Freedom for Gaza (but for one day only)

The Israeli blockade of Gaza has been going on since last June. Yesterday - no-one knows who but many of us suspect Hamas - someone blew the wall between Gaza and Egypt with seventeen separate explosive charges.

And through they came, thousands of Palestinians searching for household goods, cigarettes and spare car parts which they have been denied for the past seven months.

And, from the reports that I have read, the Egyptians seemed very happy to see them.

And certainly the steel-helmeted Egyptian border guards standing by their armoured personnel carriers seemed pleased enough to see the tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children who squeezed between the now flattened eight- metre concrete slabs of wall or scrambled across the furrows in the now uselessly prone and twisted corrugated iron barrier.

One, in camouflage fatigues, surrounded by curious small boys and standing by Rafah-Sinai's Shuhada Mosque, but with no visible weapon and refusing to give his name, said: "Everything is good. We are very happy at what happened." Had his unit received instructions on how to handle the day-long mass Palestinian break-out? "Nobody told us anything," he replied.

This may not have been quite the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But if anyone doubted the impact of a prolonged siege on an imprisoned people, they had the evidence yesterday.

With Gaza City's streets abnormally light of traffic because of the fuel shortages, the cars, vans, cattle trucks, packed with Gazans seeking everyday household wares, crowded the main Salahadin north-south artery of the Gaza Strip clogging the approaches to the border, confident of filling their jerry cans of petrol and diesel after queueing patiently on the other side. "We are going to heaven," shouted one teenager.

Israel have, understandably, complained about the security implications of this, stating that "potentially anyone could enter Gaza" which is, of course, true. However, it still made me smile as it implied that there might be some rush of people eager to enter the world's largest open prison.

No doubt the Israelis will close the holes in the wall soon enough and the blockade will continue, but for one day there was something very endearing about the fact that the Egyptian border patrol - and who would ever have thought that border patrols would show humanity? - turned a blind eye whilst a besieged people enjoyed a day at the shops.

As a Gazan taxi driver put it:

"I don't know who did it," he said cheerfully. "But this is an agreement between two peoples, not between governments."

And there's a great truth to that. Governments might argue about the need to maintain the borders for reasons of security but, that was not the first thing most people thought of when they saw the exodus of people searching for goods.

Anyone capable of empathy, especially here in Britain where most people's parents can still remember war time rationing, imagined what it would be like to be in the Palestinians shoes and wished them well.

It is for that reason, I suspect, that President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt ordered his troops to do nothing. He didn't dare to intervene.

Here's footage of what took place.



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Tags: Israel, Palestine, Gaza