There had been daily protests in Gaza throughout the six-week period known as the Great March of Return, which culminates in May 15’s Nakba Day commemoration of the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence that drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their ancestral lands. Dozens of Palestinians had already been killed in David vs. Goliath skirmishes with the notoriously trigger-happy Israeli Defense Forces on the other side of the beleagured Strip.

The potential as Nakba Day approached for an escalation of the violence was obvious, but no one expected the ferocity of what happened on its eve as Gazans expressed their collective outrage at Donald Trump’s decision to move the United States Embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem.

This extraordinarily crass and inflammatory move reversed America’s long-standing policy that the city’s status could only be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians – who, in the event of the Two State Settlement, supported by the European Union, believe that East Jerusalem should be the capital of the Palestinian nation.

On the first day of the Great March Of Return – March 30’s Land Day, which commemorates the 1976 Israeli killing of six Palestians who were protesting about their homes being confiscated – the Gaza City-based freelance journalist, Ahmad Abu Samaan, described the scene of peaceful protesters streaming towards the border as “majestic”. This, however, fast turned to brutal carnage.
“As the day progressed, the Israeli army opened fire on peaceful Palestinian demonstrators,” Abu Samaan tells Hot Press in one of many email exchanges, “killing more than 18 Palestinians and wounding 1,416. Most of them were children and women.”

Just 50 miles away from the fortified fence where the demonstrations were taking place on May 14 – in a live split-screen effect so striking it dominated headlines around the world – the U.S. officially completed its controversial embassy relocation. In Gaza, 40,000 protesters descended on the Strip’s militarised border. Many Palestinians threw stones in anger. Others used makeshift slingshots to fire projectiles and rubble towards Israeli forces stationed on sandbanks behind the fence.

In a show of defiance, protestors made repeated attempts to breach the border perimeter. None succeeded, but the Israeli armed forces responded with singular brutality: many civilians were wounded or killed by live-fire, coming from dozens of metres back from the fortified fence.
“Since the protests began, Israeli forces have killed at least 108 Palestinians in the coastal enclave and wounded about 12,000 people,” Abu Samaan reports. “May was the deadliest day in Gaza since the 2014 war.”

A short distance up the road, it was all smiles, selfies and celebratory handshakes, as Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner unveiled the plaque on the new embassy. The counterpoint of smug jubilation, and sheer terror, could hardly have been more stark.

The UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, French president Emmanuel Macron, British PM Theresa May and Leo Varadkar, are among those who’ve accused Israel of disproportionate use of force against mostly unarmed civilians. Israel rejects such claims, as one might expect, arguing that the use of extreme force was necessary to prevent mass infiltrations from the blockaded Palestinian enclave, which is governed and run by Hamas, the militant Islamist group.

But it says it all that paramedics attempting to aid Palestinians have also been the target of Israeli Defense Forces attacks.

Samaan spoke to Hot Press two days after the mass border killings, detailing the latest flurry of Israeli air attacks on Palestinian territory.

“Israel carried out a series of airstrikes on Palestinian resistance locations in the northern Gaza Strip overnight,” he wrote in a short email. Over a number of days, our communications continued sporadically, due to regular power outages.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

Zak Hana is an Irish-Palestinian, now living in Beach Camp – a refugee camp located along the northern Gaza Strip. Hana, who is 45 years-old, completed a Master’s degree in Film and Television Studies in Dublin City University in 2013, and now works for an NGO, as a researcher and translator.

He tried to put into words how deeply aggrieved Palestinians feel, following the U.S. decision to move the embassy.

“The USA,” he says, “proved once again its bias and unconditional support of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, especially under Trump’s administration. It diminishes any prospect for peace.”
He, along with millions of other Palestinians, have seen living standards in Gaza drop to perilously low levels. A decade-long blockade on the tiny strip of land surrounded by Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean, has led to the implosion of its economy. The enclave is frequently referred to by locals and visiting journalists alike as an “open-air prison”.

The electrical and water infrastructures are decaying badly. The health conditions of its boxed-in inhabitants are deplorable. Unemployment is rampant, especially among young men. Inevitably, the result is increased radicalisation.

Gazans are routinely restricted to just four hours of electricity of day. On top of this, food shortages, a dearth of medical supplies and a heavily contaminated water supply mean disease and health problems are common. Palestinian misery is compounded by the fact their movement is totally restricted by Israeli forces. Marches are as much pleas for help as they are a show of resistance.

“Hardships lead the people of Gaza to the wall,” Hana says. “The level of despair breaks everyone’s heart. People say we either live in a dignified way or we die. Can you imagine the despair people are facing when you imprison two million people and prevent them from getting basic supplies?

“What would you expect? They would react,” he continues defiantly. “And that’s what the people of Gaza are doing. We are protesting and demanding our basic human rights.”

Locked into Gaza, and deprived of the ordinary freedoms that are taken for granted throughout most of the world, the Palestinians with whom Hot Press has spoken feel abandoned. They are living through an ongoing humanitarian crisis that affects their daily lives. What little hope they have, cut-off from the world-at-large, is harnessed into protests, organised through social-media. Hana himself has continued to participate in such demonstrations.

“It’s a way of saying ‘no’ to the injustice and oppression that we have been under for far too long,” he says. “We feel abandoned and alone and nobody is hearing our pain. We protest to wake up the world to see the misery we are living in.”

LEGITIMATE DEMAND

Beyond the larger geopolitical implications, and the rote accusations of extremism, there are ordinary Palestinian people, striving simply for a peaceful existence. Mariam Elrayes, a 26-year-old Gazan, is deeply troubled by the recent bloodshed.

“It was a sad month for all of us,” she elaborates. “Lots of innocent people were killed because they exercised their right to demonstrate and demand rights. Ramadan, our holy month, is here and we’ve lost people. Families are missing members and many are dead or injured. We are supposed to celebrate this month but we can’t.”

Mariam tells the story of Shaher al-Madhoun, one of the victim’s of last week’s border killings. His widow attended the Islamic University with Mariam, where they both studied journalism.
Al-Madhoun was shot by Israeli snipers on May 14. He died on the first birthday of his only son, Abdullah, a child he and his wife had been trying to conceive for nine years.

“That is just one of many heartbreaking stories,” Mariam explains.

Having trained as a journalist, she knows how important it is to tell Palestinian stories to the world.

“Lots of young Palestinians practice journalism,” she says. “It is a powerful way to present our cause to the world. Especially with the spread of Facebook and social media, it is very important. Anyone can shoot a video or write an article about any topic that interests them and their cause and with the click of a button, it reaches the whole world. I believe it is a powerful tool.”

Another reporter, Taghreed Alemoure, found herself on the eastern border of the Gaza Strip covering the protests as a correspondent for a local satellite station. She tells Hot Press she witnessed the “masses of Palestinians” marching freely under the Palestinian flag, a collective push for her people’s demands for a right-of-return which she supports.

“It is a legitimate demand of the Palestinian people,” she tells Hot Press. “In contrast, the Israeli occupation used gas bombs and bullets to suppress a peaceful presence, so the number of killed is only on the Palestinian side.”

Alemoure hopes that an end to the suffering of Palestinians and Gazans may be in sight.
The UN Human Rights Council voted on Friday May 18 to send a team of international war crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of protesters by Israeli forces. Yet the complicity of many governments in failing to condemn the Israeli attacks feels like an affront to Zak Hanna, who urges that his people be afforded fundamental human rights.

“We call upon the world and expect them to pressure Israel to stop using lethal force against our peaceful demonstrators,” he says. “And to intervene urgently to end the borders and allow people to move freely and without harassment. We are not going to stop protesting until we break the siege, and get our basic human rights and our freedoms.”

Right now, it’s hard to see how a breakthrough can be achieved, which would end the siege of Gaza. But it must be done. Because what is happening in Gaza is an outrage against our collective humanity.”