Political and popular forces called on Arab masses to welcome the Viva Palestina convoy coming from Europe via land and led by British MP George Galloway as well as some activists in Europe. The Kefaya Movement, el-Karama Party, the Popular Committee in Support of the Palestinian People (PCSPP), the Egyptian Labor Party, the international committee against US and Zionist domination, and the Muslim Brotherhood [MB] group issued a statement yesterday in which they called on the Egyptian authorities to help the convoy. This convoy contains 130 cargos of food and medical articles and intends to go to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing. Popular and political forces said the European convoy represented a strong position assumed by the international community against the injustice and subjugation by Israeli forces - particularly in Gaza - and by the US administration, which they said backed the aggression and war criminals. The PCSPP announced the formation of a popular committee in cooperation with all national forces to welcome the convoy. This committee is due to move from the Syndicate of Journalists when the convoy arrives in Rafah. Meanwhile, the security forces did not allow some European activists to enter the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing for no clear reason. They demanded the activists show a letter from their respective embassies in Egypt in order to be let into Gaza. The embassies, though, refused to do so and instead gave some of them letters warning them from trying to go to Gaza. The Egyptian security forces, for their part, said French, Canadian and US activists would enter under the latter's own responsibility. Ehab Latif, an Egyptian-Canadian member of a Canadian alliance for justice and freedom in Palestine, said he came to Arish to go to Gaza through the Rafah crossing. He also said he wanted to pave the way for a delegation of the Canadian civil society that included some representatives of professional trade unions and politicians, on their way to Gaza to support its local residents. He said he was surprised to see the security forces preventing him from entering and asking him for a letter from the embassy. "I have a work permit as a journalist, yet they didn't let me in to do my job without giving me any explanation" he said. Some days ago, the security services at Rafah crossing had prevented a delegation of French psychologists from entering into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing. The delegation wanted to provide necessary psychological treatment to the children traumatized by the aggression. The delegation was denied access, though, despite bringing letters from the French Embassy in Cairo calling on the Egyptian authorities to help the experts reach Gaza residents. US-Palestinian Sahr Abou Saada, head of the Palestinians for Peace and Democracy movement, deplored the security services' decision to deny access to activists who had come to Rafah from across the world to ease the pain of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and to unveil to international organizations the effects of the Israeli aggression on those people. She said that the Gazans had asked the movement for tents and blankets and that they had been bought in el-Khiyamiya, Egypt. She said the Egyptian people had very much cooperated by offering discounts or contributing to the convoy, contrary to the Egyptian authorities. She then added that a delegation of European women intended to go to the Rafah border crossing and to enter Gaza on the International Women's Day. She feared, though, that the delegation might be bogged down by the Egyptian authorities.
