Spanish peace activists march through Hebron Old City, Arab activist urge youth to ignore your governments and visit Gaza

Spanish peace activists march through Hebron Old City

Date: 23 / 12 / 2008 Time: 18:51
Hebron - Ma'an –

Several Spanish peace activists marched in solidarity with Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron on Tuesday.

Israeli soldiers prevented some of the activists from passing an Israeli checkpoint leading to Ash-Shuhada Street.

But the group still managed to march through the Old City playing bagpipes, one of the activists said, “in support of the Palestinian people.”

Activist to Arab youth: Ignore your governments; visit Gaza

Date: 23 / 12 / 2008 Time: 16:30
Gaza – Ma’an Interview –

Lebanese activist Natali Abu Shaqra sailed to the Gaza Strip in early December aboard the latest vessel to break the siege.

During an interview with Ma’an, Shaqra said that Arab youth should “ignore their governments and pay visits to the Gaza Strip on their own.”

Herself a Lebanese citizen prohibited by both Lebanese and Israeli law to visit Israel, bypassed the Jewish state by sea, arriving in the Gaza Strip onboard the Free Gaza Movement’s USS Dignity, sponsored in part by a Qatari medical relief organization.

Shaqra told Ma’an that she was motivated to visit Gaza by her “confidence in Palestinian rights and my belief that the Palestinian cause is just.”

“Each has his homeland; ants, turtles and rabbits have a homeland, but the Palestinian people do not,” she said.

The Lebanese activist slammed Arab countries’ “ineffective attitude toward supporting the Palestinian cause and toward the crippling siege in Gaza.”

“What does democracy say about what is going on in the Gaza Strip? Do people of the Arab world, the Gulf states, Europe and the US like to see Gaza’s population living in darkness and dying of a shortage of food and medicine?” she asked.

Shaqra also denied rumors and news reports that Israeli intelligence inspected the ship at the Cypriot port of Larnaca, claiming that Isralei boats surrounded the ship and demanded that two Israeli activists onboard “turn themselves in, but they refused and insisted continuing to Gaza,” she insisted.

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