While Israeli and some Western media label Gaza Palestinians’ ongoing, six-week protest a “riot,” what visitors and participants see on the ground is completely different. The tire and (Israeli) flag burning that may seem “riotous” to some are actually carefully planned by a coordinating committee to obscure the vision of Israeli snipers and serve as a peaceful outlet for frustration and anger. And while those activities are occurring on the front lines of the border protest, the “Great Return March” (so-named because of the desire of the refugees in Gaza to return to the homes they were forced to evacuate in 1948), also is hosting many family-oriented cultural celebrations. On any given day, you may encounter women cooking Bedouin bread, young men dancing dabka and children flying kites.
“By including cultural activities in the Great Return March, we send a reminder message to the world that we will never forget our heritage and customs, which remind us of home,” says organizer Ahmed Abu Ertima. “At the same time, these cultural demonstrations show we are peaceful in the demand for our rights.”
Thousands of Gaza families take their children and head off to the border to participate in the Great Return March every day, raising the Palestinian flag and chanting the event’s motto, “We have the right to return to our ancestral land.” They sit on the ground, in sight of stolen lands just a few hundred meters away, while listening to their elders’ tales about their ancestral villages and towns.
Elsewhere, depending on the day, visitors may stumble on a wedding celebration at one of the five protest encampments along the border. No one is keeping count, but photos of at least three march-camp marriage parties have appeared on social media.
Mohammed Daloul, a 22-year-old groom, is among those who celebrated their marriage at a protest site. He invited all of his friends via social media, along with the hundreds of other Palestinians gathered at the border, just a few hundred meters away from the eyes of Israel’s snipers.
The celebration prominently featured patriotic songs, such as those of Palestinian singer Mohammed Assaf, the Arab Idol singer whose tunes call for freedom and dignity. While the booming music carried clearly to the Israeli side of the border, the guests roared even louder, chanting for their right to return to their land. Daloul waved a Palestinian flag.
“This is a ‘return marriage celebration’,” said Ayman, a friend of the groom who asked that his last name not be used. “We want to show the world our demonstrations are peaceful, a legal way to demand our right of return.”
Daloul added, “Despite the joy I feel tonight, it won’t really be complete until we return to our homes, which were stolen by Israeli occupation.”
During the second Friday of the Great Return March, protest organizers staged a series of “reading chains,” with participants literally sitting on the ground in a line, reading and discussing issues such as colonialism and imperialism. The reading selections are designed to raise awareness among youth raised under occupation and blockade of the forces that have shaped their lives, while confronting Israeli soldiers with peaceful resistance.
On another day, young women wanting to leave their “mark” on the protest painted tires—which later would be burned to produce the smoke that effectively obscured the vision of Israeli snipers—bright pink, purple, blue and yellow, forming a line snaking throughout the camps.
While there is a central coordinating committee for the march, the cultural activities are in large part driven by individual initiative. “These kinds of things can’t be controlled,” notes Abu Ertima. That means sometimes the demonstrators engage in activities, like burning Israeli flags, that the organizers would prefer they didn’t. But the majority contribute to the overall festive and harmonious atmosphere. Preservation of Palestinian culture is the focus of many of the activities.
Um Wael (“mother of Wael”), 77, and originally from Julis village (only 29 km from Gaza), refuses to give up her dream of returning. “I still remember the Nakba [catastrophe], which happened when I was only 6 years old. I remember a life of hard work, but blissful independence, before Israel forcibly displaced us and we had to move to this desperate life here in Gaza,” she said. “I won’t stop telling my grandsons and granddaughters about their origins. We believe one day we will return. If not me, my grandkids will.”
The Great Return March is in its fourth week, and the number of killed now is 40. But the frustration and despair fostered by 11 years of blockade continue to drive many Gaza residents to participate in, and even live, at the march. Once they get glimpse of their homeland across the border, they glimpse freedom. Gaza’s borderline has become a theater for artists and poets to convey a message to the world that they demand the basic liberties they have been denied for too long.
This article first appeared on the Gaza writers’ site We Are Not Numbers.
Let`s recap. Zios have been whining for years in their usual eternal victim rants about what they categorise as “terrorism”eg diplomatic terrorism,economic terrorism,sporting terrorism,academic terrorism. No doubt they will be categorising the events in Gaza as “cultural terrorism” and perhaps the tyre burning as anti – most moral sniper terrorism.
Hey who knows they may break the mould and just label it “tyranny”.
Tick tick.
Thank you for the article. I didn’t know about the cultural activities and community-building activities going on at the Great March and wish more people knew about it. The duration of the march suggests there must be organizing and planning going on in the background, but the mainstream media seems not to want to take a close look and presents an image of chaos.
now everybody wants to speak up, I guess the Palestinians are fortunate in who their colonizers are, can any of this be taken seriously here Hughes reviews the remarks of the Jewish Community Relations Council, who apart from their depravity are remarkably stupid, Jewish Community Relations Council just happened to taxed by the Palestinian tragedy…more lime full blown psychosis than trauma..
“When Israelis murder Palestinians, it’s a tragedy — for Israelis.” by Richard Hughes
“Hamas was democratically elected by its people because it distinguished itself from the collaborationist leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Israel defines Hamas as terrorist because Hamas is determined to resist the Zionist entity. Israel’s minions in legislative bodies in other countries have been used to create the “designated terrorist” label.
“Brutal dictatorship” is a buzzword applied to all political movements asserting independence from imperialist control.
“It is a tragedy that Hamas has chosen to direct its resources to the building of tunnels and rockets, rather than building hospitals, schools, housing, and factories that would create prosperity and opportunity for the Palestinian people.”
Are these the same hospitals, schools, housing and factories that Israel has been bombing since 2006? Are these the same tunnels that Gazans used to bring in vital humanitarian goods not allowed through Israeli checkpoints? Doesn’t Hamas have the right to its primitive rockets when Gazans are being periodically bombarded by Israel and its highly sophisticated fighter jets?”
https://off-guardian.org/2018/04/26/when-israelis-murder-palestinians-its-a-tragedy-for-israelis/
I have seen no mention of this on the Australian mainstream news. The local services are too full of US and UK propaganda to have time for reality.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/opinion/march-gaza-friday-palestinian.html
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
“Why I March in Gaza” By Fadi Abu Shammalah
“Mr. Shammalah is the executive director of the General Union of Cultural Centers in Gaza.”
New York Times, April 27, 2018
EXCERPT:
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — “Early in the morning on March 30, my 7-year-old son, Ali, saw me preparing to leave the house. This was unusual for our Friday routine.
“’Where are you going, Dad?'”
“’To the border. To participate in the Great Return March.’”
“The Great Return March is the name that has been given to 45 days of protest along the border between Gaza and Israel. It began on March 30, Land Day, which commemorates the 1976 killings of six Palestinians inside Israel who had been protesting land confiscations, and ends on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 war that lead to the creation of Israel.
“’Can I come with you?” Ali pleaded. I told him it was too dangerous. If Israeli military warnings were any indication, the risk that unarmed protesters might be shot by Israeli snipers was too high. ‘Why are you going if you might get killed?’ Ali pressed me.
“His question stayed with me as I went to the border encampment in eastern Khan Younis, the southern Gaza town where I live. It remained with me on the following Fridays as I continued to participate in the march activities, and it lingers with me now.
“I cherish my life. I am the father of three precious children (Ali has a 4-year-old brother, Karam, and a newborn baby brother, Adam), and I’m married to a woman I consider my soul mate. And my fears were borne out: 39 protesters have been killed since the march began, many by sniper fire, including a 15-year-old last week and two other children on April 6. Israel is refusing to return the bodies of two of those slain.
“Thousands more have been injured. Journalists have been targeted; 13 of them have been shot since the protests began, including Yasser Murtaja, a 30-year-old photographer, and 25-year-old Ahmed Abu Hussein, who died Wednesday of his injuries.
“So why am I willing to risk my life by joining the Great Return March?”
“There are multiple answers to Ali’s question. I fully believe in the march’s tactics of unarmed, direct, civilian-led mass action. I have also been inspired by how the action has unified the Palestinian people in the politically fractured Gaza Strip. And the march is an effective way to highlight the unbearable living conditions facing residents of the Gaza Strip: four hours of electricity a day, the indignity of having our economy and borders under siege, the fear of having our homes shelled.
“But the core reason I am participating is that years from now, I want to be able to look Ali, Karam and Adam in the eye and tell them, ‘Your father was part of this historic, nonviolent struggle for our homeland.’
“Western media’s coverage of the Great Return March has focused on the images of young people hurling stones and burning tires. The Israeli military portrays the action as a violent provocation by Hamas, a claim that many analysts have blindly accepted. Those depictions are in direct contradiction with my experiences on the ground.”