you notice is the police. The police are everywhere! There are little booths all over the place with “Tourism Police” in English written on them.
TOURISM POLICE
In theory the Tourism Police are there to aid tourists, but as far as I can tell, their real function is to harass tourists and extract bribes from them. They do not speak English, they will let you into restricted areas or take photos only if you give them money. We found out later that they also can be called into service to separate foreign demonstrators from their local populace.
WELCOME TO EGYPT
Code Pink organizers had been in Cairo for several weeks before we got there (on December 26th, the day after Christmas). They had secured rooms at a local college for all of us to gather, register, get information, log onto the Internet, meet with interest groups etc. they had also contracted busses to take us into Gaza, and arraigned for us to meet people in Gaza, and for places to stay and eat. In return for this, the government of Egypt had requested that we not meet with local Egyptian organizations. Since we were only going to be in Cairo a day before we went to Gaza, Code Pink agreed to this. This turned out to be a serious error.
After we got there, we found out (by e-mail that the Egyptian government had canceled the arranged rooms, cancelled the busses, and denied us permission to enter Gaza. As we now had nowhere to meet, we were told to gather in a large public square in downtown Cairo called Tariq square. This was the first of many meetings in Cairo.
The International groups planned several activities for the visiting people. We were going to go out on the Nile in boats and float candles to remember the dead, nope said the government and canceled the rented boats. We were going to put notes on a large bridge about why we were there, but the police did not allow this to go on. We were disappointed that we were not allowed to go into Gaza, but could not even get together with other people except in the very small restaurants.
We gathered in the small hotels in Cairo, I swear, looked right out of the battle of Algiers. Daily briefings had to be held simultaneously in three different hotel restaurants, and still, only a small percentage of the people could attend. An attempt at everyone forming constituent groups and each group elected a delegate to a delegates assembly was suggested. The Minnesota people elected our delegate.
The Week Begins
The first day we were directed to a building called the United Nations building for meetings. The Egyptian government had no intention of allowing us to meet with anyone there. The building was actually an office building full of NGOs ( Non Governmental Organizations). Many of them seemed to be pretty good organizations, Women’s groups, Indigenous organizations, community development organizations. The police (hundreds and hundreds of them) blocked our entrance, then they blocked between us and the sidewalk. Soon we were surrounded as large green trucks full of young men in full riot gear kept pulling up. They then brought metal gates that looked for all the world like cattle gates. We soon were introduced to what would become very familiar to us, so familiar we named it the Cairo Corral.
The Cairo Coral
In order to do the Cairo Coral well a few things are very necessary.
1. No local Egyptians can be inside the corral, or be able to see or hear what the corralled foreigners are saying.
2. The people inside the corral must be denied the ability to come and go freely.
There were some variations or perhaps evolution over the week.
1. Sometimes we were allowed to leave if we didn’t come back.
2. Sometimes everyone in the area who was not a local Egyptian was grabbed and thrown into the corral regardless if that wanted to be part of the protest or not.
3. Sometimes people were kept in and not allowed to leave without their passports being looked at, and given a lecture about not “doing this” again in the future. I was never exactly clear what “doing this” entailed.
Hunger Strikers.
At this meeting I met Heddy Epstein, an 84 year old holocaust survivor who said she was going to Hunger Strike until she was allowed to march in Gaza. Before long other people joined her in the Hunger Strike. I was told there was over 40 by the end of the week.
I have always been impressed by Hunger Strikers. It seems to be to be a way of putting your life on the line that is completely non-violent. Of course it only is effective if someone cares if you die, and the Egyptian government showed no signs of caring.
We Visit our Embassy
The next day, it was suggested we all visit our Embassies to ask them to assist us in getting into Gaza. The Spanish and French delegations were told that they were going to be allowed in because their governments had asked Egypt to let them in. This turned out not to be true, but at the time we all believed it.
The US Embassy in Cairo is in a very secured area. You cannot get withing two blocks of the embassy without going past Egyptian police checkpoints. We naively walked up to the checkpoint, showed them our US passports and said we wanted to go to the embassy. We were told to wait, so we waited. After an hour and a half, a couple of women got impatient and said they had a right to go to their embassy and started to walk past the checkpoint. They were grabbed by the police, they sat down and started screaming. We ran around them to support them and yelled at the police to let them go. Someone unfolded a banner, and before you could say police state, those green trucks, those young men, those cattle gates, and we were in the Cairo Corall. This time we were not allowed to leave, to eat, to use the bathroom, to get any shade, to sit anywhere but on asphalt or dirt. The women who were being held on the ground were released into the corral, and we sat there for the next 5 and a half hours. A man who was later identified as working for US Embasy security was present. I asked him if he worked for the Us Embassy (I asked everyone around who looked like they were in authority). He said he didn’t speak English. This was a lie.
There were some people who did call the Embassy and after about 5 hours, we were told that we could go in a visit our Embassy. I still think it is outrageous that we were held like that, but the Embassy denied that they knew anything about it. ?We know they were told about it, and they did not run out and tell the Egyptians to set us free. No to us in looked like we were been held with the full knowledge and approval of the Embassy, which would, of course be a violation of law. I have been told by an aid of Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office that it will be looked into.
A compromise?
Code Pink had a previous relationship with the wife of Egyptian President Hosne Mubarek. Through this relationship, she offered to take 100 people from our group with her into Gaza as part of the Red Crescent. The Red Crescent is like the Red Cross, and she was the head of it in Egypt. This offer was made very late at night and the list of the 100 people needed to be turned in the next morning. Code Pink worked through the night to come up with a list of who would be on the list. They attempted to balance the group by country, and to give priority to Palestinians from Gaza who wanted to be reunited or visit their families. It was suggested we all go to send the two busses off.
By morning a very heated and emotional controversy was raging. The foreign minister, reportedly angry by the wife’s allowing the 100 in, was quoted as saying that only the “good” supporters were being allowed into Gaza, not the “hooligans”. This obviously offended the many groups who were not allowed to send anyone. Also it became clear that although Code Pink had organized the United Stated Delegation, they had generated a lot of anger from some people both from the United States and from around the world. People were saying they were a bunch of “California”, White, middle class, arrogant, entitled self serving women who were never chosen and did not deserve to be the leadership of the group. I thought some of these adjectives could be accurately applied to some of the women, but it was unfair to paint the entire organization with that wide of a brush.
Also some people claimed to have talked to leaders in Gaza who did not think a token group should be sent.
By morning Code Pink had reversed itself and said that it did not endorse sending the smaller group to Gaza, but the busses had been rented and the people were ready to go. The discussion raged both on and off the busses. One man told me he got on and off the bus several times. Another said that she agonized over the decision. I only talked to the people who did not choose to go at this time, because, obviously the ones who did no were not around. The anger and bad feeling expressed towards the people who did go were loud and, in my opinion, not entirely fair.
New Years Eve – the March.
Another Corral in Cairo. This one with some injury to demonstrators as the leadership decided to start a “March to Gaza” in the street in front of the Egyptian Museum. The police clearly had no tolerance for this and people were treated quite roughly as they were pushed, thrown, kicked and tossed onto the sidewalk. I and my companion had decided we did not was to be in the corral and were going to watch this from a distance. The police had other ideas, we were spotted, and although we were not wearing any buttons, carrying any signs or banners, we were pushed into the corral over our protests and pleas. Once in the Corral we were eventually allowed to leave after our passports were examined and we were admonished to b e good tourists and never cause any trouble again.
We were told that one Belgium woman died of a hear attack, but then we were also told she died at the French Embassy. I never did confirm this although I heard it from several different people.
The French Embassy
The French people had planned to camp in Gaza. As there were no hotel room available in Cairo, they decided to camp out in front of their Embassy. There were corralled of course, but after a day, their Embassy started allowing them access to the bathrooms and prevailed upon the Egyptians to allow them to come and go. It was quite a festive atmosphere there, lots of signs, tents, and people camping out. They stayed there all week.
The Israeli Embassy.
One day we converged in front of the Israeli embassy in Cairo. The newspaper said this was the first ever protest or demonstration in front of the Israeli embassy in Cairo. I really find that difficult to believe, but well there it is. Perhaps another result of the police state.
Viva Palestinia
While we were doing this, a large caravan of trucks from England and Europe carrying humanitarian supples was also trying to get into Gaza. They were told by Egypt they could get in, then told no. They went to Jordan, then up to Syria then back to Egypt by boat. Later the police attacked them when Egypt let part of the convey through and then stopped them. We were watching the news and awed and angered by the treatment of this completely humanitarian effort.
Report from Gaza
When the people who did go to Gaza returned, we met (again in multiple rooms) to hear what they experienced. For our disappointed and exhausted selves, what we heard was even more disheartening and actually devastating.
We knew, of course, that Hamas, the elected government of Gaza was problematic, but we heard nothing good about them.
• The march, which the organization who planned it expected 50,000 people was taken over by Hamas. Only men were allowed to march, and only government speakers and banners allowed. We were told that the Civil Society organizations had pulled out of the march and that only 500 people participated, all men except for a van with eight courageous women at the rear, that some of the people talked to.
• The situation for Women and Children is dire. All of the Women’s shelters in Gaza have been closed by Hamas. The incidence of domestic abuse, young forced marriage has greatly increased.
• These people, who greatly value schooling, and used to have a near 100% literacy rate, now see schools closed, child labor on the rise and fewer and fewer people going on to college.
• The regugee camps are woefully under supplied. We were told of women raising children with just an empty tent. No mattresses or cots or clothing or food, just an empty tent, because that is all the relieve agencies gave them that got through.
Hamas, we were told was corrupt, misogynist, fundamentalist and completely uncompromising.
The people in Gaza are stuck between this and the Israeli blockade. My heart goes out to them.
Conclusion
The blockade of the people of Gaza in maintained by their only two border countries, Israel and Egypt. That Israel and Egypt rank number one and two in amount of Us Government foreign aid in certainly not a coincidence.
As we were there Israel continued to build more settlements, even as Secretary of State Clinton asked them not to. What good is asking them not to, when we continue to fund them?
There was a group of South African activists who gave presentations on the Anti-Apartheid struggle in their country. This eventually resulted in a large group of people generating a document which is being called the Cairo Declaration. This document calls for an international campaign for boycott and divestment in Israel similar to the one that put pressure on the South African government in the 1980s. A plan for a world tour to generate support for this strategy is being developed. These people were very impressive.
We must find ways to create leverage on the Israeli, Egyptian, and US governments to alive the suffering of the people in Gaza. Much of the world is sitting by and allowing this atrocity to continue.
If the South African’s can reconcile, North Ireland can stop fighting with England, we the US can elect Barak Obama president, I believe we can bring peace to the Middle East.

Why I am going to Gaza

by David Tilsen

What: This year, I am joining an international group of supports to support the residents of Gaza in a march and demonstration to remember and protest the brutal bombing of Gaza by Israel one year ago, and the continued siege, blockade and imprisonment of the residents of Gaza by the State of Israel.
http://www.gazafreedommarch.org/

Ten Reasons I am going to Gaza.

10. I was not alive during the genocide of the American Indians in my own country.
The history of the European invasion of North American, and the resultant devastation it caused to the native people who were already living here has plagued my conscience for most of my live. We enjoy the prosperity, peace and beauty of this country because of the systematic murder, starvation, and cultural genocide that the founders of this country perpetrated on the people who already lived here.
I would hope that, had I been alive then, I would not have sat back and enjoyed the fruits of this destruction, but how do I really know?
I was born in 1948, the year of the partition of Palestine into Israel and Jordan. I have witnessed the European invasion of this country, funded by my taxes and the donations of the American Jewish community and the parallels between this and the history of the Americas weigh heavy on me. Once again a resident people are being moved out, disinfrachised, starved, killed and their very existence denied in my name, and for my benefit.
I have an opportunity in this lifetime to not sit idly by.

9. At a young child we raised money to plant trees inIsrael. Did these trees displace native Olive groves owned by Palestinian?

8. When I was 12 years old, I watched the film Exodus and learned the mythology of the founding of Israel.

7. I have learned the lesson of the Warsaw ghetto.
Irony is not a strong enough word for the what the children of the survivors of the Warsaw ghetto are doing to another population in their midst.

6. I have visited Yad V’shem in Jerusulaem.
There are trees planted to commemorate the hero’s, the non Jews who saved people during the Holocaust.

5. Israel’s security, in fact its very survival is threatened by its inability to live in peace with its neighbors.

4. White Phosphorus is worse than napalm.
Israel used White Phosphorus (which it purchased from the United States with money provided by the United States) on civilian populations in Gaza and Lebanon. I fought again the use of Napalm in Vietnam, and its use here touches me to the core.

3. I know what fragmentation bombs are.
Fragmentation bombs, are weapons that are dropped and then they explode the send thousands of small metal pieces (bullets) into the bodies of whomever is near. Often the people who are near are not soldiers. These bombs will be around, causing terrible injury for many many years in Lebanon, Gaza and the west Bank. These also are purchased from the United States with money from my taxes.

2. It’s the strongest statement I can make at this time.
I know this will not solve the problem, but many people taking a stand is the only thing that has ever changed anything in the history of humankind.

1. Never Again means Never Again. It’s just not that complicated.