Hungry for change

More than 50 Egyptians went on a hunger strike this week to protest Israel's tight siege of Gaza and the West Bank, reports Khaled Dawoud
The beautiful sound of Fairuz singing for Jerusalem and promising "return" for Palestinians emanated loudly from the headquarters of Hisham Mubarak's Centre for Human Rights. Since 29 March, dozens of activists have held a symbolic hunger strike there to express solidarity with Palestinians and demand the immediate end to Israel's tight siege of self-rule areas.
The decision to hold the strike came one day after the Egyptian Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada (EPCSPI) tried to deliver more than 150 tons of food and medicine to Palestinians through the Rafah crossing point with Gaza. Like many similar shipments of aid to Palestinians from Egypt and other Arab countries since the Al-Aqsa Intifada began in late September, the convoy was held up at the border, awaiting Israeli permission to enter. "There are hundreds of tons of aid piling up at the border," said Farid Zahran, an EPCSPI coordinator. "We decided to hold the strike to pressure Israel to open the Rafah crossing point and to convince the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to open a station in Rafah to ease the delivery of aid," he added.
Since the hunger strike started a week ago, more than 50 activists, divided into four groups, have taken part in it. Each group fasts for 48 hours and then hands over to the next one in a ceremony attended by other activists. The whole strike is scheduled to end on Saturday with a news conference by EPCSPI members and others who took part in the strike.
"We know this might not be something big, or perhaps even effective," said Walaa Se'da, a young Egyptian television editor. "But I want to send a clear message to Palestinians that they are not alone and that we fully sympathise with their suffering from Israel's siege and oppressive practices," she added, looking pale after more than 36 hours without food, living only on water and cigarettes.
To prove the "popular" nature of the solidarity movement, each group of strikers included participants of different backgrounds, including doctors, lawyers, farmers and university students. The Hisham Mubarak Centre, meanwhile, has turned into a temporary hotel, with mattresses on the ground and volunteer doctors checking strike participants' health every few hours.
Ahmed Kheir, a 19-year-old student at Ain Shams University, was in the second group of strikers. Sitting with a textbook in his hand and a picture of Mohamed Dorra (the 12-year-old boy shot dead by Israeli troops at the beginning of the Intifada despite his father's pleas to stop shooting) on the wall behind him, Kheir said he joined the strike after he felt support for the uprising dwindle in recent weeks. "Now that we have a war criminal as Israel's prime minister, we have to escalate our efforts again to confront the atrocities carried out against Palestinians." He bitterly complained of the restrictions imposed by the university administration and security bodies to prevent any major student protests.
Hamed Abdullah Gheith, a Libyan post-graduate student at Cairo University's law faculty, was also in the second group. "I learned about the Popular Committee from the newspapers and decided to join them because it is the minimum I could do to express my solidarity with Palestinians."
Alaaeddine Kamal, an accountant, also joined the hunger strike to express solidarity "and because I feel that we are heading towards a very dangerous escalation since Sharon took office."
The EPCSPI's Zahran said that members of the group met with a representative of the Red Cross in Cairo to convince them to open a station in Rafah to deliver aid to Palestinians. "They were very positive and said they would consider the matter if they received an official request either from the Egyptian Red Crescent or the Foreign Ministry," Zahran told the Al-Ahram Weekly.
Bernard Pfefferle, head of ICRC's Cairo delegation, interviewed by the Weekly, said that the organisation's station in Amman already delivers aid to Palestinians. "This station has been there since the Second Gulf War and we can cooperate with the Egyptian Popular Committee in delivering the medicine via Amman if they want," he said. He added that the ICRC would consider opening a second station "if we had a good argument to present on humanitarian grounds." Since Egypt has diplomatic relations with Israel, "maybe the authorities could negotiate the delivery of aid [with Israel]," he suggested.
However, an informed source told the Weekly that it was unlikely that the ICRC would open a station in Rafah. "There has to be a real emergency situation for the ICRC to take that step and to go through the trouble of negotiating such a deal with Israel," the source, who requested anonymity, said. "Moreover, the impression the ICRC has is that despite the repeated closure of the Rafah border and the complicated procedures Israel follows to deliver any assistance, goods still go through even if at a very slow pace," the source added.
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