US lawmakers John Kerry, Keith Ellison, Brian Baird Visit Gaza With Aid Convoy

ccun.org, February 19, 2009
By Hassan El-Najjar

US members of Congress John Kerry, Brian Baird, and Keith Ellison arrived in Gaza today with a US aid convoy. Arab TV stations aired footage of Ellison and Baird carrying aid boxes on their shoulders together with aid workers from trucks to a distribution center.

The footage was very effectives to show that there are some Americans in the US government who care about human beings in Gaza Strip. The US Congress has acquired the status of a rubber-stamp entity, which gave a blind support to the Israeli terrorist government, even during committing its war crimes in Gaza last month.

A lot of this is needed if Americans are concerned about their image around the world generally, which has been linked to the US support for the Israeli aggressors, through providing them with the money and military equipment used in killing Palestinian civilians, particularly children and women.

A lot of this is needed to CHANGE the US wrong policy in the Middle East generally, and Palestine in particular, to counter-balance the images of US-made F-16 dropping white phosphorus and DIME bombs on Gaza children.

Next time, Congress members visiting Gaza should seek to talk to the elected Palestinian officials, in the Hamas government, if they are really serious about a real change of policy from the disasters of the George Bush era.

US lawmakers make first visit to Gaza in four years

Date: 19 / 02 / 2009 Time: 12:01
Bethlehem – Ma’an/Agencies –

US members of Congress are expected to make a rare visit to the Gaza Strip on Thursday, the first of its kind to Gaza in at least four years.

According to the AP, officials at the US Consulate in Jerusalem say that Reps. Brian Baird of Washington and Keith Ellison of Minnesota will visit the tiny coastal enclave.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry is also expected to arrive in Gaza later Thursday to meet with officials from international organizations there. The lawmakers are expected to meet with UN officials.

The US officials have no plans to talk to the Hamas-run de facto government while in Gaza.

Ellison is the first Muslim member of the US House of Representatives. He was elected in 2006.

Former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney attempted to travel to Gaza by sea in December, but the ship was rammed by an Israeli gunboat and diverted to Lebanon.

In 2008, former US President Jimmy Carter was denied permission to enter Gaza by the Israeli government. Carter did meet Hamas officials in Syria and Egypt.

Two US congressmen visit Gaza

1 hour ago

GAZA CITY (AFP) —

US congressmen Brian Baird and Keith Ellison, both Democrats, were in Gaza on Thursday, the first such visit since the Islamist Hamas seized power in the Palestinian territory in June 2007.

The pair visited Izzbet Abed Rabbo, a community in northern Gaza devastated during the deadly 22-day Israeli offensive that ended on January 18.

They also planned to visit a factory and a hospital damaged during the war, Palestinian officials said.

An estimated 14,000 to 20,000 homes and other buildings were damaged or destroyed during the military offensive in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed.

The visit is the first by US lawmakers since Hamas, an Islamist movement Washington blacklists as a terrorist organisation, seized control of the Palestinian enclave in June 2007.

Palestinian sources said that Baird and Ellison would not meet Hamas representatives during their visit to Gaza.

Their trip coincided with a visit to Israel by US Senator John Kerry, chairman of the foreign relations committee, as part of a regional tour.

Baird is a representative from Washington state and Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, is from Minnesota.

Senator John Kerry visits Gaza

Representative Keith Ellison (left) talking to a Palestinian youngman, Rep. Brian Baird in middle

US Senator John Kerry visits Gaza

AFP, February 19, 2009

The visit "does not indicate any shift whatsoever with respect to Hamas," said Kerry, who heads the Senate's powerful foreign relations committee.

His first stop in the impoverished Palestinian enclave was the American school that was left in ruins by the deadly 22-day Israeli offensive that ended on January 18.

Talking to a Palestinian lawyer amid the dust and rubble, Kerry came to the defence of Israel for responding to almost daily rocket attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.

"Your political leadership needs to understand that any nation that has rockets coming into it over many years, threatening its citizens, is going to respond," Kerry told Shar Habeel al-Zaim.

Kerry, who crossed from Israel into the Palestinian enclave aboard a UN vehicle, briefly toured Izzbet Abed Rabbo, a northern Gaza community ravaged by the Israeli offensive.

His visit coincided with a similar trip by Democratic US representatives Brian Baird and Keith Ellison.

He was expected to hold talks with UN officials involved in efforts to help Gaza recover from the military offensive that came on the heels of 18 months of a crippling blockade.

Travelling to Gaza indicates "our effort to listen and to learn," the 2004 presidential candidate said earlier in Sderot, an Israeli city just outside Gaza that has been the main target of Palestinian rocket attacks in recent years.

The congressmen were not scheduled to meet any Hamas officials during their visits, the first such trips since the Islamists seized control of Gaza Strip in June 2007.

The United States, in common with the European Union, blacklists Hamas as a terror group.

"There is nothing in a visit that changes anything" said Kerry, who was scheduled to travel on to Syria on Saturday as part of his tour of the region.

"What has to change is behaviour. What has to change obviously is Hamas's consistent resort to instruments of terror," he said in Sderot, where he and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni inspected rockets fired by Gaza militants that are exhibited in the town's police station.

"We feel very deeply that no one should have to live under this threat," he said.

"The politics of the Obama administration and this Democratic Congress remain the same with respect to Hamas," said Kerry.

The congressmen's visits came against the backdrop of continued violence in and around the besieged territory despite Egypt's efforts to broker a lasting ceasefire following the Israeli military offensive that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians.

Palestinian militants fired rockets and mortars at southern Israel on Thursday, the Israeli army said just hours after troops were reportedly involved in a firefight when they briefly entered Gaza.

Two rockets and two mortar rounds were fired from the Gaza Strip causing no casualties or damage, a military spokesman said.

The Israeli military responded with an air raid on smuggling tunnels on Gaza's border with Egypt. Witnesses said there were no casualties.

In another development, a Palestinian who approached the border fence was lightly wounded by Israeli gunshots, witnesses said.

The armoured vehicles entered the Gaza capital after anti-tank rockets were fired at them, witnesses said.

Cairo's efforts to broker a lasting truce hit a snag on Wednesday when Israel's security cabinet voted to make a truce conditional on the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid in June 2006.

Hamas insists that Shalit's release be negotiated separately as part of a prisoner exchange involving hundreds of Palestinians currently held in Israeli jails.

Hamas has said any truce must include the opening of Gaza's border crossings, which Israel has closed to all but humanitarian aid since the Islamist movement seized control of the territory.

Egypt has been acting as a go-between in efforts to consolidate the separate ceasefires that ended Israel's 22-day Gaza offensive on January 18.

The ceasefires have been rattled by Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli military raids.

Fair Use Notice

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.