RAFAH: Ismailia is a grim place in Winter. During the past week the rain has poured relentlessly and the streets, owing to Egypt’s poor drainage systems, are ankle deep in water.
Hopping through the puddles, my companions and I managed to hitch a lift to the other side of the main street, where it would only be a short walk to the Ismailia Doctors’ Syndicate. From there we had made arrangements to accompany them to Egyptian Rafah, where they would be delivering medicinal and staple food supplies, clothes and domestic items to the Palestinian’s flooding into Gaza.
“Of course it won’t be enough, said Abdullah, one of the volunteers, “We have only have four or five trucks and there are 1.25 million Palestinians, but if it can make a small difference, then that’s something.
The volunteers gathering in the union were made up of doctors, academics, biochemists and a few students thrown in for good measure. All were religious, and the majority had affiliations with or were active members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Indeed, Ismailia itself is the cradle of the Brotherhood, and the overt piety of its population seems to reflect that. But they also know that their religiosity is a point of suspicion for the Egyptian government. I asked one volunteer, who I knew to be an active member, for an interview, but he refused. In Ismailia, it seems, people are acutely aware of political Islam’s tender roots, and painfully alert to the government’s long, circumscribing arm.
But fear of the government does not stop harsh criticism of its policy. “This government is a failure, said Dr Razaq, one of the organizers of the Ismailia relief effort. “It’s failed the Egyptian people and it’s failed the Palestinian people. We tried to take supplies to Rafah yesterday, but we were refused passage across the Mubarak-Salam bridge.
The previous day, President Hosni Mubarak had made a statement saying, “We will not allow the starvation of the Palestinian people; not allow the situation to turn into a humanitarian crisis … We will do everything we can to restore humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
Yet there’s a general consensus that the president didn’t really have a choice in the matter.
Within the space of the day, Mubarak was facing international pressure to close the border. The threat of arms and drug smugglers, not to mention terrorist groups operating across an open, unchecked and chaotic border was too much to risk.
According to reports in the Egyptian press, on the night of the Jan. 26, armed police made a human barrier to cordon off the border. In response, a Palestinian group blew up another part of the wall, injuring 12 Egyptian soldiers in the process. It seemed that the government had instead resorted to stringent checks on any vehicles passing through certain key points on the Egyptian map.
Dr Razaq is one among many who have a different theory for these checks that have prevented aid from being delivered to Rafah. Standing before me, his silvery white goatee beard glistening in the dark, he tells me in clear Egyptian that marks him out as a member of the cultured class, “The government doesn’t want the Palestinians here at all. They are doing anything to get them out. They are here to buy food and get medicine, so as long as the government can prevent supplies from reaching them they can drive them home, back to Gaza and swiftly rebuild the wall.
After much discussion, the group decided to head to Al-Arish and on to Rafah the next morning. Not wanting to spend the night in Ismailia, we found a taxi and made our way to the Mubarak-Salam bridge, the Japanese-Egyptian “Bridge of Peace that runs over the Suez Canal. It was closed, only to be reopened the next morning at 8 am.
Rumors trailing through the streams of cars and lorries waiting on the roads leading to the bridge spoke of a strict no-go policy on any vehicles carrying goods, of which there were many: lorries full of motorcycles, clothes, even cows lined the road, their owners hoping to make a quick buck out of a nearby humanitarian disaster.
But that didn’t stop trucks braving the unruly sands as many found other ways to cross over to the road leading to Al-Arish, and as we reached Rafah, it was clear why. The city was surging with what could only be described as a thick unflagging wave of tens of thousands of people desperately trying to buy supplies and fill up gas canisters.
The fact that the city was swarming with security seemed irrelevant: Those turned away at a checkpoint would make their way back through the edge of the desert.
“You see that cow over there, said Bassam, a Palestinian cameraman working for Reuters. He pointed at a skinny cow being led towards the ma’bar (crossing). “They probably bought it for about $500 dollars, inside Gaza it’ll sell for $1,500.
The wall itself, a winding swoop of iron sheets, could have been a work of modern art, were not the situation so tragic. Yet even with a backdrop of bullet-riddled buildings and a recently gutted tank carcass there was a tremendous sense of exhilaration.
The Egyptian government is making plans to close the border by the end of the week. Although the sheer number of people will make this operation a logistical nightmare, the episode may shrink in the eyes of the international press within days. For Palestinians, however, this is a triumph that will be regaled for decades.
