Monday, January 28, 2008

The Great Escape from Gaza


Instead of being ashamed of what their Israeli friends have been doing to a helpless, besieged people, the US says it is concerned over the Gaza wall break. Concerned over what, Ms Rice?

By Aijaz Zaka Syed
PalestineChronicle.com

"....No wall is high enough to imprison a free people. As a breathless Jacky Rowland of Al Jazeera, standing over the remains of the corrugated metal wall that the Rafah crossing was, put it, if Gaza was the biggest prison on the planet, this was undoubtedly the biggest prison break in history.

In less than an hour, hundreds of thousands of besieged and starving Palestinians had fled this prison to flood into Egypt. Men and women, young and old streamed into Egypt for freedom. And for more mundane things. As English classical poet Richard Lovelace warned: Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; You cannot imprison a whole nation. Especially a people as free-spirited and irrepressible as the Palestinians. Even if the oppressor happens to be the most ruthless and racist regime on the planet. You cannot arrest a people's fierce desire to remain free, even if you happen to have the most fearsome weapons the Man has known at your disposal.

The sheer joy and boundless delight of ordinary Palestinians on breaking out of the prison that Gaza has been for years was exhilarating and infectious even to distant spectators like us.....

And if you happened to watch that rare spectacle at Rafah crossing this week, you would know what a great crime it is to enslave those free-spirited souls; making them prisoners in their own land.....

Who knows how many innocents may have died as a result of Israel's long siege of Gaza? Who cares? The civilized world — if there's such a thing as the civilized world — doesn't.

Even those token, whimpering protests that the so-called international community used to register by way of that wonderfully ineffectual angel called United Nations aren't heard any more.

Truth is, we have all become used to the endless, perpetual tragedy that the wretched existence of the Palestinians is.....

Ironically, instead of being ashamed of what their Israeli friends have been doing to a helpless, besieged people, the US says it is CONCERNED over the Gaza wall break. Concerned over what, Ms Rice? The liberation of a people from the clutches of tyranny? I wonder what America's founding fathers would have said on this interesting reaction by Condi Rice, someone whose own people had to fight long and hard for their freedom. But anyone watching the Palestinians make their freedom run to Egypt, trampling the dismantled 40ft high barrier as if it were a broken concertina, would know that you cannot enchain a people as independent as this forever. Freedom may take its own sweet time coming. But come it will, come it will. As Richard Lovelace promised: If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone that soar above Enjoy such liberty Don't let your hopes die, comrades. Everyone who loves freedom is with the Palestinians. The world is with you."

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