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egypt
I Went From Chicago to Egypt to March for Gaza—This Was My Experience
The lesson: Egypt is in full “compliance” with Israeli directives, fully complicit in its crimes toward the people of Gaza, and never had the slightest intention of allowing the march of solidarity we had hoped to carry out.
Jul 20, 2025
I participated in the Global March for Gaza because the countries of the world that have the power to stop Israel’s ongoing atrocities against the people of Gaza have done nothing whatsoever to change the situation. The situation is absolutely appalling. I wanted the people of Gaza to know that even if the governments of the world refuse to see their suffering or do anything to bring it to an end, there are ordinary citizens willing to travel across the world to stand with them and demand that they be released from the deadly prison that Gaza has become thanks to the utter impunity Israel and the United States enjoy on the world stage.
Those of us who went knew that the Egyptian authorities might not allow us to carry out our planned march from al-Arish to the Rafah border crossing. However, the march organizers were engaged in good-faith efforts to negotiate with the Egyptian government and to seek their approval, so we went, trusting that our efforts would make some sort of a difference, if even just on the symbolic level, and help to raise global awareness of the horrific and unjustifiable nature of the Palestinians’ suffering.
I had never done anything of this nature before, and I felt frightened and overwhelmed at times as I struggled with the decision of whether to go; I had to push past fears and doubts on numerous occasions, but the sense of necessity and the dire nature of the situation kept me moving forward. I was blessed to have found someone to share a hotel room with before arriving, and she and I were supportive of each other both before and after arriving in Egypt.
The first day we were there, June 13, 2025, we had initially been scheduled to meet at an agreed-upon location in Cairo, board buses to al-Arish, and then again seek permission to march from there to Rafah. However, the plan changed for reasons we weren’t fully aware of (I suspect that the Egyptian authorities were making things difficult for the organizers, and it may have been difficult to find drivers for the buses given the heavy surveillance under which Egyptians must live). In any case, we were instructed to make our way in small groups to the town of Ismailiyya, an hour and a half from Cairo, where we hoped to meet and plan next steps.
In the days that followed, it became clear that we were, indeed, being watched and followed, and scores of activists from various countries were detained and deported.
Three of us set out in a taxi for Ismailiyya, but when we came to the first checkpoint along the road, we were not allowed through. We were told we would have to surrender our passports for some reason. Many non-Egyptians were standing around a nearby building, and it became apparent that they had handed over their passports and had been waiting for them for hours, but to no avail. Some of them warned us not to hand over our passports for fear of not getting them back. Our taxi driver had had his license pulled, and I think he was questioned, though of course he had no clue about anything!
Eventually, the taxi driver got his license back, and we were urged to go back to Cairo. However, we felt as though it was our moral obligation to stay with all the would-be marchers who were stranded without their passports, so we stayed with them instead. The hours went by, and a sense of community began to develop among the people there. At one point, some military vehicles drove up and parked, and very young-looking armed soldiers got out and basically just stood there watching us.
Still more hours later, some of the would-be marchers said, “Well, everybody knows why we’re here, so we might as well demonstrate openly for Palestine!” So, cheers for a free Palestine went up, and speeches were delivered in French, English, and some other languages. Meanwhile, the Egyptian authorities had sent out several military buses and were urging people to get on them to be taken back to Cairo. People were not doing so, however. Eventually, at 7:00 pm local time, plainclothes policemen—thugs, essentially—began lunging at certain individuals, the ones they could see were in leadership positions, and they physically assaulted several of the men, dragging them across the pavement. Others of us locked arms and sat down, but the thugs kept coming at people, knocking a woman violently to the ground and stealing her phone. They were demanding that we get on the buses, which we then did.
They were prisoner buses, with tiny windows at the very top that don’t allow you to see out. I, along with four other women from the American delegation, managed to stay together as we got on one of the buses. We waited for around two hours on the bus, sweltering in the heat, while very gradually, people whose passports had been taken from them got their passports back. Once we were driven off, we expected to be detained and deported. But when we had been traveling in the bus for around an hour heading back to Cairo, we were told that we would simply be let off the bus, five at a time, in locations around Cairo.
We learned that Egypt is indeed a police state, and a gathering of even as few as four people to protest the government is illegal. It was a sobering lesson, and it caused me to feel unwilling to engage in any outward actions that might jeopardize either myself or my group or the local population.
In the days that followed, it became clear that we were, indeed, being watched and followed, and scores of activists from various countries were detained and deported. The crowning act of hostile intimidation by the Egyptian authorities was the arrest, temporary disappearance, and abuse of the Global March’s initiator and lead organizer. Our people were being warned to leave the country, and many of us changed our travel plans to depart earlier than planned.
The lesson: Egypt is in full “compliance” with Israeli directives, fully complicit in its crimes toward the people of Gaza, and never had the slightest intention of allowing the march of solidarity we had hoped to carry out.
As people began leaving the country, a last-minute initiative materialized, namely, that of traveling to Tunisia, whose government and population are nearly all pro-Palestine, to meet with participants in the Sumud overland convoy that had made its way to Egypt’s western border but, not surprisingly, had not been allowed entry. Some of their party might also have been detained at the border (though I’m not sure about this). By the time this initiative emerged, I had already changed my travel plans once, and since the details weren’t very clear to me, I decided simply to head back home.
Now that I am home, I am hoping to become more involved in an initiative that has begun to bypass the United Nation’s useless Security Council by passing a General Assembly resolution that would demand concrete measures such as sending a U.N. peacekeeping force into the occupied Palestinian territories at the request of the State of Palestine, breaking the deadly blockade on Gaza (obviously), calling on countries around the world to jointly boycott Israel on all levels, reopen the apartheid committee, strip Israel of its U.N. credentials, and carry out comprehensive embargos of Israel—pushing individual countries to take this last action in particular. It’s the least we all can do.
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100 Palestinians Killed in Weekend of Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza
Victims include 22 members of one family massacred in their Gaza City home.
Apr 27, 2025
Israel Defense Forces bombing killed at least 100 Palestinians including numerous women and children in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, while the IDF also renewed airstrikes on Lebanon as cease-fire talks between senior Hamas and Egyptian officials wrapped up in Cairo without any breakthrough.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday that Israeli strikes killed at least 51 Palestinians over the previous 24 hours. Among the victims were eight people, including three women and two children, killed in an IDF bombing of a tent in Khan Younis; a man and four children slain in another strike on a tent in Deir al-Balah; and at least six people who died when a coffee shop near the Bureij refugee camp was hit.
The ministry said Saturday that at least 49 Palestinians were killed during the preceding 24 hours, including 22 members of the al-Khour family who were sheltering in their Gaza City home when it was bombed.
The IDF said the strike targeted a Hamas militant. Israel's military relaxed rules of engagement after the October 7, 2023 attack to allow an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
Saed al-Khour, who is grieving the loss of his family, refuted Israel's claim, telling The Associated Press that "there is no one from the resistance" among the victims.
"We have been pulling out the remains of children, women, and elderly people," al-Khour added.
Israel's U.S.-backed 569-day assault on Gaza has left at least 183,800 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing. Nearly all of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened amid a "complete siege" that is cited in an International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for the pair last year.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces unleashed a wave of bombing attacks in Lebanon in what critics called a blatant violation of a November cease-fire agreement with the resistance group Hezbollah. The IDF bombed targets in southern Lebanon and in suburbs of the capital city of Beirut.
The IDF, which said it warned residents ahead of the Beirut airstrike, claimed it attacked "an infrastructure where precision missiles" were being stored by Hezbollah, without providing any supporting evidence.
Israel says it will continue its assault and siege on Gaza until Hamas releases the two dozen Israeli and other hostages it has imprisoned since October 2023. Hamas counters that it will only free the hostages in an exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, a complete withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza, and a new cease-fire agreement. Israel unilaterally broke a January cease-fire last month.
A senior Hamas delegation left Cairo late Saturday following days of talks regarding a possible deal for a multi-year truce and the release of all remaining hostages. The head of Israel's Mossad spy agency was also in Qatar earlier this week for separate cease-fire talks. Qatari mediators said they believed there has been "some progress" in both sides' willingness to reach an agreement.
United Nations agencies and international humanitarian groups—many of which have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war—have warned in recent days of the imminent risk of renewed famine in Gaza as food stocks run out.
"Children in Gaza are starving," the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
said on social media Sunday. "The government of Israel continues to block the entry of food and other basics. [This is a] man-made and politically motivated starvation."
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As Israel Pulls Plug on Gaza, Smotrich Says Trump's Ethnic Cleansing Plan 'Taking Shape'
"By openly trying to starve and freeze an entire civilian population to death, the far-right government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has once again clearly demonstrated its genocidal intent in Gaza," said CAIR.
Mar 09, 2025
Israel's finance minister said Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza is proceeding, remarks that came on the same day as Israel completely cut off electricity from the last receiving facility in the obliterated Palestinian enclave.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the far-right Religious Zionism party told fellow Knesset lawmakers that "this plan is taking shape, with ongoing actions in coordination" with the Trump administration.
Smotrich said that he is working with Cabinet members including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz to establish a "migration administration" that will oversee the removal of an indeterminate number of Gaza's approximately 2.1 million people, most of whom are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel during the modern Jewish state's founding in 1948.
While Smotrich insisted that Palestinian removal would be "voluntary," it is highly questionable whether many Palestinians would leave what remains of their homeland of their own free will, or what kind of incentives it would take to convince them to go.
Last month, Trump—who on Wednesday threatened to kill everyone in Gaza unless Hamas handed over the dozens of remaining Israeli and other hostages it has held for over 500 days—vowed that the U.S. would "own" Gaza.
U.S. developers, the president said, will "level" Gaza and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" there after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave. Asked if his plan involved sending U.S. troops to Gaza, Trump replied, "If it's necessary, we'll do that."
Forced removal of people by an occupying power is a war crime according to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under which Israel's apartheid settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are also illegal.
Smotrich said Sunday that the so-called Trump Plan "involves identifying key countries, understanding their interests—both with the U.S. and with us—and fostering cooperation."
"Just to give you an idea—if we remove 10,000 people a day, seven days a week, it will take six months," Smotrich said. "If we remove 5,000 people a day, it will take a year. Of course, this is assuming we have countries willing to take them, but these are very, very, very long processes."
Leaders of both Egypt and Jordan, where Trump has proposed sending Gazans, vehemently oppose the plan. A counterproposal issued by Egypt and other Arab nations—which involves rebuilding Gaza without forcibly displacing its residents—has the support of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation and nations including China, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.
Smotrich's remarks came on the same day that Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said that he "just signed an order for the immediate halt of electricity to the Gaza Strip" as part of a policy to use "all of the tools that are at our disposal to ensure the return of all the hostages."
Smotrich weighed in on the power cut, arguing that "the Gaza Strip must be completely and immediately blacked out as long as even one Israeli hostage is being held there."
Israeli officials believe 24 hostages are still alive in Gaza, including 22 Israelis, one Thai, and one Nepali. The bodies of 35 hostages who died or were killed after their abduction are also being held in Gaza.
"Israel must bomb the huge fuel depots that entered the strip as part of the unfortunate deal, as well as the generators operated by Hamas," Smotrich said, referring to the crumbling cease-fire that went into effect on January 19. Israel stands accused of nearly 1,000 violations of the truce.
In recent days, renewed but limited Israeli airstrikes and statements from Israeli leaders about resuming a full assault on Gaza have further imperiled the shaky cease-fire.
Electricity was first cut off to Gaza in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, as then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a "complete siege" of the coastal strip. The ongoing blockade has fueled deadly starvation, disease, and exposure.
Along with Israel's bombardment and invasion—which have left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed or missing in Gaza—the siege is cited in the South Africa-led genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu and Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri is also a fugitive from the ICC.
Humanitarian groups warned that the suspension of electricity to Gaza could force the shutdown of the strip's two functioning desalination plants, reducing the already scarce supply of fresh water.
However, Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said Sunday that the electricity cutoff probably wouldn't have much impact, given the existing siege. But Qassem still called the move "behavior that confirms the occupation's intent to continue its genocidal war against Gaza, through the use of starvation policies, in clear disregard for all international laws and norms."
Hamas further slammed the Israeli move as "cheap and unacceptable blackmail."
In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned what it called "Israel's latest act of genocide in Gaza."
"By openly trying to starve and freeze an entire civilian population to death, the far-right government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has once again clearly demonstrated its genocidal intent in Gaza," CAIR said in a statement. "Banning food, water, fuel, medical supplies—and now electricity—threatens the lives of everyone in Gaza."
"The United States and other western nations must stop treating Palestinians as less than human and stop giving this one government impunity as it flagrantly violates international law," the group added.
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