Hundreds of activists with the Gaza Freedom March are staging continued demonstrations and sit-ins in Cairo to protest the Egyptian government’s refusal to allow them to cross the border into Gaza. Organizers say an offer by Egyptian authorities this morning to allow just 100 members of the group to go to Gaza was not sufficient. More than 1,300 people from over forty countries are in Cairo as part of the Gaza Freedom March. We go to Cairo to speak with Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada.
More than 1,300 people came from over forty countries. They’re in Cairo as part of the Gaza Freedom March, planning to cross the border last Sunday to commemorate the first anniversary of Israel’s assault on Gaza that killed 1,400 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis.
Around fifty to eighty people with the group did take up the deal and boarded a bus to Gaza this morning. Egypt’s border crossing point at Rafah is the only entrance point into the Gaza Strip not controlled by Israel.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit had hash words for the marchers, saying, quote, “Those who tried to conspire against us, and they are more than a thousand, we will leave them in the street,” he said.
Organised by the US progessive organisation, Code Pink, the Gaza Freedom March has been endorsed by the likes of Oliver Stone, Mike Leigh, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Craig and Cindy Corrie of the Rachel Corrie Foundation.
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