2018.03.30-2019.12.27 - Great March of Return

Sources

1. Wikipedia, “2018-2019 Gaza border protests” - Accessed 2024-05-21
2. Mustafa Abu Sneineh, Middle East Eye, “Interview: The Palestinian who sparked March of Return with a Facebook post” - 2018-06-08, archived on 2024-05-26
3. Toi Staff, The Times of Israel, “Netanyahu wants UNRWA gradually shut down, backs US cuts” - 2018-01-07, archived on 2024-05-26
4. UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the detailed findings of the independent international Commission of inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” - 2019-03-18, archived on 2024-05-27
5. The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, “Findings of the ITIC’s examination of the identity of Palestinians killed in the events of the “Great Return March” - 2018-05-23, archived on 2024-05-27
6. Ahmed Abu Artema, facebook post suggesting the Great March of Return - 2018-01-07, archived on 2024-05-26
7. @JoeTruzman, Twitter video of Palestinians preparing tires for the Great March of Return - 2018-05-14, archived on 2024-05-27
8. @JoeTruzman, Twitter video of Yahya al-Sinwar with Great March of Return protestors - 2018-04-20, archived on 2024-05-27
9. @JoeTruzman, Twitter video of IED exploding in a Great March of Return crowd - 2018-10-08, archived on 2024-05-27
10. @JoeTruzman, Twitter video of Great March of Return fence cutters - 2018-08-04, archived on 2024-05-26
11. @JoeTruzman, Twitter video of Yahya al-Sinwar with Great March of Return protestors - 2018-09-28, archived on 2024-05-27
12. @JoeTruzman, Twitter video of Great March of Return trespassers planting IEDs - 2018-10-16, archived on 2024-05-27
13. @JoeTruzman, Twitter video of Great March of Return participants cutting the security fence - 2018-10-21, archived on 2024-05-27
14. Associated Press, “Gazans Protest To Bust Israeli Border Blockade” - 2018-05-11, archived on 2024-05-27
15. AP Archive, “Tension Flares At Israel-Gaza Border” - 2018-05-02, archived on 2024-05-27
16. Getty Images, “Gazans converge on Israel buffer zone for 37rd Friday” - 2018-12-07, archived on 2024-05-27
17. UN Human Rights Council, “COI on Gaza Protests: Lethal force against demonstrators not posing imminent threat” - 2019-02-28, archived on 2024-05-27
18. Amnesty International, “Six Months On: Gaza’s Great March of Return” - 2018-10-19, archived on 2024-05-27
19. Oliver Holmes, The Guardian, “Video emerges of cheering as Israeli sniper shoots Palestinian” - 2018-04-10, archived on 2024-05-27
20. Elior Levy, ynet, ""They said they would imprison us” this is how Hamas threatens the protestors’ drivers” - 2018-04-05, archived on 2024-05-27
21. Mahmud Hams, AFP, “The man in the wheelchair” - 2018-10-18, archived on 2024-05-27
22. CBS News, “Dozens of Palestinians killed in protests at Israel-Gaza border” - 2018-05-14, archived on 2024-05-27
23. AP Archive, “Dozens of Palestinians hurt in protest on Gaza-Israel border” - 2018-05-09, archived on 2024-05-27
24. Adel Zaanoun and Clothilde Mraffko, The National US Edition, “Gaza’s ‘night confusion units’ step up months of anti-Israel protest” - 2018-10-02, archived on 2024-05-27

Belligerents

1. Israel
   1. Notable Leaders
      1. Prime Minister - Benjamin Netanyahu
      2. Minister of Defense - Avigdor Lieberman (until November 18th, 2018)
      3. Minister of Defense - Benjamin Netanyahu (after November 18th, 2018)
      4. Chief of Staff - Gadi Eizenkot (until January 15th, 2019)
      5. Chief of Staff - Aviv Kohavi (after January 15th, 2019)
   2. Israel Defense Forces
   3. Israel Border Police

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1. Gaza Strip
   1. Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
   2. Hamas
      1. Notable Leaders
         1. Chairman of the Political Bureau - Ismail Haniyeh
         2. Leader in the Gaza Strip - Yahya Sinwar
         3. Military Commander - Mohammed Deif
   3. Palestinian Islamic Jihad
   4. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Casualties and losses

1. Israel
   1. 0 or 1 killed (wikipedia)
   2. 4 or 11 wounded (wikipedia)
      1. 6 soldiers, 5 civilians

---

1. Gaza Strip
   1. 200-250 killed (multiple figures cited by different sources)
   2. 9,204 injured (wikipedia)

Location

• Along the Gaza Strip border fence

Causes

• The the continuing the blockade was angering those in the Gaza Strip.
• The U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
• Netanyahu and Donald Trump made statements criticizing UNRWA (and their support for the Palestinian Right of Return) and called on funding to be transferred instead to UNHCR, leaving many Gazan citizens fearing that they would soon permanently lose the right to return to their ancestral homes.

Events

Ahmed Abu Artema, a journalist and political activist in Gaza, made a post on Facebook where he suggested the idea of having tens of thousands of Palestinians march back to Israel to occupy their ancestral homelands. He suggested that Israel and the IDF would be powerless to stop so many peaceful activists and hoped Palestinian refugees from Jordan, Syria and Lebanon would join in as well.

Ahmed Abu Artema on Facebook, January 7th, 2018

(using Google to translate from Arabic) What if two hundred thousand demonstrators went out in a peaceful march and stormed the barbed wire east of Gaza and entered our occupied territories for a few kilometers while raising Palestinian flags and the keys of return and accompanied by the international media, then they set up tents inside and established a city there, and let us call it the city of Bab al-Shams, and thousands of Palestinians from inside joined them? They insisted on remaining there peacefully without using any form of violence?? What can the heavily armed occupation do to these peaceful human advances?? Will he kill ten, twenty, or fifty of them? Then what will he do in the face of the relentless human encroachment?? A people who want life and nothing more than life. Nothing delays this idea except the self-fetters that we have woven from our illusions. We are dying in our narrow, besieged place, so why don’t we flee before the knife slaughters us? They are plotting to expel us to the south after killing us, so why don’t we go one step ahead of them and hasten to flee to the north? If there must be a price, let this price be in the right direction, in the direction of returning to Palestine, in the direction of gaining new land and deepening the enemy’s existential predicament. When we implement this idea and it achieves a historical breakthrough, we will discover how many years we have wasted in hesitation and reluctance. Revolt, and you will lose nothing but shackles.

Despite claims from the UN and other third parties, and despite the stated desires of Abu Artema, Hamas picked up on this protest almost immediately and started to organize heavily for the first demonstration on March 30th. Gazan bus drivers reported being threatened by Hamas in the beginning days of the protest to bus violent protestors to the front of the demonstrations.

Ismail Hanyeh on April 9th, 2018 in a speech at the Malak protest site

“Here I am emphasizing more and more that the March is peaceful and I hope all the factions and our people understand the aim behind this March, we are leading this March with a lethal weapon, the weapon made of people and masses that we will use to knock over the doors of the occupation forces and open the doors of return and breaking the siege. Yes, at this time we emphasize the peacefulness of the March.” He underlined though that Hamas was still committed to armed resistance: “Our weapons are in our hands, our missiles in our hands, our tunnels are with us and the improvement of our resistance is ongoing by God’s will. This does not contradict that.” Later in the same speech Haniyeh said: “Yes we will break the walls of the blockade, we will remove the occupation entity, and we will return to all of Palestine’s land by God’s will.” While the majority of those who showed up to protest were peaceful, violent actions occurred almost every protest near the separation border between Gaza and Israel. This included organized groups of people bringing tires to the front and burning them to provide cover against the IDF sniper fire, dozens of young men slinging rocks towards the border fence, protestors sending incendiary kites and balloons across the fence into southern Israel, and occasionally militants making it up to and across the border to plant IEDs.

The IDF prepared in advance for the Great March of Return, dropping leaflets and warning the civilian population not to participate. Snipers were brought to the wall, organized in teams of two, requiring explicit permissions from a commander for every shot taken. The IDF employed a variety of non-lethal methods, including sandbag bullets, tear-gas, and loud speakers. They were also given instructions to shoot legs to reduce the overall fatality count by the end of the encounters.

Multiple times throughout the first year of protests involved protestors getting up to the separation fence to begin cutting it, or to attach rope to it to pull away the barbed wiring. Palestinian journalists and medics were on standby to capture footage of any protestor shot by the IDF during the demonstrations, with the footage being broadcast to the world immediately to rally support for the Palestinians and anger against the Israelis. May 14th, one day before the anniversary of the Nakba, was one of the largest days and the early culmination of the protests, with some tens of thousands of protestors turning out on that day.

By the end of the first year of the demonstrations, the IDF killed 112 individuals. The IDF claimed that some 90 of these were positively identified as belonging to either Hamas, Fatah, PIJ, the DFLP or the PFLP, with 19 being of unknown origin. In the UN’s analysis of the first year, they concluded only a single fatality was justified, though they analyze the event as a policing event rather than an armed conflict event.

The protests would finally be formally brought to an end in December of 2019, with Hamas negotiating a ceasefire brokered by Egypt and UNSCO in exchange for fuel from Israel.

Outcome

Nothing significant was achieved as a result of these protests, aside from more condemnation of Israeli’s violent response to Palestinian violence at the Gazan border.

Important Notes

1. The Great March of Return started off as a protest immediately utilized by Hamas for violent purposes to degrade the security of the Gaza-Israel separation border.
2. This event was largely seen by the rest of the world as a mostly peaceful protest, despite what actually occurred during the demonstrations, and served to turn the world increasingly against Israel.