The Viva Palestina Convoy makes it into Gaza!

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The Viva Palestina convoy drove slowly along the Salah Eddine road leading to Gaza City taking in the atmosphere around them and savouring the moment of history they had just created.


Along the way, thousands of Palestinians, the other heroes of this beautiful story of resistance, defiance and hope approached

Some support members of Viva Palestina who managed to cross on foot after a ten-hour wait at the border are staying at Rafah tonight as guests of the Gaza governing authorities. Unfortunately, some other members are still awaiting permission to cross. They are hoping that the Egyptians will allow them to join their friends tomorrow.

An eventful day, with a roller-coaster of emotions, is drawing to an close. Tomorrow Viva Palestina will tour Gaza to see, at first hand, the plight of one and half million people in the densest concentration of people per square kilometre on the globe.

They will report on the scale of the calamity in what, in reality, is the world’s biggest concentration camp, where people have endured a never-ending siege and where they have nowhere to run when the F16s decide to play their deadly game with the children of Gaza.

Farid Arada

George Galloway's first speech inside Gaza



Meanwhile Mad Mel Phlips (spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3423966/it-couldnt-have-happened-to-a-nicer-bunch.thtml - this passes for civilised mainstream blogging) reaches a now moral low. You get what you sow and Phlips is no exception: from her comment section:

Wilhelm

The ego has landed.
George Galoway, a self indulgent, narcsissitic, vain, egotist and and bar room brawler, Mr Shouty always squeeeeling from the roof tops. Ho Hum.

d1carter

Don't you just love it when all the stars align and something happens that makes you just laugh. What a buffoon!

jose garcia

so they hit the convoy with stones?
and they missed geordi Galloway's
head?.

how is that possible?

But there's also a few that provide civilised counterfire to Mel's and her paladins' shameful gloating:

MV

Even by Ms Phillips' extraordinarily low standards this is disgraceful. Galloway is not saying anything re. Egypt he hasn't said many times before. Even the most basic research would have revealed that. Still, mocking people as they fail to get aid to people your favourite state recently massacred and maimed is, apparently, ok. Hee Hee indeed.

George Laird

Dear Michelle
I did comment on this report, it was censored because I directly asked Melanie questions.
It is a pity you couldn't have read it, it was one of those sorties into the human psyche.
Finally, let me ask you, what is funny about people trying to do Humanitarian work being attacked?
This is the second time I have asked this question today.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

john

Collective punishment is in vogue I see. Hamas and Islamic Jihad fire rockets at Israeli civilians, so the whole of Gaza must be cut off from aid having suffered a disproportionate and often criminal bombing campaign from the IDF. Galloway participates in an aid convoy so it's open season on the lot of them, whoever they may be.
I don't think Egypt's disgraceful record on Gaza is any secret. It's been very handy for Melanie Phillips and other apologists, a cynical tool to deflect attention from the fact that if access to Gaza was permitted by sea, aid wouldn't have to be delivered via Egypt or Israel.
Getting smug over civilians being prevented aid and those trying to help suffering physical harm, intimidation and abuse is a new low and hardly the sort of support people living in Sderot need.

John Edwards

Melanie, I may disagree with just about everything you say about the Middle East, but if your vehicle was pelted with stones I would not be mean spirited enough to support it or gloat about it on my blog.