By Diaa Hadid and Majd Al Waheidi, NY Times, Nov. 6, 2015
El BUREIJ, Gaza Strip–The Palestinian youths huddled in the prohibited zone along the fence separating Gaza from Israel on Friday, cloaked by thick smoke pluming from flaming tires as they hurled rocks at Israeli jeeps. A tear gas canister came thudding down over their heads, and one teenager dashed over to pick it up and throw it into a puddle on a rainy afternoon.
This is the new normal in Gaza, where nearly every day since early October hundreds of youths have staged a demonstration of defiance against Israel by rushing the Gaza security fence en masse, and sometimes crossing it, to show solidarity with Palestinians under fire in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“We want to send a message to the Israelis that we exist,” said Suheil, 24, who like most of the demonstrators requested that his family name be kept secret to avoid reprisal. “I feel like I’m in solidarity with our brothers in Jerusalem and the West Bank.”
But the demonstrations are also in defiance of the Islamist group Hamas, which governs Gaza and is trying to keep the battered territory out of trouble with Israel, even as the group’s leaders urge Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up.
At least 15 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza fence demonstrations, including a 23-year-old killed on Friday, according to Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
At two separate demonstrations on Friday, one on the outskirts of Gaza City, another on the outskirts of El Bureij, a refugee camp in central Gaza, a few demonstrators tried to dash across the fence into Israel.
Most others, though, hurled rocks in the direction of military jeeps, or just sat on nearby mounds to watch. One was Muhanad, an 18-year-old who said he was staying put after he tried to rush the fence at an earlier demonstration, but ran away when an Israeli jeep opened fire in his direction. “I even forgot my flip-flops there,” he said.
Nearby, the rat-a-tat of live fire echoed, and an ambulance siren blared as a wounded demonstrator was rushed out. A small boy pretended that he, too, was injured. He collapsed on the ground and two others carried him away, giggling. Within minutes though, dozens of boys rushed away for real as Israel forces peppered the area with tear gas.
In all, 72 Palestinians have been killed since a spate of protests, stabbings and vehicular attacks erupted in October in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians have killed 10 Israelis in that period, and some of the Palestinian deaths have come during such attacks or attempted attacks. Many Palestinians, however, question whether some of the reported attacks actually occurred, and say Israel has used excessive force.
On Friday, one of those killed by Israeli soldiers was a 72-year-old Palestinian woman, Tharwat al-Sharawi, who was shot in Halhoul, a town in the southern West Bank. An Israeli military spokeswoman said Ms. Sharawi’s vehicle sped up to head directly at a group of soldiers, who jumped out of the way and shot her.
Palestinian news media quoted her son Ayoub as saying that his mother had stopped to get gasoline when the soldiers inexplicably opened fire. He said his father had been shot dead by Israeli forces during the first intifada in 1988.
In nearby Hebron, a gunman opened fire on Israelis near a shrine holy to Jews and Muslims, wounding two; the attacker fled, according to news media reports. Another suspected Palestinian attacker was reported to have shot a 19-year-old near Hebron and then fled. And in an industrial area, an Israeli was stabbed and wounded, supposedly by a Palestinian.
While the trigger for demonstrations was Palestinian fears over the fate of a holy site in Jerusalem, a rapidly growing discontent with their political leaders and Israel’s continued military occupation appear to be at its core.
Gaza’s demonstrations were first called by a group of activists who have long resisted Hamas’ heavy-handed rule. One activist, Fadi Alsheikh-Yousef, 28, said they were trying to organize peaceful activities, too, like demonstrating outside United Nations offices in Gaza, demanding that the group intervene. “We need to engage with people’s humanity,” he said.
Some of the protesters said they had also participated in rare demonstrations in September against Hamas over intensified outages of electricity and water. “There’s a huge amount of frustration and depression inside me,” said one, Hamada, 23, who is unemployed. “I want to be involved in all demonstrations against oppression and occupation.”
But the mass rushes to the Gaza security fence–where Hamas forces patrol along a dirt road on one side, and Israeli soldiers patrol the other–have swept up an unusually broad swath of young Palestinians.
Early on, Hamas forces set up checkpoints to bar demonstrators from reaching the border area, said about a dozen protesters interviewed separately. The protesters would rush past, and some were beaten up.
More recently, Hamas security forces appear to wear civilian clothes and mingle with the protesters, ensuring nobody is carrying weapons–much like their rival Palestinian security counterparts in the West Bank whom they have harshly criticized.
Taher Nunu, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said they could not allow any violence from the territory against Israel because they had agreed to a truce that ended last summer’s devastating war. “That’s a political and sovereign issue, and we are abiding by that,” Mr. Nunu said.
So far, Hamas is gambling on hopes that Palestinians in the West Bank will keep the uprising going without active support from Gaza. They expect that a continuing conflict will fray support for the security coordination conducted between Israel and the West Bank security forces of the Palestinian Authority, used chiefly to crack down on Hamas loyalists in that territory.
Akram Attallah, a writer with the Palestinian newspaper Al Ayyam, said Hamas was in a difficult position. The group looks as if it is betraying its own militant words by trying to stop protests, but if it participated, it would invite a harsh Israeli response.
“They know that Gaza needs reconstruction, not destruction. Gaza is still emerging from a war,” he said, referring to last summer’s war, the third in 10 years.
Adding to their misery, most of Gaza’s Palestinians are effectively locked into the tiny coastal territory, since few are allowed to leave through Israel, and Egypt has only briefly opened its border crossing this year. The United Nations estimated that some 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians relied on international assistance to survive.
Hamas’ cautious approach, so far, appears supported by most of Gaza’s residents, like Hamada Isdoudi, a car parts salesman, and his customer Ahmad.
“Of course I care about what’s happening,” Ahmad, 21, said on a recent day, as he checked out parts of a rusty yellow car in a dusty spare parts shop just a few hundred feet where the demonstrations took place. “I watch it on television.”
“All of the West Bank can burn!” shouted Mr. Isdoudi, 25, in response.
“We gave the cause our martyrs,” Ahmad said. “They should fight now too,” he said of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“They are part of us; we are the same people,” said a shopkeeper, Hani Hilis, 39, standing nearby. “We share the same destiny,” he added. But what could he do? His home was damaged in the last war and still was not repaired. He barely eked out a living for his six children, he said.
“We have swallowed so much suffering,” he said, sighing.
El BUREIJ, Gaza Strip–The Palestinian youths huddled in the prohibited zone along the fence separating Gaza from Israel on Friday, cloaked by thick smoke pluming from flaming tires as they hurled rocks at Israeli jeeps. A tear gas canister came thudding down over their heads, and one teenager dashed over to pick it up and throw it into a puddle on a rainy afternoon.
This is the new normal in Gaza, where nearly every day since early October hundreds of youths have staged a demonstration of defiance against Israel by rushing the Gaza security fence en masse, and sometimes crossing it, to show solidarity with Palestinians under fire in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“We want to send a message to the Israelis that we exist,” said Suheil, 24, who like most of the demonstrators requested that his family name be kept secret to avoid reprisal. “I feel like I’m in solidarity with our brothers in Jerusalem and the West Bank.”
But the demonstrations are also in defiance of the Islamist group Hamas, which governs Gaza and is trying to keep the battered territory out of trouble with Israel, even as the group’s leaders urge Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up.
At least 15 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza fence demonstrations, including a 23-year-old killed on Friday, according to Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
At two separate demonstrations on Friday, one on the outskirts of Gaza City, another on the outskirts of El Bureij, a refugee camp in central Gaza, a few demonstrators tried to dash across the fence into Israel.
Most others, though, hurled rocks in the direction of military jeeps, or just sat on nearby mounds to watch. One was Muhanad, an 18-year-old who said he was staying put after he tried to rush the fence at an earlier demonstration, but ran away when an Israeli jeep opened fire in his direction. “I even forgot my flip-flops there,” he said.
Nearby, the rat-a-tat of live fire echoed, and an ambulance siren blared as a wounded demonstrator was rushed out. A small boy pretended that he, too, was injured. He collapsed on the ground and two others carried him away, giggling. Within minutes though, dozens of boys rushed away for real as Israel forces peppered the area with tear gas.
In all, 72 Palestinians have been killed since a spate of protests, stabbings and vehicular attacks erupted in October in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians have killed 10 Israelis in that period, and some of the Palestinian deaths have come during such attacks or attempted attacks. Many Palestinians, however, question whether some of the reported attacks actually occurred, and say Israel has used excessive force.
On Friday, one of those killed by Israeli soldiers was a 72-year-old Palestinian woman, Tharwat al-Sharawi, who was shot in Halhoul, a town in the southern West Bank. An Israeli military spokeswoman said Ms. Sharawi’s vehicle sped up to head directly at a group of soldiers, who jumped out of the way and shot her.
Palestinian news media quoted her son Ayoub as saying that his mother had stopped to get gasoline when the soldiers inexplicably opened fire. He said his father had been shot dead by Israeli forces during the first intifada in 1988.
In nearby Hebron, a gunman opened fire on Israelis near a shrine holy to Jews and Muslims, wounding two; the attacker fled, according to news media reports. Another suspected Palestinian attacker was reported to have shot a 19-year-old near Hebron and then fled. And in an industrial area, an Israeli was stabbed and wounded, supposedly by a Palestinian.
While the trigger for demonstrations was Palestinian fears over the fate of a holy site in Jerusalem, a rapidly growing discontent with their political leaders and Israel’s continued military occupation appear to be at its core.
Gaza’s demonstrations were first called by a group of activists who have long resisted Hamas’ heavy-handed rule. One activist, Fadi Alsheikh-Yousef, 28, said they were trying to organize peaceful activities, too, like demonstrating outside United Nations offices in Gaza, demanding that the group intervene. “We need to engage with people’s humanity,” he said.
Some of the protesters said they had also participated in rare demonstrations in September against Hamas over intensified outages of electricity and water. “There’s a huge amount of frustration and depression inside me,” said one, Hamada, 23, who is unemployed. “I want to be involved in all demonstrations against oppression and occupation.”
But the mass rushes to the Gaza security fence–where Hamas forces patrol along a dirt road on one side, and Israeli soldiers patrol the other–have swept up an unusually broad swath of young Palestinians.
Early on, Hamas forces set up checkpoints to bar demonstrators from reaching the border area, said about a dozen protesters interviewed separately. The protesters would rush past, and some were beaten up.
More recently, Hamas security forces appear to wear civilian clothes and mingle with the protesters, ensuring nobody is carrying weapons–much like their rival Palestinian security counterparts in the West Bank whom they have harshly criticized.
Taher Nunu, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said they could not allow any violence from the territory against Israel because they had agreed to a truce that ended last summer’s devastating war. “That’s a political and sovereign issue, and we are abiding by that,” Mr. Nunu said.
So far, Hamas is gambling on hopes that Palestinians in the West Bank will keep the uprising going without active support from Gaza. They expect that a continuing conflict will fray support for the security coordination conducted between Israel and the West Bank security forces of the Palestinian Authority, used chiefly to crack down on Hamas loyalists in that territory.
Akram Attallah, a writer with the Palestinian newspaper Al Ayyam, said Hamas was in a difficult position. The group looks as if it is betraying its own militant words by trying to stop protests, but if it participated, it would invite a harsh Israeli response.
“They know that Gaza needs reconstruction, not destruction. Gaza is still emerging from a war,” he said, referring to last summer’s war, the third in 10 years.
Adding to their misery, most of Gaza’s Palestinians are effectively locked into the tiny coastal territory, since few are allowed to leave through Israel, and Egypt has only briefly opened its border crossing this year. The United Nations estimated that some 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians relied on international assistance to survive.
Hamas’ cautious approach, so far, appears supported by most of Gaza’s residents, like Hamada Isdoudi, a car parts salesman, and his customer Ahmad.
“Of course I care about what’s happening,” Ahmad, 21, said on a recent day, as he checked out parts of a rusty yellow car in a dusty spare parts shop just a few hundred feet where the demonstrations took place. “I watch it on television.”
“All of the West Bank can burn!” shouted Mr. Isdoudi, 25, in response.
“We gave the cause our martyrs,” Ahmad said. “They should fight now too,” he said of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“They are part of us; we are the same people,” said a shopkeeper, Hani Hilis, 39, standing nearby. “We share the same destiny,” he added. But what could he do? His home was damaged in the last war and still was not repaired. He barely eked out a living for his six children, he said.
“We have swallowed so much suffering,” he said, sighing.
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