"Peace" protestors riot in Egypt

George Galloway's "Viva Palestina" convoy members started rioting in El Arish when the Egyptian government told them that some of the items that they planned to bring to Gaza must go through Israel.

A security official said the vehicles in question are carrying pickup trucks, sedans, generators and other equipment, which are not allowed to pass through the Egyptian crossing at Rafah and had to go via Israel. Only medical aid and passengers are allowed through, the official said.

While the Galloway group insists that the rioting was started by plainclothes Egyptian policemen throwing rocks at the group, other reports have the group abducting four harbor police officers. As many as 15 police were injured.

Palestine Press Agency reports that Egyptian TV showed injured Egyptian police, and said that police were injured by members of the convoy pelting them with rocks. It also adds that the agreement between the convoy and Egyptian authorities were that only buses would be allowed to enter, not private cars.

Non-violence!

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The Guardian throws in this very inaccurate paragraph as background information:

Israel's strict blockade of Gaza, which has been in place for more than two years, prevents all exports and limits imports to a few humanitarian items. The policy has grown ever tighter since Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, won parliamentary elections in early 2006 and then seized full security control of Gaza a year later. Israel now regards the strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, as a "hostile entity".

I emailed to them, saying:

The two sentences contradict each other - the first says the blockade began in 2007 and the second says it began much earlier.

Besides that, Israel has recently allowed exports of flowers and strawberries from Gaza, and they also allowed a shipment of flowers last spring.

We will see if they correct the story.