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The Nonviolent Return Attempt of 2018-2019

   The mass media will have people believe that the Gaza assault across the Israeli border on October 7, 2023, was a vicious
and undeserved attack on innocent Israelis. But here is just one example of a mostly nonviolent effort by Palestinians to reclaim the land that was stolen from them by the Zionists. The most noteworthy event to have happened at the fence encircling Gaza was Friday, March 30 of 2018. There was one of the largest non-violent civilian mobilizations the world has ever known: the Great March of Return. That day, 30,000 people showed up after work or after school, at locations along the eastern border fence which Israel had built around the Gaza Strip.

      The Great March of Return was intended to openly, and without weapons, push towards the fortified border fence and the lands of Palestine that Palestinians were forced to leave when the United Nations gave 55 percent of their land to the Zionists. That day Gazans showed up to resist nonviolently, on foot and unarmed, to show the world their pain of dispossession and their strife under the illegal blockade which Israel imposed on them in 2007.

      The blockade of Gaza had been going on for 11 years, and the refugees had not been home for 70 years. Something had to change! Could massive civil disobedience, unarmed civilian action, be the answer?
     
      That was the intention set by the journalist who imagined such an action, and shared his thoughts in a Facebook post almost a decade earlier. As the idea picked up steam, other individuals championed the cause. Community organizations also
got involved and promoted the effort, as did the government of Gaza.

      But these demonstrations were not absolute in their adherence to non-violence. Every person who has been part of nonviolent action will tell you that different people have different ideas of what constitutes not going far enough, or going too far. Some groups of people threw stones, others reportedly approached within 300 meters of the fence with guns and were shot (the Israeli military only allows its own soldiers to be near the fence with guns).

      There were incendiary kites flown over the border fence, which burned swaths of agricultural land farmed by Israelis – lands that had belonged to Palestinians. These fires constituted destruction of property, and were potentially dangerous to the life and safety of people on the other side. Out of thirty thousand people, though, the vast majority did not endanger
anyone or anything except the status quo of domination and The Nonviolent Return Attempt of 2018-2019 subjugation by a colonial Zionist Israel.

      These nonviolent gatherings were made more significant because of the real danger: unarmed demonstrators faced that was more than batons or arrest. They faced real bullets. Some nonviolent demonstrators were injured by crossfire, no doubt, however thousands were intentionally targeted by the Israeli military. The tell-tale signature of Israeli snipers was to shoot participants in the knees so the army would make sure the participant would never
“march” again.

      It’s important to understand the context, the motivation, and the name for this massive popular action. Seventy percent of the population of Gaza is not from Gaza. They are from the rest of Palestine. They, or their parents or grandparents, were simply kicked out in 1948 or in 1967, and had to relocate to Gaza. Just like in the West Bank, there are many refugee camps in Gaza (small refugee cities really) where Palestinians live who were displaced from their villages, towns and cities so the Zionists could create an “ethnically clean” Jewish state.

      Ever since 1948, Zionist forces have sought to win the “demographic game” they created to outnumber other religions and
ethnicities, by committing ethnic cleansing. The Zionist project’s approach is captured in Zionists’ own literature and  frequently described in their journals and correspondence. But this article is about Palestinians’ response, and the Great March of Return symbolized Palestinians returning on foot to the places from which they had been removed.

      On the Fridays that followed, the demonstrations continued – from the spring of 2018 to the winter of 2019. Even though
the event was originally planned to end on Nakba Day in May of 2018, for another 18 months beyond that people in Gaza showed up and demonstrated to the world the lengths they were willing to go to in order to plead their case and present their demands: Lift the blockade on Gaza and allow refugees to return to their homes.

      The event was organized around five locations – five tents distributed along the length of the Israeli fence around Gaza.
Over time, each location turned into a tent city. There were tents grouped by the village of origin, or the areas the participants were from. Each tent city became a microcosm of Palestine. Music and dance were frequent, music played over loudspeakers with dabke lines stomping through the dusty ground – all with the backdrop of dark smoke billowing from piles of tires set aflame to obstruct the military snipers’ view of the participants.

      By the time the demonstrations were declared “postponed” in December of 2019 That meant more than 4,000 bullets fired, one by one, into civilians demonstrating for their rights. The UN documented 124 Palestinians had been killed and 15,000 injured. More than 4,000 by live gunfire. Of those killed, the Israeli military justified that 50 were enlisted armed fighters for the resistance, however they did not provide evidence of wrongdoing. Many reports described cold blooded murders of unarmed people and medical personnel by snipers.

      As early as 1948, the United Nations asserted that Palestinians have the right to return to their homes in UN Resolution 194. And the Palestinian refugees in Gaza have longed to exercise that right for 77 years. But today they are being decimated and starved to try to stop them from returning.

      And remember, the people have the power. But will we use it? Following a call from the civilian resistance in Gaza, the global consumer strike for Gaza is every Thursday. Go to work but don’t spend money or buy anything on Thursdays.

      From March 2018 until December 2019, Palestinians civilians demonstrated for their right to cross the fence and were rebuffed. In October 2023, armed Palestinians used bulldozers to cross the fence and did not have any more success regaining their homeland. How can we support a more successful effort? Can Gazans do anything which will not have them demonized by colonial mass media for resisting the invasion and occupation of their country? What will the future hold for Palestinians in Gaza? It may depend on humanity’s willingness to use its strength and skill as a protective force.

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Luigi Petrigh-Dove, activist and writer in Sonoma County. He can be reached at [email protected]

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