the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jun 23, 2025
This article is translated from the June 20 issue #2968 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Thousands of people from around 50 countries gathered in Cairo, Egypt on June 13 as part of the Global March to Gaza organized by various groups.
The idea was to march to Gaza to protest the genocide and the Israeli blockade. On June 9, a caravan of 80 buses and 400 cars called Sumud (Arabic for perseverance) set off from Tunisia to Cairo. Bringing together activists, doctors, men and women, people of all ages and from across North Africa, the caravan sparked a surge of solidarity and hope along its way. The buses left Algeria’s capital city Algiers discreetly, because demonstrations in support of Palestinians are banned there. Some local people were disappointed to learn about the caravan only after it left, so they couldn’t participate.
The convoy was supposed to reach Egypt before June 15. But Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an ally of the Egyptian regime, stopped it in Sirte, in eastern Libya. Thirteen Tunisian, Algerian, Libyan, and Sudanese activists were arrested, including those who had been posting about the caravan’s journey on social media. The caravan was forced to retreat to Tunisia.
At the Cairo airport, hundreds of people were turned away on arrival. Some were arrested at their hotels. Two hundred participants who managed to get through these checkpoints were arrested before joining a gathering in Ismailia along the Suez Canal. Plainclothes cops beat them brutally. The organizers expressed surprise at this repression. They had complied with all the demands of Egyptian embassies in more than 15 countries.
Egypt’s leaders present themselves as peace mediators and officially condemn the ongoing siege of Gaza. But they are complicit in it. In fact, Egyptian authorities make life very difficult for 100,000 Gazans who managed to escape the hell of the enclave by paying thousands of dollars to Egyptian army auxiliaries to let them enter Egypt. Their children are under close surveillance and can’t attend school. Since October 7, 2023, thousands of Egyptians have been imprisoned for showing solidarity with Gazans.
At 1.3 billion dollars per year, Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid after Israel, with which it maintains close economic and military ties. No surprise that Egypt obeys the Israeli Defense Minister’s orders to prevent the arrival of these protesters, whom he describes as jihadists.
In failing to break the blockade, this caravan highlights the chasm that exists between the Arab peoples, who are genuinely outraged by the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and their leaders. Official support for the Gazans is nothing but hypocrisy. This is evident for Egypt, the Gulf monarchies, and Morocco, which recently hosted the American-led African Lion military maneuvers on its soil, in which the Israeli Golani unit, responsible for the March 23 massacre of fifteen paramedics and rescue workers in Rafah, participated. This is also true for Algeria and Tunisia, which claim to have made the Palestinian cause their own.