GAZA CITY: Ahmad Abu Artema, a 31-year-old Gazan, once dreamed in a Facebook post of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip breaking through the border fence and camping inside Israel as a mass protest, seeking the return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to homes in present-day Israel.
Now, after his social media post in February snowballed into one of the largest Palestinian protests in years, 32 Palestinians have died from Israeli fire in the past 11 days.
Most of the deaths occurred during two consecutive Fridays of protests along the Gaza border, called the “Great March of Return.”
The protests are planned to continue until May 15, the day after Israeli Independence Day, which is marked by Palestinians as the “Nakba” or catastrophe.
Failure is “not in our calculations,” said Abu Artema, a social media activist who remains a main organiser for the demonstrations. “Although we are getting killed and wounded, at the same time, until now we have so far succeeded,” he added, noting the international attention the protest has garnered. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have amassed near the border to demand the right for refugees and their descendants — the majority of Gaza’s nearly 2 million people — to return to homes they fled or were expelled from during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.
During the mass protests the majority of the demonstrators stay away from the border fence, instead having picnics and partaking in cultural activities.
Meanwhile groups of mostly young men push towards the fence and hurl rocks. According to Israel, which says it only fires upon “main instigators,” Palestinians have hurled firebombs and planted explosives along the border.
But the army’s policy of shooting Palestinians who approach the border fence has come under intense criticism from human rights groups, the United Nations, and the European Union, who say that Israel’s use of force is disproportionate to the threat posed.
While Abu Artema maintains that the protests are completely non-violent, Israel says that Hamas has co-opted the march to carry out attacks on Israeli border communities and security infrastructure.
“The Israeli occupation is all the time trying to show us as violent people and tell the world that we are terrorists,” Abu Artema said, “But we tell the occupation that our marches are peaceful and will remain peaceful.”
— dpa
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