Conceived as a “civilian response to global injustice,” marchers from across the world descended on Cairo in June, with the goal of crossing Egypt’s Rafah border and breaking Israel’s humanitarian blockade on Gaza

Jenna Martin, Prism, June 25th, 2025

The original plans were shot. 

By the morning of June 13, Egyptian officials were deporting foreign activists as fast as they could arrive in Egypt, whether rounded up by the handful in hostels and hotels or turned away by the delegation at the airport. The infamous Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo was swarming with riot police and military. As one activist waited for coffee outside a street cafe, they told Prism that a police officer questioned them about their reason for visiting Egypt. 

“Just don’t participate in any marches, for your own good,” the officer said, according to the activist, before walking away. 

As part of the Global March to Gaza, foreign and local Palestinian activists planned to reach Egypt’s Rafah border crossing and break Israel’s humanitarian blockade on Gaza, first by bussing to Al Arish, a city tucked into the North Sinai Governorate. This was where they would begin their multiday, more than 30-mile walk through the heavily militarized Sinai Desert, ending at the gates of Rafah, where on the other side, over 2.1 million Palestinians were without food, water, or medicine. 

The original plan, however, was no longer viable.

Organizers instead instructed the marchers to take their own forms of transportation to Al Ismailia, a city on the western edge of the Sinai Desert. The trip would require bypassing at least three different checkpoints and traveling considerably farther than Al Arish.

Activists cleared the first checkpoint and alerted the group behind them: All was well, continue on. Some even made it all the way past the third checkpoint. However, the momentum gradually slowed, and a crowd began to bottleneck at the second checkpoint.

“I’d say anywhere from 700 to 1,000 people are milling around,” said Wynd Kaufmyn, a retired City College of San Francisco professor and member of the U.S. delegation, during the ordeal. “Most of us are without our passports. Our driver gave our passports to a man in a white uniform with a gun, and we’ve been escorted to the area where everyone else is waiting. Most people seem to have their luggage. Rumor is no one is getting past the second checkpoint except Egyptians.”

Kaufmyn described the early mood at the second checkpoint as “varying temperaments,” with some people resting in whatever shade they could find and others breaking into chants of “Free Palestine.” Off to the side, one activist practiced tae kwon do.

Kaufmyn has been active in advocacy for Palestine for nearly her entire adult life. 

“I’m Jewish, and I come from a Zionist family,” she explained. “In 2002, I couldn’t turn away from the Palestine situation anymore, when Israel just decimated Jenin.” 

As an active participant in various human rights groups, Kaufmyn estimated that she entered the West Bank about five times between 2002 and 2012, until she was banned for 10 years in 2012. On Oct. 7, 2023, she was on a plane back to the occupied territories when her flight was diverted. She never made it in. 

“Since then, I’ve been working, organizing, anything I can do,” Kaufmyn said. “When I saw the announcement [for this march], I thought this is what I have to do because nothing else is working, and maybe thousands of people marching to the border would work.” 

Hours later, marchers were still missing their passports, and trouble was brewing at the first checkpoint. 

The violence begins

“They were especially brutal and especially interested in the Turkish, from the very beginning. Very mean with them,” said Javier Murugarren, a member of the Netherlands delegation who crossed the first checkpoint around 1 p.m. “They give us different options: People over 40, they can go to Cairo now, because there were a couple older women that collapsed on the ground,” he said. “It was very hot. But we refused all of that.”

A member of the U.S. delegation’s medical team confirmed that the women were treated for heat exhaustion with rapid cooling methods. An ambulance was later called for a woman because she showed signs of heat stroke. After an intense exchange with Egyptian security forces, a nurse from the delegation was permitted to accompany the women to a hospital. 

Murugarren credited much of his advocacy for the Palestinian people to his Basque heritage. He first vocally supported Palestinians as a 10-year-old, and his advocacy only intensified by the time he was 18. “I come from the Basque Country. It’s very connected and it’s a very dignified people there with a lot of political and social protection for so many different cultures around the world,” Murugarren said, as a way of explaining the deep connection between the Basque and Palestinian people.

A week prior to the march, he met one of the event’s organizers, and he quickly made the decision to join the effort. “I told the mother of my child that I wanted to come,” Murugarren said, explaining that he worked with her to reorganize his child’s schedule, which allowed for him to travel. “She understood because she is also Basque. She said, ‘Go, I respect you.’”

Now, nearly six hours after the march first began and as the sun etched lower into the sky, tensions reached a peak. 

“There were 300 people, and suddenly they mixed all the passports. I came from the Dutch [delegation], but I’m Spanish, so they gave me the Spanish passport with the Spanish group,” Murugarren told Prism. “In one moment, I remember they pushed an older man to one side, and some other guys went to try to protect him, and it exploded. It exploded into a fight.” 

Murugarren said a police officer grabbed him from behind by the neck and forcefully pushed him toward a line of buses, ripping his shirt. Another officer kicked him and punched him in the head.

“They just kicked in, they started to literally rage,” he said. “There were like literally ten people punching one person.”

At the second checkpoint, the violence was already well underway. 

“We had cops circling the entire group so we couldn’t move,” said Rae M., a New Yorker in the U.S. delegation who abstained from using their full name for safety reasons. “As the sun set, more cops and some government officials arrived. We were told we had 15 minutes before we had to leave. We decided to stay, and that’s when they brought in Baltagiya, who immediately began the abuse.” 

The Baltagiya, an Egyptian Arabic word loosely translated to “thugs” in English, is a pro-government militia used to attack protesters and discourage political dissent. 

“Some of the Baltagiya were dressed in keffiyehs. Some of them were children,” recalled Rae, who said they were also throwing rocks and beating marchers, sometimes with whips known as cat-o’-nine-tails. “I saw them pick up multiple women by their backpacks and hair, heads, necks, etc., and throw them. If we tried to intervene, they took that as an opportunity to be more violent. They ripped one guy’s shirt off and were brutally punching a few men trying to board the bus.”

As Egyptian authorities forcefully packed people onto buses at the first two checkpoints, most marchers were still not in possession of their passports, necessitating that they sit for hours on the buses. Whether they were being sent to Cairo, the airport, or prison, no one knew. 

“It was very clear that the strategy that they had was trying to separate us into small groups,” Murugarren said. “They were not going to let us go walking 300 people with passports in the middle of the highway.” 

But sending people with passports down the middle of the highway was exactly what happened. 

Al Ismailia

Palestinian U.S. delegation member Nemer Bassam Afaneh left the third checkpoint on foot around 3 p.m., hopping onto a local minibus in a rural farm area of Ismailia. When he arrived at the Egyptian Youth Hostel, he was met with roughly 80 other marchers from various delegations, including Germany, France, Korea, Turkey, Algeria, and Tunisia. 

He was also met with buses of police officers. 

“They knew,” said Afaneh. “They were prepared.”

Within the hour, the marchers were condensed into a tighter and tighter group as the police surrounded them. Then the chants of “Free Palestine” started, mostly led by Afaneh, who simultaneously began waving a Palestinian flag. 

“We’re telling them we’re not leaving. We’re here for peace. We’re here for Palestine. We’re not here for challenging the Egyptians or authorities or the people,” he explained. “And one of the officers said, ‘This is enough.’ So this is where they started grabbing me and snatching me.” 

Afaneh said roughly 10 officers grabbed him from all directions. “They were holding me everywhere. They carried me and threw me on the bus, and one of the officers said, ‘If it was up to me, I would have chopped you.’ He said that literally, like, ‘I would have chopped you.’ Like into pieces.”

We’re telling them we’re not leaving. We’re here for peace. We’re here for Palestine. NEMER BASSAM AFANEH, PALESTINIAN U.S. DELEGATION MEMBER

He also described how Egyptian police opened the abaya of a Muslim delegate from Spain in front of the others. 

“She was scared and they completely flashed her in front of everyone,” said Afaneh. “They took it off. They were grabbing her from everywhere, and her whole abaya opened. That was the worst.” 

Once loaded onto a bus, Afaneh expected marchers would be taken the way they came, through each of the three checkpoints. Instead, they were driven on a long and winding route along the Suez, taking them farther and farther from Ismailia and Cairo. After a few hours, the group grew increasingly nervous. When the bus pulled over to the side of the road, people began contacting their embassy representatives, lawyers, and anyone who could help. Afaneh sent a screenshot of the bus’ location to the U.S. delegation group.

The bus didn’t move for two hours. It wasn’t until the crowd insisted on having their passports returned that the bus began to move again, turning back toward Cairo. At roughly 3 a.m., nearly 80 activists were dropped off just outside Nasr City. With their passports in hand, they walked down the middle of the highway.

“Who remembers you?”

In Cairo the next day, the deportations continued. Members of various delegations were taken from their hotels and interrogated in the streets. Remaining marchers shifted from one hotel to another. Additional actions were floated to the group chat, among the 1,000 or so marchers still present in Cairo. 

Meanwhile, a Tunisian convoy was still attempting to make its way to Gaza via Libya, and Malaysian groups were planning a 1,000-ship flotilla to Gaza. 

Afaneh and other marchers remain undeterred. 

“I’ve been in a lot of marches, a lot of protests for Palestine, everywhere. The UAE, Jordan, the U.S., of course. I organized the first protest for Palestine that was ever held in Mississippi,” Afaneh said. “The people are gathering all around the world now, they are doing something. If you haven’t [gotten involved yet] do it now. Take the opportunity and start something as well.” 

Kaufmyn said she isn’t giving up either, and she had a message for the people of Gaza. “We see you,” she said. “We’re trying to get to you. We’re sorry we’re not able to. We’ll keep trying.” 

Murugarren told Prism that it’s not too late for others to get involved and no act is too small. 

“The only way that we can fight this monster is by love, by connection, by care,” he said. “Be busy with the community. Take care. Care, care, care. Go to the ground. Go and help people. Clean shit, cook for people. Do whatever you want, but always remember to be on the ground. This is going to save the whole shit.”

When asked what she would say to the people of Gaza, Rae shared the poem “Who Remembers the Armenians” by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish:

I remember them
and I ride the nightmare bus with them 
each night
and my coffee, this morning
I’m drinking it with them 
You, murderer–
Who remembers you?

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor

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JENNA MARTIN

Jenna Martin is a freelance journalist, photographer and filmmaker who currently splits her time between Yellowstone County, Montana and the West Bank, Palestine. She writes about resistance movements… More by Jenna Martin