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‘The unity is stronger than ever’: Report from historic march on Qalandia checkpoint in solidarity with Gaza

One of the biggest protests the West Bank since the second Intifada took place, as thousands of Palestinians marched towards the Qalandia checkpoint in solidarity with the people in Gaza who have been under heavy bombardment for the past two weeks.

Fireworks burst at the separation wall, lighting the heads of Israeli soldiers who are poised ready with loaded guns. Overhead, flare guns also brighten the scene at Qalandia checkpoint, quickly followed by shots from Israeli snipers that race into the burgeoning crowd. In the middle of the haze and chaos Palestinian politician Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is clear in his definition of the events unfolding around him, “The Intifada has started. This is the Intifada! Peaceful and nonviolent but as you have seen, they encountered us with gunshots,” Barghouti told Mondoweiss. Amidst his words, molotov cocktails hit the military watchtowers, while young men scrambled by in a desperate attempt to get the wounded out of the line of fire.

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Palestinian shabab using fireworks over Qalandiya. (Photo: Guglielmo Grandinetti)

At around 9 p.m. last night, the streets of Ramallah started to flood with Palestinian protesters, all of them heading in the same direction — Qalandia Checkpoint. One of the biggest protests the West Bank has seen since the end of the second Intifada took place, with a march of several thousand Palestinians towards the checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. The march was to demonstrate solidarity with the people in Gaza who have been under heavy bombardment for the past two weeks. That bombardment has been part of Israel’s latest military incursion, Operation Protective Edge, and has resulted in the death of over 800 people. Conservative figures state that at least 70% of the casualties are civilian, among them nearly 200 children.

“The unity is stronger than ever”, explains Barghouti. “And what Israel is doing will not stop us. We know that Netanyahu started this war to break the unity but he will not succeed, especially now.”

The protest occurred during Laylat Al-Qadr, the holiest night for Muslims during Ramadan. Shabab, (young Palestinian men) sorted out their kuffieyhs and readied themselves for the upcoming clash with the Israeli army, while marching together with families, elderly and children – a picture of unity on the streets of Ramallah, analogous to the unity government talks and recent Palestinian politics.

“Actually I thank Netanyahu because he united us”, a Palestinian man, who wished to stay anonymous for security reasons, told Mondoweiss during the march. “Now Hamas is not alone anymore, all the people are united. As you can see: we have old men, young men, boys, girls – everybody is here today. Just to say that we are one.”

Ambulances and medics had to rescue the injured and killed from the battlefield. (Photo: Martin Gajsek)
Ambulances and medics had to rescue the injured and killed from the battlefield.

The rare scene changed abruptly when the protesters reached Qalandia checkpoint where dozens of IDF-soldiers waited ready to fire, their M16s steadied on concrete blocks. Within minutes, the protest turned into an ugly shooting spree, fleets of ambulances ran non-stop to carry wounded Palestinians to the crowded and chaotic hospitals of Ramallah. Capabilities were exhausted with over 250 injured, resulting in scores of people using everything they could to carry the wounded, from their own cars, scooters, bypassing trucks, to medics carrying injured Shabab on their bare backs.

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A Palestinian protester throwing stones next to a burning tire. (Photo: Guglielmo Grandinetti)

At the forefront of the demonstration, around 200 Palestinian protesters clashed with soldiers for several hours throwing rocks, fireworks and molotov cocktails. The Israeli soldiers replied with rubber coated steel bullets at the beginning. Shortly after, the high-pitched whizz of live ammunition could be heard – and hundreds of Palestinians lay down on the ground to avoid getting hit by the live rounds. Within a few hours, the battle had cost the lives of at least two Palestinians, with five in a critical condition.

“It doesn’t matter how many people of us they kill, it doesn’t matter how many houses are going down: they [Hamas] are doing the right thing for us”, says Joe, a Palestinian-American. “That is why all these people are here today. But what really hurts us is that everybody [in the international community] is with Israel, like Ban Ki-moon and Obama. The Israeli army got about 50 soldiers killed and we got 700 people killed, but everybody is talking about the dead Israelis. This is not right. This is not fair.”

Palestinian security forces blocking the entry to the emergency facilities of a hospital in Ramallah. Hundreds were searching for their relatives among the casualties. (Photo: Martin Gajsek)
Palestinian security forces blocking the entry to the emergency facilities of a hospital in Ramallah. Hundreds were searching for their relatives among the casualties.

The clashes in solidarity with Gaza lasted until the early morning. While mosques in Bethlehem and elsewhere used their speakers to call for blood donations for Ramallah hospitals, the PA police had to block the entrances of the Palestine Medical Complex as hundreds of Palestinians tried to stream through the entrance in order to search for their loved ones. Meanwhile, inside the hospital locals spoke of floors drenched in blood.

Palestinian politician, civil rights activist and party leader of Al-Mubadara Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. (Photo: Martin Gajsek)
Palestinian politician, civil rights activist and party leader of Al-Mubadara Dr. Mustafa Barghouti.

“We [the party Mubadara] believe that what Israel is doing in Gaza is an act of massacre, genocide and ethnic cleansing”, Barghouti said. “These are definitely war crimes and Israel has to be taken to the International Criminal Court for that.”

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Thank you, Mr. Satan, this unity is for you!

Thank you for this report, Martin.

Bless the Palestinian people, and long live Palestine.

6 people shot dead. Debased Judaism.

One Palestinian killed by settlers near nablus. Would they be from itzhar? Very serious deterioration in situation.

The beginning of the end of Mahmoud Abbas?

David Hearst

Editor, Middle East Eye
Mahmoud Abbas’ Epiphany Over Gaza
Posted: 07/25/2014 1:38 pm EDT

Mahmoud Abbas is having something of an epiphany. Only two short months ago, the Palestinian president said security co-operation with Israel in the West Bank was “sacred.” Now Abbas is quoting a Koranic verse which says” Permission [to fight] has been given to those who are being fought, because they were wronged. And indeed, Allah is competent to give them victory.”

What has happened to him since he said in a speech in Jeddah, shortly after the kidnap and murder of three young settlers: “The security coordination with the Israelis is for our own benefit, to protect our own people?” What indeed has happened to the PLO which issued a statement after an emergency meeting in Ramallah chaired by Abbas which praised: “the resolute stand of the great Palestinian people and the forces of resistance that are fighting heroically against the occupying army that is committing crimes and slaughtering our compatriots?”

What conversion has Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Chief Negotiator, miraculously undergone? He now says that every Palestinian is a target of Israel. Could this be the same Erekat who, according to the Palestine Papers, offered his counterpart Tsipi Livni , the ” biggest Yerushalayim” in history?

Strange things are happening in that part of the West Bank, which Erekat has not bequeathed Israel as another fact on the ground. Hamas flags were seen in the 30,000 strong march which converged on Qalandiya checkpoint on Thursday night. The loudspeakers of mosques called Palestinians to the demonstration. Those lines of Palestinian Authority riot police seemed less willing to stand between the demonstrators and the lines of Israeli police and border guards.

Abbas himself has come under a torrent of Internet abuse from the ranks of his own constituency since his Jeddah speech. Amira Hass quoted in Haaretz a Fatah member who is a resident of a refugee camp and a former prisoner as saying that only 10 percent of Palestinians now support the aging president. There has even been reports that his wife and grandchildren have fled Ramallah for Amman.

What is happening to Abbas is a political earthquake. The veteran PLO fighter may spin the new pro-Hamas line from Ramallah as an attempt to strengthen himself as a negotiator. This, too, is a difficult space for Abbas to inhabit. His closest Arab partner Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is behaving even worse than Netanyahu is — not only by holding up aid on the Egyptian side of the border, but by urging the Israeli prime minister to finish Hamas off militarily once and for all. Without Sisi’s and King Abdullah’s daily voices in his ear, it is doubtful that Netanyahu would have acted so decisively in Gaza. Abbas’s allies damn him with the people who matter, the Palestinian street, because they are an essential part of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Sisi is the prison warder who keeps the door closed as Israeli guests beat the inmates up. Be it as president or negotiator, Abbas’s stock is plummeting as each day passes.

As the death toll in Gaza gallops towards the four figure mark, few have stopped to think of the effect the operation will have on the unity deal which the military operation tried to smash.

When the unity deal was signed, Azzam al-Ahmed member of Fatah’s Central Committee whispered that “Hamas had taken off all their clothes,” meaning that Hamas had surrendered too much, and certainly all authority over Gaza. Initially, Khaled Meshaal was thought to be have paid too high a price. The deal was unpopular in his own movement (particularly in the West Bank) and that discontent crescendoed when Abbas refused to pay the 50,000 government workers in Gaza who stayed loyal to Hamas.

Hamas seemed to have emerged from the deal the weaker partner, betrayed once again, in their eyes, by Abbas’s lack of faith. Today, the position is reversed for two reasons.

The unity government broke the psychological barrier between Hamas and the PLO, and presented the fleeting vision of a unified nation. The all out war that Israel’s army has declared on Gaza has only cemented that unity. If disunity had been one of the reasons preventing a third intifada from starting, that obstacle is no longer there. It still may not materialize, but after this week’s scenes in the West Bank, no one can dismiss it as peremptorily as they once did. It is now a real possibility.

If this unity does now exist, who stands to gain? In war, that role falls now to Hamas for their response to the Israeli operation. In peace, Abbas and the PLO may now have to make way for a new leader capable of representing all factions.

Abbas can make a series of feints like pressing ahead with membership of UN institutions, and taking Israel to the International Criminal Court. But the margin of error for the arch political survivor is narrowing. When the ceasefire comes, Hamas be naked no more. It will be fully clothed in military fatigues, as Abbas himself once was.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-hearst/mahmoud-abbas-epiphany-ov_b_5621412.html