2018–2019 Gaza border protests

In Palestine, Syria and Lebanon we saw images around the world like this one of Palestinians successfully demonstrating in large numbers.

In Jordan and Egypt the authorities stopped Palestinians from getting very close to Palestine but nevertheless the demonstrations were organized This was a significant precursor to the Great March of Return that many of you will be familiar with that was organized in Gaza on the anniversary of the Nakba in 2018 and that was met with fire by the Israeli army leading to huge numbers of fatalities and very, very high numbers of injuries as Palestinians in Gaza tried to march to the armistice line and found themselves shot in most cases when they were not even armed.

Nevertheless, again, three years later, we saw further return marches taking place in Lebanon and Jordan.

So this is an ongoing continuing theme.

Yeah, I think so.

That would have been the Great March of Return.

Yeah.

So that basically, yeah, I think it was basically just happening during the Great March of Return.

And so I see them, you know, marching peacefully around.

towards the fence towards the wall or that surrounds Gaza and just, you know, IDF IOF snipers, just killing innocent people and children and maiming them and disabling them.

And honestly, the kind of vibe that even now you two are embodying on this podcast, a real sense of strength in the face of tremendous pressure.

an effort to find joy, you know, sitting with people who at that point, the Great March of Return was going on, sitting with people who were wounded, had prosthetics, but were joking, you know, or talking about the experience or asking questions about my life, not making about them.

That was

in Malacca, right? In Gaza cities.

And Palestine, of course, was also on the agenda again and again, as it always is.

I was there during the Great March of Return.

You all may recall in 2018 when thousands of Palestinians in Gaza organized effectively a nonviolent protest in Gaza where they marched up to the wall and The Israelis just opened fire on them and killed hundreds of people.

They shot medical workers.

And there's ample, at this point, ample documentation of that, of snipers killing children, of drones killing children.

Even in March twenty eighteen, during the Great March of Return, when the people of Gaza attempted non-violently to end that medieval siege, the UN report found that Israel was targeting children, journalists, medics, brace yourself, targeting double amputees who were three hundred meters away from the perimeter fence.

That's twenty eighteen before the horror that was unleashed after October seventh.

And now you're telling me that I have to be inclusive and pluralistic with these child killers, a nation of child killers? To its credit, Israel has a citizen army, and that's how it should be because everybody-- I notice two of your producers or tech people, they were in the Marines, they mentioned to me, everybody should have to bear the burden of the ultimate sacrifice to keep their country free of foreign occupation.

who was exchanged for something like 1,400 or 1,200 Palestinians, including himself.

He announced when Hamas finally decided we're going to let young men protest the siege, everybody in Gaza who wants to, at the Great March of Return, I think it was 2018.

He came there and he said, we are going to go through the border fence one way or another.

We are going to do it because we are under siege.

In December 2017, while looking across the Israeli barrier at the land from which Palestinians had been expelled, he wrote a Facebook post asking what would happen if Palestinians walked toward their ancestral homes.

That idea helped inspire the Great March of Return, the mass mobilization that began on Land Day in March 2018 and continued into 2019.

Palestinians gathered week after week to demand their right of return and an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Israeli forces killed 212 Palestinians during the unarmed marches and wounded more than 36,000.

And I know they'll appreciate

hearing that from you.

Now, when we think back to the Great March of Return and what you wrote about it,

you

Yesterday I talked about...

The many trips I had to Gaza over the years, after 2008-9, after 2012, after 2014, during the Great March of Return, And each time this question of hope kind of came up.

On the five-year anniversary of the blockade, we did a report on child health that we launched in Gaza.

And one of the Palestinian journalists piped up, it was with the UN, piped up, you know, what are you going to do on the 10th year of the anniversary? And now look where we are, almost 20 years later.