Gaza siege is heartbreaking and corrupt

 Published on Friday 8 June 2012 08:44
I LEFT Belfast on April 22, 2012 to join the Bradford2Gaza Viva Palestina Arabia Right of Return Convoy.
We travelled through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria and Jordan. We stayed in Aqaba on the Jordanian Red Sea coast while attempting to be granted access to Egypt and in turn Gaza.
I was a participant on a previous Viva Palestina convoy which successfully got 150 vehicles and 382 activists into Gaza on October 21, 2010 – at a time when Egypt was under the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarack.
This time, with Egypt apparently undergoing the transition to democracy, I had hoped it would be much quicker. How wrong was I.
Mubarack may be gone but the regime and the counter revolutionaries appear to have
dug in.
Egypt’s complicity and active participation in the Israeli/American-inspired siege of Gaza is as heartbreaking as it is morally corrupt.
After 36 days on the road, Viva Palestina had to cancel the convoy carrying penicillin and baby milk to Gaza.
Eventually time and the Egyptians killed the convoy.
We must challenge the Egyptian government’s siege on Gaza.
This is a setback on the long road for peace, social justice, equality, dignity and freedom for Palestine but ultimately we shall prevail. We shall overcome.
Because the convoy represents the 6.8 million Palestinians living in exile who under UN Resolution 194 have the right (denied by Israel) to return to their homes in Palestine – Viva Palestina will return too.
I have already submitted my name for the next convoy.
We will keep trying to break the siege until free access is returned to the besieged little Gaza Strip, home to 1.8 million people living in a space of six miles by 26 miles.
Fra Hughes
Belfast
Gaza siege is heartbreaking and corrupt - Letters - Belfast Newsletter