Egypt's wall of shame aims to starve Gaza into surrender

An iron wall of shame is being built around a suffering people who are being effectively starved into surrender, but if not into surrender, then into death.

One day after after this Democracy Now interview, George Galloway -- Britsh MP and a vice president of Stop the War Coalition -- was deported from Egypt when he tried to return to Rafah to help seven members of the Viva Palestina aid convoy who had been arrested.

The Egyptian people are entirely behind the Palestinians under siege. Unfortunately, they are ill-served by a government that is playing a quite despicable role, actually, just a few yards from where I am now.

The Egyptians are building what we call the wall of shame, which is being done in conjunction with the United States military, to try and choke off the tunnels, which are the only other means of bringing life into Gaza, in which sheep and chickens and petrol and gas and the other means of staying alive, other than medicine because food is actually not allowed to come through the Rafah gate from Egypt into Gaza. Food must pass through the Israeli lines.

If I give you a tiny example only to give you an example, I’m here in quite a nice hotel, except there is no food in the hotel. There’s no food for breakfast, there’s no food for lunch.

Now I make that point only to illustrate that if there’s no food in the best hotel in Gaza, imagine what the people are suffering. I’ve watched with my own eyes Palestinian women and girls in the early morning mists on top of garbage heaps, combing through the garbage heaps looking for food. In an Arab Muslim country in 2009 and ’10, it’s a absolutely scandalous situation.

Remember why and how it came about. It’s been imposed by men. It’s not a natural disaster. How do you explain to anyone that Egypt, once the heart of the Arab world, is now playing a part in building an iron wall of shame around a suffering people who are being effectively starved, they hope, into surrender, but if not into surrender, then into death?