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Since its launch from the Gaza Strip on March 30, the continuing Palestinian ‘March of Return’ has been a source of confusion and embarrassment for the Zionist state, showing its floundering in the face of peaceful marches, while underscoring the impact of popular struggle against the military occupation.
Israel has so far implemented several measures in a bid to put an end to the marches, but to no avail, despite all the provocative statements made by some members of the Israeli extreme-right government and army commanders. All those measures proved ineffective in restraining the flow of thousands of Palestinians to join the rallies along the Gaza Strip border in particular and in several parts of the occupied West Bank.
Since the launch of the marches, the Israeli army took several salient measures/lines of action, week after week, trying to halt them:
■ First: Israeli troops installed barbed wires, bulldozed and uprooted land, placing sand barriers along several locations of the Gaza border where the ‘five camps of return’ have been built. They became a scene of clashes with soldiers, particularly on Fridays, as the Israeli army tried to stop protesters from reaching the ‘security’ fence to cross it on the ‘day of march’ designated to coincide with and observe Nakba memorial on May
15. Recently, more military enforcements were also brought inside the boarders of Gaza Strip to keep Palestinians away from the fence.
■ Second: With thousands of Palestinians joining the marches, and protesters hitting nearby Israeli fields with ever-growing ‘firebomb kites’, the Israeli army carried out more immediate executions and sniping acts ordered by the rightist government. But despite threatening to open fire on anyone trying to cross the border, the Israeli army’s reaction to the second march was less harsh apparently in response to growing international criticism. Troops used giant fans and water hoses to douse the fire and disperse smoke while observing new firing rules by the army in a bid to send the protesters away.
■ Third: As part of a psychological war tactic, the Israeli army dropped leaflets near the fence, warning protesters of danger to their lives, and calling on them to stay away from the “leaders of the marches”, threatening to use all kinds of weapons to thwart any attempt to cross the border fence.
■ Fourth: As the Palestinians approached the fence, erecting tents at a distance of 100-200 metres from the border and after the occupation authorities declared some areas in the Gaza Strip a closed military zone, the army resorted to targeting journalists in a bid to obliterate its crimes, despite their obvious badges and being in areas clear to the army when carrying out their professional
■ Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.