Hospitality is perhaps not a thing to generalise about, but how many shops in the UK would insist that you sit down with them for a really good Turkish coffee, just because you went in to buy some board shorts, and despite the fact that you don’t share a word of the same language? So yes, I’ve just spent half an hour watching the business of the head of the Aqaba clothes-shop mafia. 🙂
Some of the convoy tried to begin a hunger strike today in front of the Egyptian consulate here. They were prevented from reaching it by the Jordanian police, but the hunger strike will proceed anyway. Taking part amongst others is John Hurson from Tyrone, a relative of whose (Martin Hurson) died in the Irish hunger strikes in 1981.
Meanwhile, Kim, Joel, Shak & Ryan got up at five and took a flag up a mountain today, then some of the rest of us took one out in a boat towards Israel. Not to worry you, but their navy fired a few intimidation shots out to sea just before we headed out (they were expecting us? The room IS bugged then… 😉 and then the Jordanian police came out to tell us not to film the border. The scene was pretty dramatic with our glass-bottomed tourist boat being rammed by the fast police inflatable (and losing his landing ladder in the process), but the glass boat dudes were very cool about it and even enjoyed holding up some of our banners on the way back. In fact the police were fine too, although I was a bit nervous for DashCam for a moment and it looked as though Hassan from Press TV might have his tape removed… the excuse was that our cameras were “too big” to be for tourists.
I was using DashCam, the dashboard-mounted camera that’s been filming those moments of the journey where you wish you’d had time to grab a camera. He’s been liberated from my dashboard while the trucks languish in the compound. I’m going to miss that camera when I have to give it back! Having been talking about DashCam as a “he”, I asked Kim the other day if his had a gender. Kim decided his was a girl, after which bit of anthropomorphising he realised he’d suddenly become even more attached to the thing! It’s fascinating for me as a keen photographer to watch the related but distinctly different techniques of video film-makers like Kim and Hassan.
On the subject of the compound, the Jordanians have sent a refrigerated truck up to help the medicine survive. Which doesn’t bode too well for how long they plan to keep us there.
SO, here is where you guys can help. Please, write to your MP, MSP, MEP, and to the Foreign Secretary — also to the Egyptian government. Stress that this is a peaceful convoy of humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. Demand to know from the Egyptians the justification for denying it access to Egypt and thus through to Gaza. And plead with the UK to show some measure of care by pressing Egypt to allow us access; and indeed pressing Israel to stop the bombing, which recommenced today, killing several Gazans.