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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/great-march-of-return-is-palestinians-cry-for-justice/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/great-march-of-return-is-palestinians-cry-for-justice/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Great March of Return is Palestinians’
Cry for Justice</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">April 3, 2019<br>
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<p><strong>By <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud"
title="Display all articles for Ramzy Baroud">Ramzy
Baroud</a></strong></p>
<p><span>The aims of the Great March of Return protests,
which began in Gaza on March 30 last year, are to put
an end to the suffocating Israeli siege and implement
the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were
expelled from their homes and towns in historic
Palestine 70 years ago.</span></p>
<p><span>But there is much more to the protests than a few
demands, especially bearing in mind the high human
cost associated with them. According to Gaza’s
Ministry of Health, more than 250 people have been
killed and 6,500 wounded, including children, medics
and journalists.</span></p>
<p><span>Aside from the disproportionately covered
“flaming kites” and youths symbolically cutting
through the metal fences that have caged them for many
years, the marches have been largely nonviolent.
Despite this, Israel has killed and maimed protesters
with impunity.</span></p>
<p><span>A UN human rights commission of inquiry found
last month that Israel may have committed war crimes,
resulting in the deaths of 189 Palestinians, within
the period March 30 to December 31. The inquiry found
“reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers
shot at children, medics and journalists, even though
they were clearly recognizable as such,” the
investigators concluded.</span></p>
<p><span>Many in the media, however, still do not
understand what the Great March of Return really means
for Palestinians. A cynically titled report in the
Washington Post attempted to offer an answer. The
article, “Gazans have paid in blood for a year of
protests. Now many wonder what it was for,”
selectively quoted wounded Palestinians who,
supposedly, feel that their sacrifices were in vain.
Aside from providing the Israeli military with a
platform to blame Hamas for the year-long march, the
long report ended with these two quotes: The March of
Return “achieved nothing,” according to one injured
Palestinian. And “the only thing I can find is that it
made people pay attention,” said another.</span></p>
<p><span>If the Washington Post paid attention, it would
have realized that the mood among Palestinians is
neither cynical nor despairing. The Post should have
wondered: If the march had “achieved nothing,” then
why are Gazans still protesting, and why has the
popular and inclusive nature of the march not been
compromised?</span></p>
<p><span>Sabreen Al-Najjar, the mother of young
Palestinian medic Razan, who was fatally shot by the
Israeli army while trying to help wounded protesters,
wrote in the Independent last week: “The right of
return is more than a political position, more than a
principle: Wrapped up in it, and reflected in
literature and art and music, is the essence of what
it means to be Palestinian. It is in our blood.”</span></p>
<p><span>Indeed, what is the Great March of Return but a
people attempting to reclaim their role, and be
recognized and heard in the struggle for the
liberation of Palestine?</span></p>
<p><span>What is largely missing from the discussion on
Gaza is the collective psychology behind this kind of
mobilization, and why it is essential for hundreds of
thousands of besieged people to rediscover their power
and understand their true position, not as hapless
victims, but as agents of change in their society.</span></p>
<p><span>The narrow reading, or the misrepresentation, of
the Great March of Return speaks volumes about the
overall underestimation of the role of the Palestinian
people in their struggle for freedom, justice and
national liberation.</span></p>
<p><span>The story of Palestine is the story of the
Palestinian people, for they are the victims of
oppression and the main channel of resistance,
starting with the Nakba — the creation of Israel on
the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages in 1948.
Had Palestinians not resisted, their story would have
concluded then, and they would have disappeared.</span></p>
<p><span>Those who admonish Palestinian resistance or,
like the Post, fail to understand the underlying value
of popular movement and sacrifices, have little
understanding of the psychological ramifications of
resistance — the sense of collective empowerment and
hope that spreads among the people. In his
introduction to Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the
Earth,” Jean-Paul Sartre describes resistance, as was
passionately vindicated by Fanon, as a process through
which “a man is recreating himself.”</span></p>
<p><span>For 70 years, Palestinians have embarked on that
journey of recreation of the self. They have resisted,
and their resistance in all of its forms has molded a
sense of collective unity, despite the numerous
divisions that were erected among the people. The
Great March of Return is the latest manifestation of
the ongoing Palestinian resistance.</span></p>
<p><span>It is obvious that elitist interpretations of
Palestine have failed — Oslo proved a worthless
exercise in empty cliches, aimed at sustaining
American political dominance in Palestine as well as
in the rest of the Middle East. The signing of the
Oslo I Accord in 1993 shattered the relative
cohesiveness of the Palestinian discourse, thus
weakening and dividing the Palestinian people.</span></p>
<p><span>In the Israeli Zionist narrative, Palestinians
are depicted as drifting lunatics, an inconvenience
that hinders the path of progress: A description that
regularly defined the relationship between every
Western colonial power and the colonized, resisting
natives.</span></p>
<p><span>Within some Israeli political and academic
circles, Palestinians merely “existed” to be
“cleansed,” to make room for a different, more
deserving people. From the Zionist perspective, the
“existence” of the natives is meant to be temporary.
“We must expel Arabs and take their place,” wrote
Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion.</span></p>
<p><span>Assigning the roles of being dislocated,
disinherited and nomadic to the Palestinian people,
without consideration for the ethical and political
implications of such a perception, has erroneously
presented Palestinians as a docile and submissive
collective.</span></p>
<p><span>Hence, it is imperative that we develop a clearer
understanding of the layered meanings behind the Great
March of Return. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
in Gaza did not risk life and limb over the last year
simply because they required urgent medicine and food
supplies. They did so because they understand their
centrality in their struggle. Their protests are a
collective statement, a cry for justice, an ultimate
reclamation of their narrative as a people — still
standing, still powerful and still hopeful after 70
years of Nakba, 50 years of military occupation and 12
years of unrelenting siege.</span></p>
<p><i><span>– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and
editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book
is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto
Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine
Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was
a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global
and International Studies, University of California
Santa Barbara. His website is</span></i><a
href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"> <i><span>www.ramzybaroud.net</span></i></a><i><span>.</span></i></p>
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