Further Background on Political Developments in Cairo among GFM
A post on Jewbonics provides more details about Wednesday's
developments among the GFM dlegates as the Egyptian deal was rejected:
organizers permission for a token 100 marchers to enter Gaza.
Initially, a segment of the steering committee accepted the offer. "But after many of the core delegations refused to submit to tokenism,
including the French EuroPalestine group, which has spent nearly a
week sleeping in tents in front of their embassy, and the South
African contingent, with leadership strengthened in the crucible of
the anti-apartheid struggle, a fuller, more representative segment of
the steering committee rejected the offer in deliberations that lasted
until dawn, and attempted to prevent the buses from leaving. "Two young Palestinian-American sisters, Dana and Lara Elbrno, their
father from Gaza, were among those who refused to go. They said they
could not accept the offer and were unwilling to accept the terms the
Egyptian government had imposed: the buses allowed into Gaza under the
auspices of Code Pink and not the Gaza Freedom March, their purpose
framed explicitly as a humanitarian convoy and not a political symbol
- ultimately, they said, the conversion of a political statement
against the siege into charity. "Others, selected among the 100, refused the offer too. Palestinian
author Ali Abunimah and Filipino politician and writer Walden Bello of
the Akbayan Party disembarked when they heard that the Gaza Freedom
March's core partners in Palestinian civil society, including Haidar
Eid, a literature professor at Al-Aqsa University and Omar Barghouthi,
the founder of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, also
spurned the offer, claiming it was divisive, and so, 'we deeply feel,
terrible for the solidarity movement.'" Here's the full story:
http://www.maxajl.com/?p=2792