CAIRO (AFP) -- Egypt detained and deported Northern Irish Nobel Laureate and peace activist Mairead Maguire on Wednesday and held up others who had been planning to go to neighboring Gaza, the activists and officials said.
Maguire had intended to join a delegation of women activists going to the blockaded Palestinian enclave on Thursday.
The group could embarrass the military-installed government, which is at odds with Gaza's Hamas rulers, yet does not want to be seen as party to a siege of Palestinians, blockaded by Israel.
On Tuesday, airport police had already detained and deported American anti-war activist Medea Benjamin, also part of the delegation, who told AFP police broke her arm.
Maguire said she arrived at Cairo airport on Tuesday night with fellow activist Ann Patterson.
"We were taken to the detention center and questioned and held for eight hours, and were told we would not be allowed entry into Cairo and would be put on a plane," she told AFP by telephone from Britain after her expulsion.
She said police were polite but gave no reason for barring her, while an airport official told AFP she had been blacklisted.
Maguire, born in 1944, won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize with Betty Williams for founding a peace group to resolve the conflict in Northern Ireland.
She has become a vocal supporter of the Palestinians and was expelled from Israel in 2010, after trying to enter the blockaded Gaza Strip aboard a ship with other activists.
The delegation of activists that will try to enter Gaza through the Egyptian Rafah border crossing was meant to be led by Djamila Bouhired, an icon of the Algerian war of independence from France.
Bouhired had been expected to arrive at 1800 GMT on a flight from Paris, but did not do so.
Meanwhile, about 15 other activists were barred from leaving the airport, their comrades said, and it was not immediately clear if they too would be deported.
Egypt controls the only border crossing with Gaza that bypasses Israel, and is accused of colluding with Israel to blockade the territory ruled by Hamas.
Complying 'with blockade'
The border crossing is opened irregularly.
"I think it's sad, what they've done," Maguire said of the reception she and the other activists received in Egypt.
"It is an example and confirmation of the Egyptian government's compliance with the blockade of Gaza."
In 2006, Israel imposed a blockade on the enclave and tightened the siege in 2007 when Hamas seized control of Gaza after routing forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.
Egypt refuses to recognize Hamas' authority in Gaza and only infrequently allows some aid through the Rafah crossing.
Cairo says the crossing is meant for people, not goods, and a 2005 agreement between Israel and the Palestinians stipulates that Abbas's forces should be present at the passage.
Pro-Palestinian activists from abroad protested in Cairo in 2010 when they were prevented from entering Gaza.
The government of then president Hosni Mubarak eventually allowed some of the activists to cross.
BDS movement “will fail,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told cheering AIPAC delegates. (Screenshot)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today launched a frontal assault on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
“One movement that’s definitely on the wrong side of the moral divide is the movement to boycott Israel, the so-called BDS,” Netanyahu told the cheering delegates, in his keynote speech to the annual gathering of the powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC in Washington, DC.
“That movement will fail,” Netanyahu predicted.
While claiming that people were “flocking to Israel” for its technology from all over the world, Netanyahu warned, “I don’t want you to get complacent – because the fact that they’re going to fail doesn’t mean that the BDS movement shouldn’t be vigorously opposed.”
“Anti-Semites”
Netanyahu proceeded to defame supporters of Palestinian human rights in the crudest terms: “Throughout history, people believed the most outrageously absurd things about the Jews, that we were using the blood of children to bake matzos, that we were spreading the plague throughout Europe.”
Those who support BDS today are just as bad, Netanyahu asserted: “Those who wear the BDS label should be treated exactly as we treat any anti-Semite or bigot. They should be exposed and condemned. The boycotters should be boycotted.”
This speech is Netanyahu’s highest profile attack on BDS, although last summer, he put responsibility for fighting against the movement for Palestinian rights into the hands of the “Ministry of Strategic Affairs.”
Israel is also placing dedicated anti-BDS operatives in its foreign embassies.
In recent months, top ministers in Netanyahu’s government have repeatedly declared that BDS is the “greatest threat” Israel faces.
Desperate
Responding to his remarks, Rafeef Ziadah, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, the Palestinian civil society coalition that leads the BDS movement, said in an emailed statement:
“Netanyahu’s desperate attack on the BDS movement comes as European pension funds are blacklisting Israeli companies and banks, as Israeli concert organizers find it increasingly difficult to persuade artists to perform in Israel and as governments begin to take action to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law.”
“At its core, the BDS movement is a movement against Israel’s systematic discrimination and apartheid policies. The BDS movement is opposed, as a matter of principle, to all forms of discrimination, including anti-semitism and Islamophobia. The world is growing increasingly weary of Israel’s attempts to conflate criticism of its violations of international law with anti-semitism.”
Ziadah is right. It’s hard to see how people who are not already on board with Netanyahu will be swayed by his invective.
If Israel’s only answer to people all over the world who are horrified by its oppression of Palestinians and ongoing theft of their land, is to call them “bigots,” then Netanyahu should fully expect the BDS movement to grow.
