Madison Rafah Journal

On Wednesday, January 30, from 12 noon – 1 pm, the Rafah journalist and blogger Mohammed Omer will be interviewed on "A Public Affair" on WORT (89.9 fm) by host Esty Dinur.

Omer, who visited Madison last year and shared his stunning and visceral images of life and death in occupied Gaza, will give eye-witness reports and analysis of this week's massive Gaza revolt. We are hopeful that he will be joined by members of MRSCP's partner in Rafah, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. Call in at 256-2001.

The vigil has been cancelled due to weather

Vigil in Support of the Gaza Prison Break and
Against the Continuing Siege of Gaza

Tuesday, January 29, 2008
6:15-7:00pm
Lowell Center, 610 Langdon St., Madison

The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project will hold a candlelight vigil to support our Rafah friends, and all the other people of Gaza, more than 350,000 of whom this week have courageously broken through the Israeli wall that starves and cruelly imprisons them. And we will protest the still on-going siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israel, financed and supported by the United States.

This vigil will take place from 6:15 to 7:00 pm on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 outside the Lowell Center, where Mr. David Makovsky will be speaking on the current situation in the Middle East. Makovsky represents WINEP, or Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a prominent neo-conservative think-tank allied with the U.S. Israel lobby AIPAC, the Bush Administration, and the right wing in Israeli politics. It espouses the continuation of the siege and destruction of Gaza, as well as the rapidly escalating application of these inhuman and illegal policies to rest of the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Makovsky, Director of the so-called Project on the Middle East Peace Process at WINEP is an adviser to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice whose failed Middle East initiatives at Annapolis and elsewhere deliberately perpetuate policies contravening international law including the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

We invite the public to join us in a Vigil in Solidarity with the People of Gaza and against the on-going destruction of Palestine and the Palestinian national movement. (Read on …)

The Rebuilding Alliance Board and team ask your help to purchase food and medicine for Gaza

Please Donate Now

As I write, the Nasrallah family (the family Rachel Corrie sought to protect form the IDF bulldozer that threatened them and their Rafah home) is arranging to bring a first truckload of food and medicine through the Egyptian checkpoints into Rafah Gaza, for distribution to Rafah's Nongovernmental Organizations. Our partners at the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) are working with them to purchase a specific list of medicines.

Will you help us raise $5000 for food and medical supplies? Khaled Nasrallah, who many of you met when he and his wife and daughter joined Cindy and Craig Corrie on their U.S. speaking tour, is coordinating logistics. Husam El Nounou and the medical team at GCMHP have given them a list of the medicines and supplies they need.

Khaled and Husam say the situation is very difficult with the border likely to close in a couple of days. Palestinians can go no further in Egypt than Al Arish, and are barricaded from entering the rest of the country. Prices in Egypt have skyrocketed as stores sold-out. In the meantime, the Nasrallahs (who parents still live in Egypt) are drawing upon their friends and family in Alexandria to cross through the Egyptian checkpoints with food and medicine.

Anything you can give would be sincerely appreciated. All funds will go for purchase of food and medicine. Please Donate Now

(Read on …)

Palestinian children play on top of the bombed metal fence that used to separate the Gaza Strip and Egypt at Rafah, 24 January 2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

(Read on …)

Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, 23 Jan 2008

Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after militants blew up a border wall, and stocked up on food and fuel in short supply because of an Israeli blockade.

"Those people are hungry for freedom, for food and for everything," said an Egyptian shopkeeper who gave her name only as Hamida, surveying shelves emptied swiftly by Gazans paying with Egyptian pounds and Israeli shekels.

The fall of the Rafah wall punched a new hole in efforts by Israel, under frequent rocket attack from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, to keep pressure on the territory in the face of an international outcry over shortages and Palestinian hardship.

(Read on …)

Dear Members and Friends of MRSCP,

If you haven't watched the news today, last night unknown parties blew at least seven holes in the massive Israeli wall between Rafah and the Egyptian border and today the UN estimates that up to 350,000 Gazans have been streaming back and forth across the border to Egypt to buy food, medicine, fuel, cement, cigarettes, and every imaginable thing that has been blockaded by Israel. (Of course, this does not restore electricity or water service or power to hospitals as Israel retains tight restrictions on diesel fuel entering the strip.)

For video footage, click here.

For pictures, click here: Gaza border break

This amazing event is taking place in the context of a week of protests against the seige of Gaza all over the world…just yesterday there were angry and desperate protests by 3000 women in Rafah at the border, some succeeded in crossing into Egypt but were detained and sent back after clashing with Egyptian police that injured many. It is reported also that a shipment of emergency aid from Egypt had just been denied entry into Gaza through the Israeli-controlled Keren Shalom crossing. So for some reason, Egypt has decided not to intervene for the time being. There are also protests in Egypt in support of the seige break. It is unclear how long the border will remain open.

(Read on …)