One year a go, at this time, I entered the besieged Gaza strip with a convoy of about 60 people from different origins and professions. We wanted to show solidarity with Gazans who suffered from a terrible war, death, destruction and devastation.

Our journey ended safely one week after we arrived. We all returned home, each one of us with a story, pictures and tears to share with families, friends and communities. Unfortunately, the tragic events that happened yesterday where one of the boats of the flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza was attacked in international water by an Israeli commando and more than 10 activists were killed, were totally opposite.

Would you like a “future,” a “plain-vanilla mortgage,” a “European option,” perhaps a “swaption”? You might think these are the latest exotic offering at a your local hipster café, but they are in fact complex financial instruments. More precisely, they are all examples of the now infamous “derivatives.” Derivatives, so little known and even less understood by most of us, and so cherished by bankers and speculators, have been around since the 1970s, but the financial crisis which began in the U.S. three years ago, and is currently rocking Europe, has put them under an unaccustomed spotlight.

To be allowed to enter into Gaza or not to be allowed? This is the question swirling in my mind these days as I am getting ready to travel with a Codepink delegation to Egypt and then to Gaza.

Last March, I missed the opportunity to join a similar delegation mostly composed of women from all over the world who commemorated International Women’s Day with Palestinians women. They also visited this tiny territory where 1.5 millions of people, half of them children and youth, who have struggled to live through almost two years of siege and terrible ongoing war. 

I was so excited when I received an email from a friend about joining a delegation of women to travel to the Gaza Strip for International Women's Day. I felt it would be a wonderful opportunity for me to be able to meet Palestinian women and peace activists from different cultures and different religions. It would also be an excellent opportunity to share, in a very different way, the suffering of many women, children and families who saw their houses destroyed, their loved ones disappeared under the bombs and the rubbles.

The recent three-week war on Gaza, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, including at least 346 children, was covered daily in the media and the passion and feeling ran high.