End the Siege of Gaza!

End the Siege of Gaza! Those responsible for criminal acts must stand trial!

Demonstration, Saturday Jan. 2, 2010

A year to the offensive on Gaza

Press Release, December 30, 2009

To mark the first anniversary of the destructive offensive on Gaza, and protest the ongoing siege which causes terrible suffering to the inhabitants of the Strip, the Coalition Against the Siege will hold a demonstration in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, December 1, 2010 at 6.30 pm. The procession will leave the Rabin Square (corner of Frishman and Chen) and march to the Tel Aviv Museum Plaza, where a rally here will take place.

Tomorrow, Thursday December 31, at 10.30 am, Coalition activists will join the rally at Erez Checkpoint initiated by the Monitoring Committee of the Arab Population in Israel. This action will take place simultaneously with a mass procession by inhabitants of the Strip in the direction to the checkpoint, initiated by the civil society organizations in Gaza.

Thousands of activists from all over the world who meant to arrive at the Strip and whose entrance was denied by the Egyptian authorities, under pressure the Israeli government, held protests and hunger strikes at Aqaba, Jordan and next to UN Headquarters in Cairo. Among the hunger strikers is the 85-year old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein.

Last night the Egyptian authorities stated that they will permit one hundred out of 1,362 activists from 42 countries presently in Cairo to cross at Rafah and arrive in the Strip. The organizers continue to negotiate with the Egyptian authorities, demanding to let all participants get through.

Why we protest: A year has passed since the Israeli offensive on the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, in which more than 1,400 people were killed, an additional 5,000 were injured and tens of thousands were left homeless.

The blockade on Gaza continues and becomes ever tighter, making Gaza into an isolated enclave, whose inhabitants are cut off from their family members, from possibilities of study and livelihood and from the cultural, social and political life of their people.

Those responsible for war crimes have not been prosecuted. They continue to walk free among us, as if they were not responsible to systematic and well-planned crimes against millions of human beings.

ENDS

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