[We picked this up straight from the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), Jehad Saftawi shot the video. –Editor]
They are young, and they are fearless. In Gaza, a growing nonviolent movement, led predominantly by youth, is challenging Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands in the so-called “buffer zone” — a unilaterally demarcated and militarily patrolled area that, according to Harvard researcher Sara Roy, “now absorb[s] nearly 14 percent of Gaza’s total land and at least 48 percent of total arable land.” The zone officially extends 300 meters into Gaza’s territory, but “attacks against civilians take place anywhere up to approximately 1.5 kilometers inside the border fence,” according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. (That’s a mile into a strip of land that is seven miles at its girth.) In this video, some 300 protesters are shown under fire from Israeli guns, too far to see but no less lethal for it. The protestors’ crime? They were planting citrus trees to replace those destroyed by Israel’s ongoing occupation, which daily deprives Gaza’s more than 1.7 million Palestinians of access to their farmland, to the sea that borders them, to the airspace above them — and, crucially, to their fellow Palestinians. With more than 10 percent of the worldwide Palestinian population living in Gaza, no serious discussion of the conflict or its resolution can exclude them.
Nonviolence won palestinians anything in the westbank?
Rockets have a range such that they can be, and are, launched from anywhere. Tunnels to Israel are never going to be a mile long (and Israel would be able to here the sound in any event, as even the ancient Chinese could; http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/chinese-sonar-invasion-alarms.htm). And no mass surface “invasion” of Israel could even plausibly be mounted even from 100M away from the fence.
So what’s the point of a 1500M “buffer zone” again? Rhetorical question. Rhetorical answer: Collective punishment by deprivation.
Doesn’t this just radicalize Gazans and make the notional goal of getting rid of Hamas more distant, rather than less distant? Again, what’s the point?
It would be nice if this became mainstream. Unfortunately, they will just end up becoming patsies for Hamas. Used as human shields for the next wave of rocket attacks.
There was never a time in the 80 years since the Palestinians started fighting for their own country that non-violence was mainstream, hence the bloody bloody history from the 1920 riots and massacres of Jewish communities to the 2000 Hamas and Fatah homicide bombers.
Yserbius “There was never a time in the 80 years since the Palestinians started fighting for their own country that non-violence was mainstream”
You’re spouting bullsh*t! By far the majority of Palestinians have never been in a militia or a terrorist group or suicide bombers. The majority of Palestinians have never lifted a finger towards anyone. The militant and or terrorist factions are a tiny minority.