The following is the press release issued to the corporate media, and a few smaller independent left papers, which tho far from ideal articulates some of the crucial information:-

PRESS RELEASE



20th February 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



Nick Durie 07963 025578  nick_durie@hotmail.com
Alice Coy 07952 969102  alice@alice-coy.org



PALESTINIAN EYE-WITNESS TO BRIT'S SHOOTING TO VISIT SCOTLAND



STARTS

Ahmad Sorany, a graduate from Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and the
regional coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement, will be
giving a speaking tour of Scotland in the first two weeks of March to
raise awareness of the situation. His existing Scottish friends, made
during their humanitarian missions to Gaza, are also excited to show off
our country's natural beauty to Ahmad, who was brought up in the dusty,
overpopulated, dangerous Gaza Strip.

Ahmad was an eye witness to Tom Hurndall's fatal shooting in April, and
was also friends with Rachel Corrie, the American who was run over by a
bulldozer in March. His family house was recently occupied by Israeli
soldiers who used it as a sniper position, and is in imminent danger of
demolition.

Although a professional graduate, Ahmad has been unable to find work as
jobs are scarce in the Gaza Strip, which is one of the poorest, most
densely populated regions in the world. Few young people in the 22 by 6
mile strip have ever left their claustrophobic birth place, as the Israeli
army maintain tight border controls over the whole of the occupied
Palestinian territories, especially controlling the movements of 18 to 35
year old men. He has so far enjoyed this rare opportunity to see the
outside world, although he was shocked by the level of poverty in London,
which he previously had thought to be full of riches.

Nick Durie, 20, from Dundee, spent 2 months with Ahmad in Rafah. During a
night time invasion and siege they got through the night talking of how
one day Nick would buy Ahmad a drink in Glasgow. Now the genuinely made,
but unlikely promise is about to be fulfilled.

ENDS



For further information, or to arrange an interview, please contact
Nick Durie 07963 025578  nick_durie@hotmail.com
Alice Coy 07952 969102  alice@alice-coy.org





NOTES TO JOURNALISTS


1) Rafah is a crowded yet sprawling refugee camp on the Southern tip of
the Gaza strip, home to around 160 000 Palestinians. It has suffered a
disproportionate number of deaths and home demolitions during the current
intifada and is the poorest refugee camp in Palestine.
According to the UN:
"Rafah camp is the southern-most camp and is located on the Egyptian
border. The camp was established in 1949 to house 41,000 refugees. At that
time it was the largest and most concentrated population of refugees in
the Gaza Strip. However, several thousand residents have since moved from
the camp to a housing project in nearby Tel es-Sultan.
"Today the camp is almost indistinguishable from the adjacent town of
Rafah. It is divided into 17 blocks; about 20 percent of the shelters have
concrete roofs and 80 percent have asbestos roofs.
"The sewerage system covers only 80 percent of the camp and about 60
percent of Rafah town. UNRWA carried out a feasibility study for a new
sewerage network in 1994 and work is now underway with funding provided to
Rafah Municipality by the European Commission.
"Since the start of the second Intifada in September 2000, Rafah camp has
suffered from a campaign of demolitions by the Israeli military along the
Egyptian border. Several hundred families have been made homeless and
UNRWA is working to provide them with replacement shelters in a safe part
of town."
 http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/gaza/rafah.html



"Since 29 September 2000, the Israeli army has killed 275 people in Rafah,
more than three dozen of them since October 2003. Seventy-six of the dead
have been children. It has destroyed a total of 1,759 homes, 430 of them
since October 2003 displacing a total of 12,643 residents, 2,894 since
October 2003. Unemployment is nearing 70% in Rafah, with a poverty rate of
83.4% as of the end of the third quarter of 2003.[14] Malnutrition affects
a large number of Rafah's children as does Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

"Rafah, a city with a population of about 120,000 (smaller than Ramallah,
Nablus, Gaza City, and Hebron) has lost more people than any other city in
the Occupied Palestinian Territories since the beginning of the second
Intifada. It is the poorest of all Palestinian cities, and its Shaboura
district is the poorest section of Rafah. There, whole families live
together in one-room shacks made of corrugated iron with dirt floors and
sheet metal, cardboard and tarpaulin roofs. Children run barefoot in the
streets, ill-clad and ill-fed. Nowhere in Palestine will one find
conditions as miserable and destitute as they are in Rafah, where
approximately 80% of whose citizens are refugees sometimes two and three
times over."
 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2426.shtml


2) Tom Hurndall, 23, a photography student at Manchester University, was
shot in Rafah on the 11th April 2003. He remained in a vegetative state
until finally dying of his injuries on the 13th January. His family are
campaigning for justice for him, and other innocent civilians killed by
the Israeli army.

 http://www.tomhurndall.co.uk/


3) The International Solidarity Movement is a Palestinian led humanitarian
organization that involves volunteers from disparate countries and exists
to support Palestinian non violent resistance to the Israeli occupation.


 http://www.palsolidarity.org/



4) Ahmad Sorany will be speaking in:

Aberdeen (29th Feb, time & place TBC)
Inverness (1st March, time & place TBC)

Dumfries (6th March, time & place TBC)

Falkirk (8th March, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM, Falkirk Old and St.Moden's Parish

Church Hall, Manse Road, Falkirk.)

Glasgow (9th March, time & place TBC)

Edinburgh (10th March, time & place TBC)

Dundee (11th March, 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM, room G12 at Dundee University's

tower building and 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM at Dundee University's tower lecture

theatre)