London, UK, January 22 2008 – As hundreds of Muslim women tried to cross the Gaza-Egypt border at Rafah to escape Israel’s brutal strangulation of Gaza, they were forced back by the Egyptian police who beat them with batons, used water canons to disperse the crowd and fired live shots into the air over the women. Dozens of women had to be treated for suffocation.

Israel’s Gaza lockdown effectively strangles 1.5 million men, women, and children – while the world watches on. A Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said, "We have the choice to either cut electricity on babies in the maternity ward or heart surgery or stop operating rooms."

Commenting on this, Dr Nazreen Nawaz, the women’s media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain said, "The Muslim world is all too familiar with the Israeli state’s legacy of flagrant disregard for human life and suffering."

"The Egyptian regime’s collusion with the Israeli state in intensifying the humanitarian crisis in Gaza shows that its treachery knows no bounds. Not only has it remained muted and paralyzed while witnessing decades of oppression of the Palestinian Muslims at the hands of the Israeli apartheid state but now it shows that it is willing to beat unarmed women and force them to return to a quagmire of human starvation and suffering. Mubarak has shown himself to be at the beckon and call of his Western masters in ensuring the security of the Israeli state. In this betrayal of the Palestinians, he is joined by every ruler in the Muslim world who have shown their eagerness in bartering Muslim blood in exchange for securing Western support for their seats of power."

"It is only through the establishment of the Islamic Khilafah state that the oppression of the women and children of Palestine will be lifted. It is this state that will unify the Muslim lands, bring strength where there is weakness and return hope where there is desperation. It is this system alone that will answer the cries of the Palestinian, Iraqi, or Kashmiri mothers who cradle their injured, hungry children in their arms and that will change the state of fear that women across the Muslim world face, to one of protection, security, honour and peace."

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