The Electronic Intifada 21 July 2025
A coalition of Palestine solidarity groups march to Downing Street in central London while Global March to Gaza activists attempt to reach Rafah crossing, 15 June.
ImagoIn mid-June, delegations from more than 50 different countries gathered in Egypt in an attempt to march to the border of the Gaza Strip and break the siege.
Instead of breaking the siege and piercing Israel’s bubble of impunity, the activists saw first-hand the lengths to which Egyptian authorities will go to maintain Israel’s blockade on Gaza.
When asked why she decided to join the Global March to Gaza, Nadia, an activist living in an Arab country who asked that her name be changed for this story, said: “It’s clear that we have failed and that institutions want to retreat into themselves and their privileges.”
“As citizens, we must create something that goes beyond the models of mobilization we know,” she added.
On 13 June, Nadia and thousands of others were supposed to take their first steps from the Egyptian city of al-Arish, in the northern Sinai Peninsula, and head toward Rafah. The march, around 30 miles long, was supposed to end with an encampment in front of Rafah crossing, the only connection between Gaza and Egypt and which has been closed by Israel since May 2024.
Participants planned to peacefully occupy the area surrounding Rafah crossing from 15 to 19 June. The demand was the same one that has echoed through the streets of cities worldwide for nearly two years: reopen the borders, allow Gaza’s exhausted population to access humanitarian aid and stop the genocide.
Meanwhile, on 9 June, the Sumoud Convoy left Tunis to reach Rafah. The roughly 1,500 participants – coming mainly from Tunisia, Algeria and Libya – had planned to travel overland to northern Sinai, where they would join the peaceful protest of the Global March to Gaza.
Things, however, did not go as planned.
Hurdles
Antonietta Chiodo, spokesperson and coordinator of the Italian delegation, said that preparing for the march involved intensive coordination.
Egyptian law prohibits unauthorized gatherings of more than 10 people, and the Spanish delegation, led by Palestinian activist Saif Abukeshek, was in charge of obtaining permits – but no response from Cairo ever came.
Activists therefore hoped to reach Egypt and, once there, negotiate the permits.
On 11 June, Egypt’s foreign ministry published a statement welcoming international support for Palestinian human rights and expressing opposition to the Israeli siege on Gaza, while stressing that participants in the march must follow bureaucratic procedures to obtain permits. The declaration was viewed by the organizers as a partial opening by Egypt.
However, that same day, concerning messages began circulating in the Signal groups of the incoming delegations.
“By Thursday evening, the permit still hadn’t arrived, but people had already started to arrive in Cairo,” Nadia recounted.
“In our group chat, some people said they had been arrested at the airport, others had been questioned before being allowed to enter, and still others complained of being followed by plainclothes police or secret services inside their hotels,” she said.
“Everyone was very afraid.”
Bairbre Ní Chaoimh, who was part of the Irish delegation, got rid of anything that could identify her as a participant in the Global March to Gaza while she was en route to Egypt.
“I was flying via Frankfurt, where I had a really short turnaround. I was in the bathroom, and I had to give away a T-shirt and put an Irish flag and a Palestinian flag into the bin,” she said.
“I didn’t throw my sleeping bag away, though; I just put it into a less obvious place in my hand luggage. So, on I went. I had been warned to behave like a tourist once in Cairo.”
By 12 June, the day before the march was supposed to begin, the number of people stopped upon arrival, interrogated, or deported by Egyptian authorities had already reached about 200.
“They just let loose”
Plans changed once it became clear that the Egyptian authorities would never allow the march to reach al-Arish.
On the morning of 13 June, the delegations were informed that everyone would have to take a taxi and reach the new meeting point in Ismailia independently. Some groups, including the Italian one, decided to stay in Cairo for safety reasons. Other delegations and individuals decided to go to the city on the Suez Canal.
“It was impossible to reach Ismailia,” said Bairbre Flood, another participant from the Irish delegation. “We tried, we booked an Uber five times and each time the driver canceled because they knew the address.”
Helen Lawlor, also part of the Irish delegation, managed to reach the first checkpoint set up by the Egyptian authorities on the road to Ismailia. Upon arrival, the police forced her out of the taxi and confiscated her passport.
Together with hundreds of others, Lawlor sat under the sun in an act of peaceful protest. After several hours, buses and unidentified cars arrived from which groups of men in civilian clothes descended. The police issued an ultimatum to the demonstrators: they had 15 minutes to voluntarily board the buses that would take them back to Cairo, or they would be forced onto them.
The crowd refused to comply.
“They started turning off the streetlights. We were in total darkness, and we didn’t know what was going to happen because we knew these men were there for a sinister reason,” Lawlor said. “They had ropes, whips, belts and metal bars with spikes on the bottom of them.”
“Very quickly, they just went to people,” she added. “They were throwing full bottles of water into people’s faces to try and break their nose, splashing people with water. And then they just let loose.”
“A woman in front of me was grabbed by three men. She had short hair, and they pulled her maybe 50 meters by her scalp,” Lawlor said.
“Another woman’s arm was sliced open with a whip. People had black eyes. One of our group was beaten on the head. He had to leave the following day for medical treatment. I got a big bruise on my arm.”
Bairbre Ní Chaoimh, who managed to avoid the checkpoints and reached Ismailia via back roads, had a similar experience.
“The armed police surrounded us. They held hands so that we couldn’t get out, and then they started dragging people. It didn’t matter what age they were or anything,” she said.
After midnight, the exhausted demonstrators agreed to board the buses. But they were not taken back to Cairo as promised. Instead, they were dropped off in the middle of the road, miles away from the city or the airport.
Activists detained
The next day, on 14 June, the Sumoud Convoy was also forced to turn back. Blocked near Sirte in Libya, the convoy faced days of surveillance and interrogation by forces linked to commander Khalifa Haftar.
Meanwhile, in Cairo, the intimidation did not stop.
“On Saturday I went to a hostel where part of the French delegation and part of the German delegation were staying,” Nadia said.
Six march participants, including Nadia, held a video call with other delegations in the common room of the hostel to figure out next steps.
Nadia and other activists believe that hostel staff informed the authorities about their meeting. A few hours later, she said, police visited the hostel and began asking questions about the call and who participated in it.
“Panic broke out: some left, some changed hostels, others went back to their rooms and didn’t come out again,” Nadia recounted.
Antigoni Karnava, part of an anarcho-communist collective that joined the Greek delegation, explained that her group was supposed to return on 17 June. However, their departure was delayed until the following morning because they were detained by the Egyptian authorities.
“On the day of our return to Greece, we were arrested, our phones and passports were confiscated and we were not allowed to contact lawyers,” Karnava said. “The following morning, the Egyptian authorities accompanied us all the way back to Greece, where they handed over our passports to Greek officials.”
The UN human rights office later condemned the “unnecessary and disproportionate use of force” by Egyptian and Libyan forces against peaceful solidarity activists.
Disrupting complicity
While Egyptian authorities violently prevented the march from reaching Rafah, participants say focus must be placed on pressuring their own governments’ ties with Israel and complicity in the siege and genocide.
“It just felt like Gaza is a fortress,” said Bairbre Ní Chaoimh.
Alluding to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was intercepted by Israeli commandos in early June, she added: “People are trying to penetrate [the siege on Gaza] by land and by sea, but the political and financial collusion between the US and Israel and all the other countries is what is forcing the Palestinian people to endure a genocide.”
Karnava said that the Global March to Gaza mobilization will continue and there is a particular responsibility among people in Global North countries supporting Israel to take action.
“Solidarity must be directed against our own governments, arms exports, trade deals and any political support provided to Israel,” she said.
“Its aim should be the disruption of this complicity, not its management. It must be solidarity that sees itself not merely alongside the oppressed peoples but in opposition to the oppressors.”
While Israel’s violence and siege grind on in Gaza, the challenge for those living in countries complicit in the genocide is to transform solidarity into concrete actions that have a material impact.
“Since I came back, I noticed that people who would never be involved in anything are asking me questions,” Lawlor said. “And now they’re writing to their government leaders, they’re [boycotting] Israel, they’re bringing Palestine into their daily talks.”
For her part, Chiodo was critical of the decision by some delegations and individuals to head independently toward Ismailia, as it could have compromised all the work done beforehand and jeopardized the possibility of negotiating access to the Rafah crossing in the future.
But she acknowledged the impact of what did unfold.
“I believe that the people who participated will carry an important message,” Chiodo said.
“Everyone can come together, even if they don’t know each other. And if we’ve done it once, we can do it again.”
Camilla Donzelli is a freelance journalist based in Athens, Greece.
