06/01/2010 Egyptian forces shot and wounded at least two Palestinians on Wednesday during a violent protest on the Egypt-Gaza border against clashes between the Egyptian security forces on Wednesday and members of a convoy led by left-wing British politician George Galloway. The convoy was trying to take relief supplies to Palestinians in the Gaza strip.
Egyptian state television said that gunfire from the Gaza Strip killed an Egyptian border guard. However, the Palestinians deny that the shootings took place from their side.
Some 520 activists belonging to the convoy broke down the gate at the port in El-Arish to protest the Egyptian decision to ship some of the goods through the occupied territories.
Police used water cannon to force the protestors to leave Arish harbor, which they had occupied, a security source said. Around 40 members of the convoy had minor injuries while around 15 police officials were hurt, witnesses said.
Cairo insists the food and other supplies should go to Gaza via an Israeli-controlled checkpoint while the convoy's leaders want to use the Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing.
Egyptian authorities wanted 59 of the trucks to go to the Israeli checkpoint, said Galloway, the sole member of the British parliament for the Respect party who has long campaigned for the Palestinian cause. Galloway said Israel was likely to prevent convoy lorries entering Gaza. "We refused this," he told Reuters TV. "It is completely unconscionable that 25 percent of our convoy should go to Israel and never arrive in Gaza. Because nothing that ever goes to Israel, ever arrives in Gaza."
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu telephoned his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Aboul Gheit several times Tuesday night and urged him to release members of an aid convoy blocked at El-Arish following violent clashes.
Talks in which Galloway and a delegation of Turkish MPs sought to change the Egyptian's minds proved unsuccessful.
Cairo has imposed strict regulations and restrictions on pro-Palestinian foreign activists who have held protests in Egypt since late December to mark the first anniversary of Israel's three-week offensive on the Gaza Strip.
It has also controlled the movement of Palestinians and some foreigners at Rafah and is building a controversial steel wall along its border with Gaza.
The convoy of nearly 200 vehicles arrived in the Mediterranean town on Monday after a dispute with Cairo on the route. Leaders of the convoy originally refused Egypt's condition that the aid should be shipped via Arish on the Mediterranean rather than via the Red Sea port of Nuweiba. But they later relented and started arriving at Arish on Thursday.
Cairo accused the convoy organizers of trying to embarrass Egypt, which has refused to permanently open its Rafah border crossing with Gaza.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum on Wednesday strongly denounced the Egyptian authorities for assaulting Viva Palestina activists in Al-Arish seaport, saying that this attack confirmed that there is participation in the blockade on the Gaza Strip and attempt to prevent any help extended to its people.
In a press statement to the Palestinian information center (PIC), spokesman Barhoum said that this savage attack on the aid convoy activists affirmed that there are no Egyptian intentions to break the siege or alleviate the suffering of one and a half million Palestinians besieged in Gaza.
The spokesman underlined that the Egyptian authorities also infringed on the sovereignty and dignity of 40 European, Arab and Muslim countries represented by the convoy. “This convoy came with noble humanitarian and moral goals and attacking it in this way is an inhuman and unjustified act,” the spokesman stressed.
Spokesman for the convoy Zahir Al-Beirawi said that the Egyptian security authorities used intentionally excessive force against the international activists and damaged more than 10 vehicles loaded with humanitarian aid.
Spokesman Beirawi pointed out that the Egyptian authorities brought cars full of large quantities of stones to use them against the activists.
The spokesman appealed to the free people of the world to intervene to prevent the Egyptian attacks on the convoy and called on the Egyptian authorities to stop this madness.
About the reasons which led to these clashes, the spokesman explained that the Egyptian authorities demanded the organizers of the convoy to give up one third of the cars loaded with aid.
The spokesman noted that the convoy organizers felt that there was a kind of conspiracy especially after they saw a large number of Egyptian policemen moving and surrounding the port from all sides.
Different participants in the convoy also told satellite channels on air that the Egyptian attack on them was carried out unexpectedly following a sit-in staged by the convoy at the port terminal in protest at the Egyptian refusal to allow more than 50 aid cars into Gaza.
For his part, Ali Abu Sukkar, a member of the convoy, noted that the Egyptian authorities refused unjustifiably to allow into Gaza the most important aid vehicles which are loaded with medicines and medical equipment, adding the policemen deliberately damaged several cars of the convoy, which reflected the level of hatred and insistence on not helping Gaza people.
In another context, the youngest European activist Israa Abu Rashid, who participated in the convoy of Freedom for Gaza, told the PIC that the Egyptian security forces, after confiscating their buses and aid vehicles and allowing them to walk on foot last Thursday, attacked the convoy participants and physically assaulted her and her mother.
The young activist added that the Egyptian officer tried to take off the Palestinian flag she was carrying and kept beating her in order to force her to let the flag, while on the other side of the street, she saw other officers beating her mother too.
Meanwhile, an alliance of solidarity with the Palestinian people in Europe has called for demonstrations in front of the Egyptian embassies in a number of European capitals to protest the Egyptian security authorities' assault on the international aid convoy Lifeline-3.
The alliance, grouping 14 European organizations, said that the rallies would take place at the same time in a bid to pressure Cairo into halting the blackmail against the Lifeline convoy and to protest the savage assault on its members.
In Istanbul, thousands of protesters staged a demonstration to condemn the Egyptian police crackdown on the Gaza-bound aid convoy. The protestors marched towards the Egyptian Consulate in the Turkish capital and held a picture of assassinated Hezbollah military commander Imad Moghniyeh (Haj Redwan) and a picture titled "the picture of betrayal", showing Egyptian President Hosni Muabark shaking hands with former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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