The next day, according to plan, I participated in the symposium at Artists' House in Tel Aviv.
In conclusion
I am full of satisfaction that I had the honour of being part of the humanitarian delegation that set out on the second voyage to break the Israeli closure of Gaza. (My friend Jeff Halper, chairman of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, participated in the first voyage). Aid for a million and a half besieged human beings outweighs any military order. And besides: in a democratic state, generals do not give orders to civilians. Another example of how Israel is not a normal democracy.
In Gaza I found people who yearn for peace. If I may be permitted to use a somewhat flowery expression: they thirstily drank my messages of peace, which of course were not just mine but spoke for a large constituency in Israel, even if it is not a majority, it is still a great many people.
The closure affects everything. There is no aspect of civil life in Gaza that is not affected by it, and of course those who suffer worst are the sick, especially babies and children.
In the Gaza Strip there is no hunger of the type that is seen in parts of Africa, but there is great hardship, and we do not have to wait until the situation gets to such a low point.
The Hamas regime is a concrete political fact, at least at this stage. The refusal to talk to it is reminiscent of the old refusal to talk to the PLO. It was not wise then and it is not wise today. The impression that I got was that there are people to talk to and there is something to talk about. I have no doubt that Israeli gestures such as lifting the closure would be more fruitful - including on the Gilad Shalit issue - than a continuation of Israel's policy of force would be.
These days it is becoming clear that the Defence Minister has gotten tired of the calm that has been respected by the Hamas regime, and has decided on baseless grounds to return to the language of missiles, bombs and raids. As usual, the military correspondents have acted as an extension of the IDF Spokesperson's office and they have justified the violation of the calm by the Israeli invasion army.
During the two very full days I spent in Gaza, I also succeeded in making several acquaintances with impressive people, and I hope to strengthen my ties with them.
My sojourn in Gaza did not turn me into a Hamas supporter, for as a secular person I oppose all religious fundamentalism, whatever form it takes. There are many Israelis who believe that the internal Palestinian rift that the Israeli Occupation encourages and to a great extent creates is good for Israel. That is the short-term wisdom of fools.
The Palestinian people must be permitted to choose their own path free of the shackles of the Occupation.
I call on peace-loving Israelis who oppose the closure to implement Nobel Peace Prize laureate Reverend Martin Luther King's principles of civil disobedience. The appeal is directed mainly to retirees in their 60s and 70s whose health permits them to sail from Cyprus to Gaza.
The youth among us, like the brave Occupation refusers who are sitting in military prisons, are implementing civil disobedience with their refusal to enlist in the Occupation army. We retirees can fulfill a similar role by breaking the closure of Gaza. The Gazans warmly welcomed those who went. The greater the number of people who refuse to obey the military order, the harder it will be to put them on trial. It will be difficult for the State to jail scores and maybe hundreds of old people who tell the regime: any law that forbids us to express solidarity with suffering people through non-violent action is patently illegal.
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