Massive woman march in Gaza calls for opening Rafah crossing

GAZA, (PIC)-- The woman sector within Hamas organized Saturday afternoon a massive march to call for opening the Rafah border crossing and breaking the siege immediately to alleviate the suffering of Gaza people. In a speech delivered during the march, Umm Mohamed Al-Rantisi, a prominent Hamas leader, called on Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his government to open the Rafah crossing and also urged human rights organizations and Arab states to pressure the besieging parties to lift the unjust siege on Gaza. Rantisi underlined that the closure of the Rafah crossing negatively affected the lives of Gaza people especially the patients, where the Israeli siege claimed the lives of hundreds of them. Meanwhile, Huwaida Arraf, an activist of the Free Gaza Movement, said in a televised meeting on Friday night that the humanitarian situation in Gaza due to the Israeli siege was unbearable, highlighting that Israel commits a war crime against humanitarian law. Arraf added that she and other activists visited many areas in Gaza and saw the suffering of its people especially patients and also witnessed the suffering of students who need to catch up with their studies abroad but cannot travel through the Rafah crossing as well as farmers who are targeted by Israeli troops and thus cannot go to their lands near the Gaza borders. On behalf of all Free Gaza activists, she affirmed that the activists will carry the messages they received from Palestinian citizens in Gaza all over the world in order to mobilize global solidarity to confront the siege, noting that in the meantime another anti-siege boat is getting ready to arrive in the Strip.