"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Martin Luther King Jr
We are driving through Turkey. It's December and bitterly cold, with what seems like almost non-stop sleet hurling through the skies at us. But warmth has come from the Turkish people who, all the way through this huge country, have lined the streets as the convoy has gone past, waving flags, cheering, passing food, water and flowers through our windows. They've mobbed us at service stations to greet us when we've stopped for breaks, congregated on the hard shoulder at motorway junctions to point us in the right direction, and gathered en masse at the tollbooths to ensure the operators keep the barriers open for all of our 200+ vehicles as we surge through. Women, men and children, all urging us on to Gaza.
At night, we unroll our sleeping bags and make ourselves comfortable on the floors of sports halls, the sleeping arrangements generously provided for us by the Turkish humanitarian organisation, IHH, whose people and vehicles have joined the convoy. Welcoming committees of hundreds meet us every night at the halls - ordinary people who live in whichever town we've stopped in - Konya, Adana, Gazientep - who want to talk to us and wish us well. Often, the women are in tears as they ask us to take their love to the children of Gaza.
After hours of driving through the dark, cold and rain, we walk into these halls to be hit by a warm wave of enthusiasm. The love and support of the people of Turkey for the people of Palestine is an inspiration to every single person on the convoy.
Syria - first time round
As border crossings go, it was certainly different. We drove out of Turkey, across no-man's land, and towards the Syrian checkpoint. We could hear the sound of the Big Band before we got there, and then customs officers were at our windows offering us plates of baklava. None of them wanted to see a passport in return. A massive reception was waiting for us at the checkpoint - local VIPs, the Syrian Red Crescent, hundreds of flag-waving Palestinians, speeches, music and food. It was amazing - I've never got this kind of welcome at Heathrow.
The two day drive through Syria, with a stopover just outside Damascus, brought the convoy into its first contact with members of the Palestinian disapora - the seven million Palestinians banned from their native country after the UN voted in 1948 to remove their forefathers and another population was imported to take their land and their homes. Seven million - the largest refugee population in the world.
I realise that the ache of this uninvited punishment is carried in the hearts of all generations. In Damascus, as crowds gather to welcome us, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl gives me a white carnation and a note she's written on a torn-out page of her schoolbook. In careful English, which her mother tells me she's taken an hour to write out, trying to get the words and the neatness just right, she's penned: 'I'd like to come with you to my country, to see my land, but I'm not allowed. Thank you for going. It gives me the strength to carry on.'
The next day, a grandmother who fled the massacre in her village in Palestine in 1948 holds both my hands and, shaking, tells me: 'I want to hold your hands again when you return from Palestine. Then I'll feel as though I'm holding a part of my homeland.' I can barely hear her tiny, old person's voice. Her daughter tells me what she's said.
Jordan
Hot weather, stunning scenery, and a desert reception in the sands near Petra from the tribal chiefs of Karak.
We also stopped for a couple of days in Amman, where a huge outdoor rally was held for us and the generosity of ordinary people was again in evidence. Throughout this journey, people have wanted to help us, fixing our vehicles without charge, feeding us, giving us money to take to those trapped in Gaza. In Turkey, women took the wedding rings from their fingers and insisted we take them, in lieu of money they didn't have. 17 wedding rings collected this way; 17 little bands of hope. And here, in Amman, an old man, obviously poor, tried to give us the crutches he used to help him walk - for an amputee in Gaza, he kept saying - while a little boy came to the rally to hand over his tin box of pocket money.
And again and again I hope that the people of Gaza, who must despair at being abandoned to their fate under Israel's brutal occupation, can know how many prayers for their freedom wash across to them from all over the world.
From Amman we drove south through the desert to the port of Aqaba, from where we were due to sail to Egypt and then continue the drive to Gaza. So close now, and then the politics kicked in. The Egyptian government informed us that, should we set sail, we wouldn't be given permission to land in Egypt.
Four days of negotiations between the Egyptian and Turkish governments, and the convoy organisers ensue, while we wait in the dusty outdoor compound of the Jordan Professional Association (a trade union organisation).
Every day, Palestinian Jordanians come to the compound to donate money to the people of Gaza, to bring us food, and to offer us their homes to sleep in. I sit amongst some Palestinian women, answering their questions, chatting. One of them has a little girl with the same name as my eldest niece, so I show her pictures of my niece on my mobile and we play. Her mother tells me how her father, as a child, was expelled from Palestine with his family, and how she has never seen her homeland. 'You'll go home one day, God willing,' I say, thinking that's quite positive, but really I'm at a loss for words, and suddenly she's crying; deep, heaving sobs that come from somewhere far within. I hold her hand and cry as well, wondering at the same time what the right words would have been; would someone else have known what to say? Her daughter watches us. The same name as my eldest niece, two totally different lives.
That night, I walk down to the beach and sit alone on the shore. Across the water, black as ink now, but sparkling blue when the sun shines on it, is occupied Palestine. During the day, the beautiful, hazy mountains seem close enough to touch; at night, the lights are in such seeming proximity, it makes your heart ache. If this is how we feel at being so close we can see, but not help, Palestine, how much sharper the anguish for the Palestinians in Aqaba who look out every day at the land they were cleansed from, knowing it is being lived in by someone else.
And underneath an upside down half moon, I try and contemplate the pain of exile. The lights of Palestine shine opposite.
Syria - second time round
In the end, while the medicines and powdered baby milk we were carrying baked in our vehicles under a hot Middle Eastern sun, the Egyptians held fast. We weren't able to sail from Jordan. On 27 December, marking a year to the day when Israel began its land, air and sea assault on a besieged Gaza, massacring 1,400 Palestinians in three weeks, we held a candlelit vigil in our compound. We were joined by about 200 of our new Jordanian Palestinian friends, many of whom lived through the agony of those three weeks not knowing if family and friends in Gaza were alive or dead.
Two days later, we left the compound to begin the drive back to Syria. Egypt was giving us permission to dock in its port of Al Arish, which meant sailing from the Syrian port of Lattakia. Sailing to Al Arish meant sailing far too close to Israel for anyone's liking, raising the possibility of losing our precious cargo if we were attacked, but it had become the only option we had left.
We reached Lattakia on New Year's Eve, to the sound of distant fireworks, and were made welcome in a Palestinian refugee camp whose inhabitants originate from the northern Palestinian town of Acre, now occupied by Israel. We went to sleep that night mentally preparing ourselves for the struggle to get into a country they may never see.
The next day, the convoy was hit by a hideous bout of sickness. Although there were nearly 500 of us, nearly everyone had a tale of vomiting and diorrhea and drivers wandered around looking like ghosts. But again, the Palestinians were wonderful, opening their homes to us, taking us away from the exposed, windy conditions of the camp, and insisting that the sickest stay with them until they recovered.
Then, on 2 January, we drove all the ambulances, all the trucks, the jeeps, the vans, that had travelled so far from London to the city's port. The Palestinians of the camp came out to cheer us on our way, roads were blocked as drivers stopped their cars and hung over bridges to wave us on.
And then came the port itself: if love, pride and sheer passion alone could free Palestine, then it would've been freed that day. Hundreds upon hundreds of Palestinian refugees crammed into that space by the sea, surrounding our vehicles as they drove in, clambering up cranes and any other structures they could find, shouting, cheering, waving Palestinian flags, a band playing and the huge doors of the ship open and the ramp down, as vehicle after vehicle inched its way in, ready for the journey to Egypt. It was awesome, it was incredible, it was inspiring; it was the face of the struggle that the Western media will never report.
A handful of volunteers travelled with the vehicles and the aid, enduring 20 hours at sea with no seats or beds, and trailed for the entire journey by a fleet of Israeli warships despite never entering Israeli waters. However, our fears that the IDF might illegally board the ship, kidnap its passengers and seize the aid didn't materialise and it docked safely the next day in Al Arish, with all its cargo being cleared by Egyptian customs.
The rest of us were to fly to Al Arish in a chartered plane, but, as it took off from Lattakia, a loud bang exploded from an engine and we saw sparks flying. Two more huge bangs followed mid-air, and we were diverted to Damascus on a single engine.
And so, with people still sick and vomiting, we spent the night in Damascus airport, sprawled out on chairs and in sleeping bags on the hard floor, waiting for a new plane to arrive from Athens, which it finally did ten hours later.
A four hour flight to Al Arish, hours spent at that airport as Egyptian customs officials refused to issue us with entry visas, protests and bargaining, and then finally we were through and reunited at the port with our aid-filled vehicles and the volunteers who had sailed with them.
We were, now, only 20 miles from Gaza, from the Rafah border crossing but the Egyptians had more in store for us. As we celebrated the safe arrival of our vehicles in Al Arish, we were quietly surrounded on one side by Egyptian riot and plain clothes police. Behind us was the sea, with warships lurking on the horizon. We were completely trapped in a small space and, as night fell, the attacks with tear gas and huge rocks raining down began.
It was a long, long night, with no sleep. We had many injured, who had to be mended with the medical supplies we were taking to Gaza, and some of the trucks suffered smashed windows. My thoughts turned often to the Palestinians of Jenin, of Sabra, of Shatila, of Gaza, of every refugee camp that has been completely surrounded by Israeli soldiers, with no escape as those soldiers begin their massacres. Yes, we were scared that night, the fear increasing when armed police arrived and threatened to start shooting, but compared to the terror suffered by the Palestinians, it was nothing.
Gaza
As the dust cleared in the morning - the police having retreated at around 4am - the convoy leaders began the task of negotiating our release from the compound and guaranteeing passage to Gaza. Many people had spent the night vomiting from the effects of tear gas and water cannon. Others had blood seeping through the bandages applied to heads and limbs, where they'd been hit by rocks hurled by the police. We waited, without food, sharing our water.
Finally, late in the afternoon, the all-clear was given. All vehicles, except jeeps, would be allowed to make that final journey of less than 20 miles to the Rafah Gate. We were going to Gaza; we were going to enter the prison.
It took hours for every vehicle to make it out of the compound, as the Egyptian authorities processed us through at a snail's pace. But when we arrived at the Rafah border crossing, exactly a month to the day after the convoy had left London in December, with that wonderful sign saying 'Welcome to Palestine' above us, nothing else mattered.
We'd made it, we'd broken a medieval and brutal siege imposed as collective punishment nearly four years before, to stand in solidarity with the brave Palestinians trapped inside. We'd made our stand against ethnic cleansing, against genocide, against fascism.
And what a welcome we received from the people of Gaza who, a year earlier, were being burnt by white phosphorus as bombs and missiles rained down on them, whose homes, schools and hospitals were shelled by Israeli tanks, whose children were shot at close range by Israeli soldiers going from house to house.
They came out in their thousands to welcome us, lining the streets all the way from Rafah to Gaza City, nearly 25 miles away, mobbing our vehicles, banging on the sides, thrusting their arms through the windows to shake our hands, shouting, in Arabic and in English, 'thank you, thank you', and 'welcome to Gaza'. Babies, children, women, men, from teenagers to the very old - they were all there. We'd heard they'd been waiting days for our arrival.
As I inched our ambulance at about 1mph through one throng, an old man in a red keffiyeh looked at me through my open window and said quietly: 'Thank you for breaking the siege'.
Two hours later, we completed that 25 mile journey. A yellow moon hung like a slice of lemon above Gaza City, and a night breeze swayed through the palms.
Inside Gaza
We delivered our aid and vehicles the next day. To NGOs, and to specific organisations, we handed over life-support machines, dental equipment, Braille machines, kidney-dialysis units, laptops, medicines, toys for children, and everything else we'd brought with us, to a people who aren't even allowed to import paper.
We weren't able to give them the concrete and steel they so desperately need, and are denied by Israel, to rebuild the homes and infrastructure destroyed by their occupiers.
We visited people living in the rubble of their bombed and bullet-ridden homes, enduring the cold nights of January without sufficient cover, clothes or blankets, living without sanitation facilities.
We saw the destroyed Parliament building, the destroyed government ministries, the destroyed police stations, the destroyed milk factories, the destroyed hospitals, the destroyed schools.
We saw the once fertile agricultural fields, now turned to wasteland, the land once covered by trees, now uprooted by Israeli tanks.
We saw the harbour and the empty light-blue sea, devoid of fishing boats which could bring in much needed food for the Gazans, but which stay away because they are shot at by Israeli gunboats.
We visited the families whose only source of food comes from the tunnels dug deep under Gaza into Egypt and ate precious meals with them, knowing that, once Egypt completes the underground steel wall it is building, they face starvation. 'We'll cope,' they told us.
We listened to stories of last January's massacre, of the father who took his wife and children to sleep in an empty grave every night because that was safer than being at home, of the father who stitched his eight-year old son's leg with a needle and thread and no anaesthetic after a rocket attack, of the family who lost 31 members in one attack, their large house now empty and broken.
We heard that night's Israeli shelling - a constant feature of life in Gaza - three strikes in Rafah and Khan Younis, and felt floors and windows shake. We found out about Gaza's new dead the next day.
And most of all, we saw and we felt the pride, and the determination, the bravery, the generosity and the resilience of the Palestinians of Gaza. We saw the beauty of Gaza City, its tall date palms, the cleanliness of the streets despite everything, smelled the sweet air coming in from the Mediterranean, tasted that special lemonade made from Palestinian lemons. We realised how ordinary and beautiful are the lives that have been ripped to shreds by Israel.
And when we left the next day, turned around at the Rafah Gate and looked at the border closed again behind us, trapping those ordinary lives inside, no-one allowed out, nothing, not even food, allowed in, it broke my heart.
Gaza is our Guernica, it is our South Africa; we cannot turn away. The Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, has described what is happening there as 'slow motion genocide'. I have a badge - in Arabic it reads 'Gaza, In Our Hearts'.
Always. We are all Gaza.
