The New Dark Age

28 December, 2009

No I do not need legal assistance as yet … Others are organizing things for various delegations … The worst that is happening to internationals is hotel arrest … No one has been deported yet. We came here to go to Gaza and that is my focus …

The thing tonight with the journalists syndicate was horrifying but we are all safe … This worry is that this is the start of things … No wonder the people of Egypt are submissive … This is a brutal dictatorship and
Mubarak is a fraud. This is no Arab! The horror is the immediate isolation of anything that looks like political autonomy … I really do not think anyone could be unsure about this miserable system after all this … How dare this government say they support Palestine. Palestine is a question of justice and there is no justice here! This is a government of toadies …

There is this horrendous system that keeps everyone in their place. There is no coherence to it … It is the logic of checkpoints: good days / bad days … no one has the slightest control over their life … this is nothing close to a democracy.

My worry now that something else may be going on in Gaza. Leaflets being dropped in Gaza. There is too much going on for it to be just about us and our trying to get into Gaza … Will they start deporting us?

What ever else get news circulating about Viva Palestina. They are really getting the worst of it … They have come all this way with wonderful receptions and then they get to the ferry crossing and Egypt begins its games …

Keith Hammond: k.hammond@educ.gla.ac.uk