Asia 1 aid convoy enters Gaza

[EjazR]

BERNAMA - Asian Solidarity Brings Aid To Gaza

GAZA, Jan 4 (Bernama) - A month after embarking on its mission, the "Asia 1" aid convoy arrived in Gaza on Monday in an attempt to break the Israeli embargo on the Palestinian enclave.

The convoy comprised 112 members from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Japan, Kuwait and New Zealand.

They entered Gaza through the Rafah border crossing after their flotilla docked at the Egyptian Al-Aresh Port.

Upon arrival at the Rafah crossing, Palestinian officials and people crowded around to welcome the convoy which started its long trip from India on Dec 2 to Syria and finally sailed to Egypt .

The group succeeded in bringing 1,000 tonnes of food supply, medicines and children's toys.

Their arrival coincided with the second anniversary of Israel's three-week offensive on Gaza that began on Dec 27, 2008.

During their visit in Gaza, the pro-Palestinian group visited the headquarters of the Palestinian parliament destroyed during the war.

At the headquarters of the International Red Cross in Gaza, the Asian activists attended a protest along with the families of Gazan prisoners calling for the immediate release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel's jails.

They chanted slogans and held placards, which among them, read "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves".

They also visited families of Palestinians who were killed during the assault to show their solidarity with them.

Meanwhile, the head of the Palestinian committee on breaking the siege, Ahmed Youssef greeted the convoy members and expressed the Palestinians' appreciation for their humanitarian effort.

"We highly appreciate your effort and we extend our thanks to your governments," he said when addressing the delegation.

Fayrouz Mesbrola from India, who was leading the "Asia 1" convoy, told a news conference that the mission was aimed at ending the inhumane siege of Gaza.

The rockets fired by Palestinian militant groups into Israel rarely cause injury or damage, but they do cause widespread fear.

 

[EjazR]

Convoy from India reaches Gaza Strip | Stock Market Today

A convoy carrying humanitarian aid from India has reached the Gaza Strip with 1,000 tons of food and medical supplies. The convoy left India in November and travelled through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria. According to Maan news agency, 112 activists were allowed entry into the coastal enclave, with Iranian and Jordanian activists excluded.

Activists of the Asia 1, aid convoy backed by nations in Southeast Asia entering Gaza were from India, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Kuwait. The group brought food, medical supplies and children’s toys.

Israel imposed an economic blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized control of the coastal strip in 2007. The government, however, eased restrictions last year after a deadly Israeli commando raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, which sparked international condemnation.

 

[EjazR]

The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Nation | In Gaza gateway, walk east… & bang-bang

Rafah-Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Jan. 4: Figures masked in red-checked kaffiyehs, fire-arms in hand, ghostly figures on pick-up vans and motorcycles raise hands to wave and pull down their masks to reveal smiles that pierce the darkness of the desert.

“Mujahideen,” says Mahmoud, guide and minder, in the bus.

“They are here to welcome you. Welcome to liberated Palestine.”

In the drive through the Gaza Strip in the minutes after midnight, the mind tries to match what the eye sees with the nightmare visions that headlines through the years have conjured up on this patch of coastline between Egypt and Israel.

Three busloads of Asian peaceniks, including 53 Indians, cut across through Rafah and entered their destination after a 26-day drive from New Delhi.

Rafah Crossing is the southern gate of Gaza Strip. Gaza City is in the northern half. Salahadeen Road runs through its 40km length right up to the crossing with Israel at Erez. At Rafah, a halo from the mercury lights of the Jewish settlement of Sofa casts a faint light on the wall that separates Gaza from Israel.

“You walk towards there,” says Gaza-based journalist Ashraf Shannon of Press TV over a cigarette as he points eastwards, “and bang-bang”.

Two nights back, near the Rafah terminal, Israeli jets bombed again.

“They suspect there is a tunnel from here to Egypt,” said a member of the government committee to receive the Asian caravan. “Today it’s been quiet so far.”

It’s quiet but rarely still on Salahadeen road, named after Salahadeen Al Ayoube, who warred against Christian crusaders in the 12th century. The masked Mujahideen and armed police wave at the buses speeding towards Gaza City.

An official who was in Rafah wondered what was there now for the Asian caravan of aid givers to see and do in Gaza nearly two years after the 22-day war in which Israeli soldiers overran the city before unilaterally pulling out.

The shadowy piles of rubble that occasionally line Salahadeen Road are unmistakable. “Many buildings have been rebuilt with poor quality cement that has been smuggled in through the tunnels,” says another official. “In these small places, people often do not build houses that are more than one or two storeys high because we know we do not have good quality materiel,” he adds.

Since invading the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008, and pulling out on January 22, 2009, Israel has imposed a blockade of the land on which a population estimated at 1.4 million resides. Israel controls the airspace and the sea —Gaza’s people cannot venture out to more than six nautical miles and neither can vessels enter these waters without permission.

The nightmare visions of the dark in the drive to the city dissipate somewhat in the morning. Gaza City is not the devastation that is easily imagined from 7,000km away.

At the Al Quds Hotel in the city’s Mina (port) area, it is possible to sit out on a balcony over a cup of tea, facing the blue Mediterranean to the west and watching over an urban sprawl to the north that stretches all the way to the smoking chimney of a power station in Israel.

Carts pulled by donkeys, old sedans, UN-marked four-by-fours, graffiti on broken walls fill up a windshield tour as much as new buildings, some of them 12 storeys high.

The devastation comes “alive” elsewhere — in the lives of the people, for instance, in experiences that they share, in real-life stories that move a 71-year-old trade unionist from Kerala, the oldest member of the Indian contingent to tears. (This correspondent of The Telegraph was escorted to these people and places by officials appointed by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Authority.)

For two-year-old Yusuf, his mother says, it is as if he was born when he was two years old. The boy was born blind in jail till he was released with his mother. A girl in the prime of her youth, Afnana Sager, says she will not marry, though she is engaged because her father is not being released from prison. Her two sisters married in his absence.

Mariam Abdul Aziz, 65 years old, from Beit Lahiya, who is at the ministry for detainees, with a placard showing her son’s photograph, says Mohammed Abdul Aziz was picked up by the Israeli forces and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He has two more years to go. He cannot walk and is in the prison hospital in Ramallah.

Asked why he was picked up, she says because they charged him with killing a policeman and because he was a member of Hamas, the outfit that won the elections in Gaza Strip in 2006.

The devastation comes “alive” in the playground of the Al Tufrah Sporting Club where footballers from 12 to 24 years of age kick around in a field next to an exhibition of spent Hellfire missiles fired from F-16 fighter aircraft, 1000-pound shells of white phosphorous, an incendiary, Nimrod bombs fired from Apache helicopters and graduation certificates of Mohammed Al Akhlouq and his comrades killed in the war.

The club was one of the first targets of the Israeli Air Force in the 22-day war.

In Hamas-controlled Gaza, the exhibition does not display the weaponry of the Qassam Brigade, the militia. One official admits that they were of no match because the Israeli Defence Forces “took out” most of Hamas’s defences in the first few days of the war.

But the Qassam Brigade’s arsenal does include anti-tank mines named Yassin after the Hamas’ founder (Sheikh Ahmed Yassin), M16 rifles, rocket propelled grenades and the Katyudha, the pencil-like missile that is also used by the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israel.

 

[Yeti]

Good news for the people in Gaza India supports you

 

[mjnaushad]

Good news for the people in Gaza India supports you

Thats why Indian member argue that attack on freedom flotilla was justifide.....

 

[Yeti]

Thats why Indian member argue that attack on freedom flotilla was justifide.....

Are you painting 1 billion Indians with the same brush?

 

[Aslan]

Good news for the people in Gaza India supports you

I agree with MJ that many indian members here think otherwise. And for the record, the convoy was not only indian but also included many other nationalities
The convoy comprised 112 members from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Japan, Kuwait and New Zealand

So please let this be a mission of help and hope for the Palestinians rather then painting it in the same brush as only I and no one else.

 

[mjnaushad]

Are you painting 1 billion Indians with the same brush?

The word i used is Indian Members (Majority of them) .......

BTW you are also painting Indian billion population with same bursh of "Supporting gaza people"

 

[Aslan]

Are you painting 1 billion Indians with the same brush?

I am sure he didnt mean all but the fact is that many do.

 

[Yeti]

I agree with MJ that many indian members here think otherwise. And for the record, the convoy was not only indian but also included many other nationalities
The convoy comprised 112 members from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Japan, Kuwait and New Zealand

So please let this be a mission of help and hope for the Palestinians rather then painting it in the same brush as only I and no one else.

I know what the convoy was about and for the record I do not share the same sentiments I always have supported the people in Palestine and have spoken with many of them they always tell me how fond they are of Gandhi and the way India obtained independence using non-violence methods.

 

[Yeti]

Good news for the people in Gaza India supports you


The official position of the Indian goverment is a 2 state solution why some Pakistani members jumping on my comment when im wishing the people in Gaza luck? is it hard to digest

 

[SpArK]

Good news for the people in Gaza India supports you


The official position of the Indian goverment is a 2 state solution why some Pakistani members jumping on my comment when im wishing the people in Gaza luck? is it hard to digest

You dont know that yet. ??