Amira Hass in Haaretz:

“The story gradually became clear. The international organizers of the march coordinated it with civil society, various non-governmental organizations, which were also supposed to involve the Popular Committee to Break the Siege, a semi-official organization affiliated with Hamas. Many European activists have long-standing connections with left-wing organizations in the Gaza Strip. Those organizations, especially the relatively large Popular Front, had organized lodging for several hundred guests in private homes. When the Hamas government heard this, it prohibited the move. “For security reasons.” What else?

Also “for security reasons,” apparently, on Thursday morning, the activists discovered a cordon of stern-faced, tough Hamas security men blocking them from leaving the hotel (which is owned by Hamas). The security officials accompanied the activists as they visited homes and organizations.

During the march itself, when Gazans watching from the sidelines tried to speak with the visitors, the stern-faced security men blocked them. “They didn’t want us to speak to ordinary people,” one woman concluded.

Hijacked or poorly organized?

The march was not what the organizers had dreamed of during the nine months of preparation. The day before the trip to Gaza, they already knew that the non-governmental organizations had backed out. Some people said that Hamas government representatives had found the NGOs did not have a clear, organized plan for the guests and therefore had taken the initiative. One Palestinian activist insisted: “When we heard there would only be 100, we canceled everything.”

Another said, “From the outset, Hamas set conditions: No more than 5,000 marchers, no approaching the wall and the fence, how to make speeches, how long the speeches should be, who will make speeches. In short, Hamas hijacked the initiative from us and we gave in.”

Hamas, or its Popular Committee, brought 200 or 300 marchers. The march turned into nothing more than a ritual, an opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the company of Western demonstrators. Especially photogenic were four Americans from the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta, who joined the trip only at Al Arish. There were no Palestinian women among the marchers – a slap to the many feminist organizers and participants, both women and men.

After the march, the guests voiced protests to some of the official Palestinian organizers. “We came to demonstrate against the siege, and we found that we ourselves were under siege,” they said. Their variegation and the transparency of their behavior did not suit the military discipline the official hosts tried to impose. The officials listened, and after the reins were loosened a bit, I set out to visit the homes of friends.”

couldn’t agree more, barnabe. hope you can take your own lesson there. this article would benefit from quite a lot of scrutiny in its next draft. you may want to consider talking with some of the civil society and pflp leaders, as some of these commentors have, to get their perspectives before claiming to “give all points of view” and offer an analysis that is sorely lacking.

I wrote about the march in Gaza, which was what the Gaza Freedom March was always meant to be. Some would like to have the Gaza Freedom March recast as the protests in Cairo and a declaration written in Egypt which equates Israeli policies with apartheid, barely mentions Gaza or the siege and lays out a plan for future, hypothetical work quite apart from the blockade of Gaza. The march was meant to be against the siege in Gaza. The declaration and future work focuses on BDS, to the great pleasure, I am sure, of two individuals.

Some commentators seem to believe they know what happened on this trip because they have been to Gaza before. Those who came on this trip and had been on past delegations said they had never been under such tight surveillance before. One commentator rather oddly surmises that a Hamas man she was neither there to see or to meet could not have lost his temper after a quarrel with foreign activists.

I can only say that those who accuse me of not comprehending the complexities of the political situation in Gaza, only to go on to say that the PFLP and Hamas are not at odds, discredit themselves. Because Hamas and the PFLP are not engaged in gun battles in the streets, as they have been before, does not mean they see eye to eye. Anyone who thinks that the secularist, leftist PFLP and Islamist Hamas do not have serious differences needs to re-examine their own understanding of the politics of Gaza. The PFLP has, unsuccessfully, acted as a mediator between Hamas and Fatah. It is the strongest party in Gaza after Hamas, and it would be folly for Hamas to attempt to take it on. This means the two tolerate each other, but it is not hard to see that the unveiled women clad in military fatigues at PFLP rallies do not fit in well with Hamas’ religious and political conservatism.

I have also been accused by one commentator of missing the human story in Gaza. Perhaps the person missed my entire section dedicated to explaining the human dimension of the geopolitical struggle of which Gaza is a pawn. The ordinary Gazans I spoke to had harsh words for Hamas’ regime. The article laid out, in detail, the issues all the actors faced in the organization and carrying out of this march. Yet leave it to Western activists to viscerally defend those they want to see as allies in a struggle against a pure evil. Unfortunately, understanding the complexities of the Middle East requires more than a chaperoned visit to Gaza. It requires a pragmatic scrutiny that some here have demonstrated they hopelessly lack.

Therefore, it is more likely that the assassination was carried out by those seeking to damage and delay Iran’s nuclear program. That, of course, means Western governments, especially the United States and Israel. These governments use their espionage agencies to gather information about the Iranian nuclear program. There are reports about efforts to damage equipment purchased abroad for the program, to recruit agents from within Iran’s nuclear project with access to information, and to lure senior officials associated with the country’s nuclear program to defect.

The possibility that Western, or even Israeli, spy agencies are behind the latest assassination is supported by precedent. According to foreign news reports, Israel acted in a similar fashion during the 1960s against German scientists working to develop missiles in Egypt, and during the 1970s against various scientists. These included Egyptians and the Canadian scientist Gerald Bull who worked on Iraq’s nuclear and missile projects under Saddam Hussein.

His colleagues at Tehran University claim that Mohammadi was not connected whatsoever with Iran’s nuclear program. However, precedent shows that Iranian universities, especially the chemistry and physics departments, have served as a front for Iran’s nuclear program. They have purchased and hid equipment, and their professors and experts have served as consultants for the program.

Reports have increased in recent years about attempts by Western espionage agencies to harm Iranian scientists; there have even been a few reports about Iranian scientists who died under mysterious circumstances. In one case, a scientist died at home, ostensibly of suffocation from a gas space heater.

Not that I’d normally bother to reply to you, but it may be of benefit to others (nothing can benefit you Julian, since you fell off the edge ages ago – maybe at birth?)

The “movement” was shown to be fatally incompetent and increasingly violent in the Gaza freedom March, eventually causing the death of an Egyptian Police Officer.

oh please. you’re sounding a little desperate.

well put unverified. i think originally it was conceived as a way to break the siege, once palestinians started getting on board i think they wanted their priorities addressed and the affirmation the efforts were in solidarity with those priorities. unfortunately some of those priorities meant making commitments and personal decisions some of the organizers had yet to make. i support norm for being honest and stepping back under the circumstances although i realize how difficult it must have been for him.

for me, one of the most amazing stories to emerge from the gaza freedom march is that almost all of the gfmers refused mubarak’s sell-out deal of the buses. despite the pleading of some of codepink’s leadership, many of the original 100 refused their seats on the buses, and many more refused to take their place. when the buses left, only 84 were on board! 1,400 people came to cairo with their hearts set on going to gaza, but we watched the buses pull away with 16 empty seats because we had come to cairo to act in solidarity with the people of gaza, not to join another token aid effort.

I do think the gaza freedom march offers a lot of lessons for our movement, beginning with finkelstein’s refusal to give up ownership of the march (so well put, laura!!), climaxing with the decision around the buses, and now being teased out by writings like this one and walden bello’s ridiculous rant in foreign policy in focus. we had so many successes in cairo, including of course the cairo declaration to end israeli apartheid (it’s still absurd to me that that document is not even mentioned in this piece), but we must also examine our weaker moments, as well. as you mention, laura, we have a lot to learn about solidarity work.

Is that what your intelligence sources told you? It’s more likely an anti reformist group in Iran killed him.
What will you do when BDS totally fails? Resort to violence again? Suicide bombings? The “movement” was shown to be fatally incompetent and increasingly violent in the Gaza freedom March, eventually causing the death of an Egyptian Police Officer.