Israeli violence mars a peaceful protest

THE lead article: “Bloodbath on Gaza border”, refers. (Weekend Argus, March 31).

How many more Palestinians must become displaced, die, be wounded or mutilated for life before global leaders take the lead and cut diplomatic ties with the brutal apartheid Israeli regime, whose only answer to a peaceful protest against the Israeli occupation is in the form of a Good Friday massacre?

Friday’s demonstrations were the start of the “Great March of Return”, in which Palestinian refugees demand to be able to return to their own 1948 homes in what is today Israel. The Palestinians, the indigenous people of the land, call this loss of land their “Nakba” or catastrophe.

Of those 750 000 Palestinians violently expelled from lands they had lived on for hundreds of years, more than 200 000 fled to Gaza. In 1948 the United Nations passed Resolution 194, agreeing that the refugees should have a right to return to their villages, but Israel refused the Palestinians this human right.

The people of Gaza are living under unimaginable inhuman conditions. They have little to no water, most of the population rely on food assistance, and suffer deliberate denial of electricity and other basic human needs.

For organising a peaceful protest in support of human rights, dignity and the right to return to their homes, villages and land, they should be commended, not shot at and murdered. The struggle to free Palestine from a ruthless and vicious occupier is a legitimate, moral and just cause. Resistance remains their only option.