European MPs send protest messages to Egypt for barring their entry into Gaza, Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire to UN: Suspend Israel's membership

European MPs send protest messages to Egypt for barring their entry into Gaza

[ 22/11/2008 - 10:08 AM ]

BRUSSELS, (PIC)--

Members of the European parliamentary delegation, who were denied access through the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, have sent protest messages to Egyptian embassies in Europe.

The 53-member parliamentary delegation expressed indignation at this measure and sent another 11-member delegation into Gaza via the sea route and the members stayed for thee days in Gaza during which they got acquainted with the tragic conditions in the Strip as a result of siege.

Irish, British, Italian, Swiss and other European MPs sent their protest messages to the Egyptian embassies in those countries. They also asked for the immediate opening of the Rafah crossing on permanent basis.

For its part, the Brussels-based European campaign announced a series of sit-ins in front of Egyptian embassies in European countries in cooperation with a number of legal, popular and human rights organizations.

The step is meant to reflect European popular rejection of Egypt's role in besieging the Gaza Strip through insisting on the closure of the Rafah border terminal, the campaign elaborated.

It demanded Arab and western pressures on the Israeli authorities to open the commercial crossings and end the Gaza people's sufferings and to send relief convoys to the Strip.

Nobel laureate to UN: Suspend Israel's membership

[ 22/11/2008 - 08:36 AM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)--

The Nobel peace prize laureate Mairead Maguire has called on the United Nations to suspend or to revoke Israel's membership in the international organization for ignoring a series of UN resolutions over the years.

Maguire, addressing a joint press conference in Ramallah on Thursday with Dr. Mustafa Al-Barghouthi leader of the national initiative party, asked the world community to pressure Israel to end its siege of the Gaza Strip and to start serious negotiators with the Palestinians.

She said that the Gaza Strip inhabitants need food and not Israeli shelling that is being financed by the US.

The peace activist described what is going on in Gaza as "very serious", affirming that the US, Europe and the UN should not remain silent towards Israeli practices against the Strip. She accused those parties of being accomplices to the current destruction of Gaza.

Maguire won the 1976 peace prize for her work with Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. She is visiting the Palestinian territories to protest Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. In October this year she arrived on a boat that sailed into the Gaza Strip carrying international protesters who wanted to bring attention to Israel's blockade of the Strip.

European campaign collects medicine for besieged Gaza

[ 22/11/2008 - 07:50 AM ]

BRUSSELS, (PIC)--

The European campaign to lift the siege on the Gaza Strip has launched a major campaign to collect badly needed medical supplies to the besieged Strip.

Anwar Al-Gharby, a founding member of the campaign, said that the collection of medicine and medical equipment has already started early November in various areas of Switzerland, Italy and a number of other European countries.

He noted that the campaign was met with enthusiasm, and added that his campaign is expanding its operation in the few coming days.

The operation targets extending aid to one and a half million Palestinian besieged in the Strip after all crossings were shut down, Gharbi said, noting that 260 Palestinian patients in Gaza died as a result of this siege and the absence of suitable treatment in the Strip.

A list of important and urgently needed names of medicines in Gaza was distributed in order to obtain suitable quantities and send them to the Strip, he said, noting that his campaign would ask Egypt to facilitate entry of those medications via the Rafah crossing and if it refused then arrangements would be made to send them by sea.

He stressed that other campaigns would follow until the siege is completely lifted, noting that volunteers are daily working on collecting those medicines.

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