Issue No.590
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13 - 19 June 2002 Issue No.590 Home news |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
'Sick and tired of watching Palestinians die'
Attempts by young men and women to cross the border to Palestine to join the resistance became "nothing unusual", according to security officials. Khaled Dawoud tries to find out what's driving them across the border
Suleiman Mustafa Ali El- Ghandour, born in 1983, tried to learn from the failures of his predecessors. Evidently moved by Israel's continuous crimes against the Palestinians, Ghandour sought to sneak into the Palestinian border town of Rafah and join the "resistance". So, instead of attempting the nearly impossible task of sneaking through barbed wire fencing and past modern surveillance equipment on the border, which is heavily guarded by both sides, he decided to swim there. He still didn't make it. Palestinian security officials announced on 29 May that they had recovered his drowned body some 400 metres off the coast of Gaza, near the illegal Israeli settlement of Rafih Yam. Ghandour's body was taken to the morgue at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis and then sent back to Egypt last week.
Click to view captionGrowing pro-Palestinian feelings led scores of young Egyptians to risk their lives and try to cross the border to join resistance in the Palestinian territories
A security official in Rafah said that attempts by young Egyptians, mainly teenagers, or people in their early 20s, to cross into occupied Palestinian areas has become "nothing unusual" since the second Palestinian Intifada broke out nearly two years ago. "But those attempts increased tremendously after the latest Israeli operation [reoccupation of the West Bank] and the pictures of death that emerged," he added.
In only one week, at the beginning of April, while the Israeli campaign of destruction, code named "Defensive Shield", raged from one West Bank town to another, at least 10 young people were arrested in Rafah. And they were not only men. At least two young women were among those who attempted to cross the border into Palestine. One of them, moreover, reportedly carried a weapon. Since then, more than a dozen others, mostly schoolchildren and university students, have also been arrested. The police usually take their age and the outrage they express into account. They hand them over to their families, asking the person in charge to sign a pledge to keep a more watchful eye on them.
A security official in Rafah told Al-Ahram Weekly: "We can't arrest all these kids, especially when these incidents have been happening almost daily." This phenomenon became particularly alarming after Israeli soldiers, in control of the Palestinian side of the border with Egypt, shot dead 21-year old Milad Mohamed Hemeida, who tried to cross the border on 16 April. Hemeida was immediately given the title of "the first Egyptian martyr" to die in support of the Palestinian uprising. Since then his name has been regularly chanted in pro- Palestinian demonstrations.
The opposition and independent press controlled by Arab nationalists and Islamists devoted pages to report on Hemeida's "heroism," and how, allegedly, the last thing he did before dying "was to try to throw a stone at an Israeli tank". How they verified this is difficult to say. Certainly, no Israeli army spokesman would provide such information on Hemeida's last minutes. But to most Egyptians, outraged by Israeli violence and killing in Palestine, he is a martyr and a hero.
Ghandour was also treated as a hero in his hometown, a small village named Shenfas in Daqahliya province, about 250km north of Cairo. He was buried on 1 June. "The mourners," according to the Nasserite opposition weekly, Al-Arabi, chanted slogans against Israel and Zionist terrorism.
Both Hemeida and Ghandour came from the provinces. It is most unlikely that they had participated in any of the Cairo-based rallies in support of the uprising. They certainly had not received any of the dozens of e- mails sent out by activists asking them to sign petitions calling for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to stand trial as a war criminal. The national mass circulation dailies also hardly report on incidents of attempted infiltration of the border, probably to discourage other young people from trying to do so. If these incidents are ever reported, it is usually in a few lines on the crime page. They never make the news on state television channels either.
Unlike other countries bordering Israel -- namely Lebanon and Jordan where infiltrators are mostly armed Palestinian fighters -- those trying to cross the Egyptian-Palestinian border are totally inexperienced young men or women who have probably never held a gun. So, what inspires them to attempt what they must know is an extremely dangerous mission?
On 4 May, the police announced that three men in their early 20s had been arrested while trying to cross the border in Rafah. They told the police they were "sick and tired of watching Palestinians die everyday in the conflict with Israel".
Farid Zahran, who has been heading the Egyptian Popular Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada (EPCSPI) for the past 20 months, accepted that explanation. "They just want to go to fight against Israel... to express solidarity with the Palestinians," he told the Weekly. He emphasised that the activities of his group or other opposition political parties led by the Islamists, Arab nationalists and leftists, did not provide the motivation for these young people to attempt to sacrifice their lives for Palestine.
"It is the effect of the [TV] image," he said. "This young man from Beheira [Hemeida], or the one who drowned in Gaza [Ghandour] had probably never heard of us. It is enough for them to watch the news everyday. They see pictures of the massacres Israel commits against Palestinian civilians and children. That is enough to make them decide to die for Palestine."
These overwhelming pro- Palestinian feelings have also been worrying Arab governments. They feel that the popular anger against Israel might turn against them. They face accusations of failure to do anything tangible to stop Israel's crimes against the Palestinians. "Oh rulers! Tell us until when will you remain silent?" read one banner during a recent protest rally in Cairo's busy Tahrir Square to mark the 54th anniversary of Israel's creation, known among Arabs as the Nakbah (or catastrophe). Another sign read: "Arab rulers are asleep. Please do not disturb."
Such comments are also distributed widely through the internet, which has now turned into an indispensable tool for coordination among young protesters throughout the Arab world. "The internet is our new weapon to organise and overcome government restrictions," said Diaa Ali, a student at the American University in Cairo who was at the Tahrir Square protest. Ali said he had never previously been involved in politics. "But I can't remain silent while seeing all this happening to the Palestinians. They are human beings, and we can't let this happen to them," he said.
Ali is not alone. Hagg Hassan, who owns a famous shop in the posher part of Mohandessin where he repairs and sells car stereos, hates politics. It is, he says, bad for business. But recently the glass façade of his shop has become plastered with posters which hardly leave him space to show off his goods. Pro- Palestinian slogans vie with lists of American products that the public is urged to boycott. Hagg Hassan told the Weekly: "I want to do anything to support the Palestinians and stop Sharon from carrying out his crimes."
For Zahran, of the ECSPI, the way out of all this is simple: "Our message to the United States and the whole world is that if you want to stop the turmoil in our region, stop Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from carrying out his crimes in Palestine. "He is provoking everybody. It is his acts that lead to emotional reactions like those of the young men and women who are killed trying to cross the border."
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