The Fall of the Gaza Wall!
The first part of this foolish & unsustainable wall to fall.
It started with 17 explosions at night along the multiple layered prison wall with Egypt
By dawn the Palestinians were breaking out of their prison
- while the demolition work continued - it is good to see it can be pushed over.
What! Bulldozers at work? No these are not Israeli but Palestinian- and they are knocking down the wall not building it!
The people of Gaza have their first taste of freedom for decades - although this is only a start.
Not able to wait until all the wall is down - the happy faces tell it all.
Note the straight break in the metal at the foot of the wall, it has been cut with oxy-acetalene torches - in an operation perhaps taking weeks but kept very secret. The explosives were just the final touch, completely catching the Israeli, Egyptian and US authorities by surprise, leaving them initially dumbstruck, leaving their policy of forcing submission on Gaza by making it a prison in tatters.
By now an enormous stretch of the Wall is laid flat - and the people are flooding out.
but then -
Shamefully, the Egyptian army briefly tries to stop the Palestinian jail-break
under presure from the USA which starts to cut aid grants to Egypt for not doing so earlier.
But, the Egyptian army is stopped by Hamas - and the Egyptians order their troops to watch without trying to stop the Palestinians
and now they start to use lorries, tractors and taxis in order to get resources from deeper inside Egypt
One day this fragment of the Wall may be a museum piece - if it survives.
the story continues - this is up to january 28th 2008
Video - a Palestinian reports on Real News
Thank to the Palestine Remembered website for providing these photos -and much more
- a visit to it (click here) is highly recommended