But the Egyptian security forces halted the delegation at Baladua, 190 km from the border. After staging a protest at the check point we began to walk towards Rafah, since our bus was blocked from moving ahead. Finally, after the police was blocking the road, taking away our passports and threatening us with arrest, we decided to take our protest back into Cairo itself. A rally was staged outside of the delegation of the European Union.
We received encouraging support from the Egyptian people and from the media. It is our fervent appeal to the governments and the peoples of the world to pressurize the Israeli Apartheid State, the US, the EU as well as the Egyptian government to end the genocidal siege of Gaza.
This year we commemorate that 60 years have passed since the Nakba, the catastrophe, expulsion and ethnic cleansing that followed in the wake of the establishment of the Zionist state of Israel. As the Israeli government threatens with a new holocaust on the Palestinian population in Gaza, we cannot remain silent. While the governments of Europe do not say a word to stop the Israeli war crimes, we represent the consciousness of all those in Europe who understand that the people of Gaza should not be punished for their democratic choice of electing Hamas as their government.
We proved our point; the complicity of the European governments on the inhuman and disastrous US-Israeli embargo imposed on Gaza. This was a further step of a series of actions we intend to take from now, in order to raise the issue of the siege on Gaza and to lift it on the ground. We call every descent human being to work with us in this direction.
European campaign against the siege on Gaza
April 1, 2008, Cairo
