An unconfirmed report is that at at 8:30pm tonight, December 24, 2009, the Egyptian Foreign Minister said on Egyptian TV Channel 2, that neither the Gaza Freedom March nor persons accompanying the Viva Palestina convoy would be allowed to enter Gaza.
The Foreign Minister’s comments confirmed statements made to Ann Wright and Tighe Barry of the Gaza Freedom March steering committee during their meeting this afternoon with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director of the Office of Palestinian Affairs Hisham Seif-Eldin and officer Ahmed Azzam. Barry and Wright went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss the December 20 disapproval of the entry into Gaza by the Gaza Freedom March.
Mr. Sief-Eldin said that Egyptian embassies in Europe and North America had received a large number emails and phone calls since the announcement of the disapproval. He was visibly upset by what he described as the “tone” of some of the emails received and forwarded to him by Egyptian embassies in Europe and North America and said that emails contained threats to Egyptian interests by tourist boycotts and personal attacks and derogatory language toward staff members. He said the position of the security and intelligence services of Egypt in disapproving transiting the Rafah border crossing had “hardened.”
Sief-Eldin said that the permit we had requested to hold an orientation meeting on December 27 at 7pm at the Holy Family complex was cancelled and that the permit for a press conference at the Pyramisa Hotel on December 27 would not be approved.
"At the meeting we presented a written request to hold a conference on Gaza for delegates only on December 28 and 29 either at the American University Cairo or at hotel. Mr. Azzad said the Foreign Ministry would forward the request to the security agency but did not believe it would be acted on in a timely manner."
The conference would be considered a “political” conference and would have to be approved by the Office of the Prime Minister.
Sief-Eldin in the strongest terms said security services would not permit gatherings with signs or banners. He said that no group would be permitted to travel to al Arish or Rafah. He said we should tell the 1360 delegates to “not come to Egypt” unless they were going to do only tourist things. He said that in a change from yesterday, the Viva Palestina convoy has not heeded the Government of Egypt’s decision on where the convoy should enter Egypt and none of their delegates will be allow to enter Gaza, but the vehicles will enter eventually through a checkpoint in Israel.
We asked again why the Government of Egypt did not make its refusal decision early in the five months process that the Gaza Freedom March has been coordinating with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a decision that would have notified delegates not to spend thousands of dollars on airfare to get to Egypt.
Seif-Eldin responded that the government makes its decision on its own time schedule, not on the time schedule of others. He ended by saying that in Egypt, things are not done in the same manner as in the United States or Europe. The security services will not permit demonstrations or protests and will deal with them quickly. (See MoreCODEPINK:Gaza Freedom March http://www.facebook.com/l/
Ottawa Canadian coordinators for the historic Gaza Freedom March were joined by Members of Parliament Libby Davies and Irene Mathyssen for a press conference to kick off a month of events in Canada and around the world, demanding that Israel lift its illegal siege of the Gaza strip.
Source: Abu Yazan, Fight Israeli Propaganda, Facebook
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Comments
Im an Australian that works within 15km of the Rafah Border Crossing. NO-ONE should go near that place, unless armed and they have a Death Wish.
dont be silly man where are u al-arish?
I hope Egypt will change their minds and allow the aid through. Is it not bad enough that they conspired with the zionist around this time last year (remember Livni and Mubarak laughing on the 26th December 2008). Egypt did not even warn Hamas that Israel was going to attack.
Egypt government should understand that if they continue to be part of the zionist oppression then they will lose far more than the 200 million dollars of US aid. The effect of global worldwide grassroot boycott of all things Egyptian will harm the Egyptian economy. By the way the US aid never reaches the poor of Egypt but fills the pockets of King Mubarak and those on his payroll!
Anwar I think Daniel is right to an extent in that if you are Egyptian or Palestinian then the EGyptian government is very good at shooting and torturing.
However if you are part of an International MOvement or NGO they will think twice about attacking them.
I hope the Gaza Freedom Marchers will go to Cairo and if they are arrested and deported back then so be it. We need to publicise it in all the countries where the delegates are from. Convince independant media to cover Egypts behaviour.
Why are you folks "demanding that Israel lift its illegal siege of the Gaza strip" when it is obvious that it is both Egypt and Israel? Here you ninnies are whining about Egypt blocking the border, yet you blame it all on Israel.
Then, of course, you people have nothing to say about the ten thousand rockets fired from Gaza at Israeli civilians (a war crime according to Goldstone, not me).
You silly bunts all hate Israel, yet you refuse to protest against the Hamas government which is anti-human rights and has an official policy that rejects peace.
Why don't you demand that Hamas negotiate peace with Israel, and ban honor killings of Palestinian women, discrimination against gays, and all those other nice causes that you are ignoring in your quest to hate the Zionists so much?
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