An Egyptian-American activist, Mohamed Soltan, was recently sentenced to life in prison by an Egyptian court. His sin? Participating in a sit-in in protest of the 2013 ousting of Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president of Egypt in over thirty years, by a violent military coup that left thousands dead.
As Egyptian-Americans, the idea of our government arresting any one of us for engaging in peaceful acts of dissent is despicable. We believe we have a strong moral duty to denounce, just as Soltan did, actions undertaken by the Egyptian government that violate human rights or contravene international law.
For 8 years, the Egyptian government has enforced an illegal blockade of the Gaza strip that has systematically denied Palestinians their basic human rights in Gaza. Although Egypt only shares a 12-kilometer border with Gaza, it has, along with Israel, implemented a system of collective punishment through domination of Gaza’s air, sea, and land borders. There has been no indication of any easing of the blockade, and tensions have only recently increased.
In the fall of 2014, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi razed over 800 homes and displaced 10,000 people in Rafah, a Palestinian border town, to create a “buffer” zone between Egypt and Gaza. El-Sisi justified this action under the pretense of a string of terror attacks on military targets in the Sinai peninsula. However, this claim fails to hold up to careful scrutiny. The rising force of militants in the region comes directly from the exclusion of Bedouins and other Arabs in the Sinai from participation in the economic development of the region after the Camp David Accords of 1979. As the head of Amnesty International said, “[the buffer zone] is not a solution to growing militancy in the Sinai region as it does not address the roots of the problem.” Such actions are representative of the collective punishments inflicted regularly against civilian populations in Gaza for the actions of a few, and el-Sisi’s pretext not only continues the depiction of Palestinian life as worthless, but also places relations between Egypt and Gaza at an all-time low.
Furthermore, in the past year alone, el-Sisi has closed the Rafah Crossing, the Egyptian border with Gaza, multiple times. As a result, trade in Gaza and people seeking asylum face more and more challenges. The Rafah Crossing is absolutely essential for allowing food, materials and other supplies into Gaza. Its closing only facilitates and amplifies the crippling effect of the blockade on Gaza. Trade becomes stifled, while asylum seekers may find themselves stuck in Gaza for months at a time.
These are only the most recent examples of a long history of Egyptian persecution against the Palestinian people. El-Sisi has continued the herding of Palestinians into overcrowded and unsanitary refugee camps, limited the number of Palestinian immigrants into Egypt, and has continued the legacy of his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, in working with Israel to maintain what various human rights organizations such as B'tselem have called the “largest open air prison in the world.”
The siege imposed on Gaza by Israel can only last with Egyptian support, and our government has refused to change its destructive policies towards the people in Gaza. Its continued devotion to the blockade stifles the development of infrastructure and economic stability in Gaza, two crucial elements required to ensure the self-determination of the Palestinian people.
It is with these crimes in mind that we feel compelled to denounce the actions of the Egyptian government. The sad state of Egyptian politics is that Egyptians today have very little freedom to criticize and challenge the policies of their government. As such, it often falls on expatriate Egyptians living abroad to bring these issues into the public eye and speak for those who cannot.
As such, we must support divestment from corporations that profit from the illegal blockade of Gaza. The continued dehumanization of Palestinians by any government, including Egypt’s, is wrong, but especially in the face of injustices perpetrated by our government, we are moved to speak out. Divestment represents the best non-violent solution to this humanitarian crisis and the most compelling action we can take as students. It is our obligation as Egyptian-Americans, and more importantly as human beings, to support divestment.
We feel a personal connection to the pain of Palestinians in Gaza because our countrymen are directly responsible for their suffering. To dismiss these atrocities in the name of nationalism, or to disparage divestment movements such as this one as anti-Egypt or targeting Egypt unfairly, in the way many have attempted to paint it as anti-Israeli or unfairly targeting Israel, is a moral obscenity. This line of reasoning is disingenuous and intellectually bankrupt. The call to divest is a moral imperative, and in particular for all those whose countries participate in the oppression of the Palestinian people.
This divestment movement calls for companies to end their complicity in human rights violations in the West Bank or Gaza. The onus to support divestment falls on all Princetonians whose university profits from the suffering of the Palestinian people, and we call on those who have roots to either Egypt or Israel to lead this call.
Mohamed El-Dirany is a freshman fromCairo, Egypt. He can be reached at mohamede@princeton.edu.
Mohamed Shalan is a sophomore from Cairo, Egypt. He can be reached at mshalan@princeton.edu.
Yasin Hegazy is a senior from from Doha, Qatar. He can be reached at yhegazy@princeton.edu.
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