return. 팔레스타인들의 자기 고향으로 돌아가다 (귀향, 귀국). 혹은 돌려달라는 의미에서 '반환'
2018년 1월, 팔레스타인 언론인이자 시인 아메드 아부 아테마 (Ahmed Abu Artema)가 매주 금요일 이스라엘과 맞닿은 벽에 모여 평화시위를 하자고 제안. 그 운동은 1948년 이전 팔레스타인인들의 고향으로 돌아가자는 의미에서 "귀향 대행진"이라고 이름붙였다.
팔레스타인 "귀향 대행진", 매주 금요일 가자 지구 콘크리트 벽에 모여 시위를 벌이다.
1년 후. 사망자 266명. 부상자 3만 398명. 고무총탄 부상자 6,867명. 최루탄 피해자 2441명.
신체 절단 사고. 상체 14명, 하체 사지 절단 122명. 의료진 사망자 3, 부상자 665명. 앰뷸런스 차 손상 112대. 기자 2명 사망, 347명 부상.
1. 와싱턴 포스트 - 1년간 운동 평가.
2. 알 자지라.
Opinion- A year after the Great March of Return, Palestinians are still fighting for freedom
By Ahmad Abu Artema
아메드 아부 아테마
March 30, 2019 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
아스마 23세. 팔레스타인 국기를 들고 있다.
Asmaa, 23, holds up the Palestinian flag at a protest. (Mohammed Zaanoun)
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Ahmad Abu Artema is a Gaza-based writer and one of the organizers of the Great March of Return.
A year ago, alongside a group of other Palestinian organizers, I launched the Great March of Return, a weekly grass-roots protest in Gaza calling for Palestinian freedom from Israel’s crippling blockade and the right of refugees to return to our former homes.
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I first had the idea to march after President Trump moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, breaking with the international consensus and almost seven decades of U.S. policy. In Gaza, many of us were deeply alarmed by Trump’s announcement and its implications for the sovereignty of Jerusalem and its holy sites, which are central to Palestinian identity.
One day, as I walked through Gaza just before sunset, I was struck watching the birds fly freely from tree to tree over the fence that separated us from Israel. I wondered aloud why I couldn’t move freely without being stopped by walls, guns and checkpoints.
I shared these thoughts with friends on Facebook, and soon excitement for the march took flight. People in Gaza were craving an outlet, a way to reach out to the world. The march gave them a platform and enabled young people to feel more connected to the land they long to return to.
Today, thousands of Palestinians continue to brave Israeli sniper fire to march peacefully every Friday. They have paid a heavy price. Israeli snipers have reportedly killed 195 people — including children — and injured tens of thousands of others. But I cannot regret the impact of my words and the movement they catalyzed.
For more than a decade, Palestinians in Gaza have been isolated in a huge, open-air prison. We cannot leave to study, visit family or friends, travel and see the world — and, except at brief intervals, the world has generally ignored our suffering.
As virtual prisoners living behind walls and fences, we cannot help but shake the bars of our prison, regardless of the price we may pay. Starved of our freedom and the ability to live a normal life, we march to retain a sense of agency and remind the world of our plight and demand for freedom.
As we approach the first anniversary of the Great March of Return, the factors that motivated us to protest have not changed. Our food is running out. Approximately 97 percent of our fresh water is undrinkable and facilities for treating water are limited. Cancer patients are forced to delay life-saving treatments after being denied travel permits by Israel. Gaza receives only a few hours of electricity each day, and our economy is in shambles. Tragically, young Palestinians — who have the highest unemployment rate in the world — feel there is no hope, and are deprived of the opportunity to work, find housing and set the groundwork to marry and start families.
A U.N. report has found that Gaza may be uninhabitable by 2020, which is just months away. Many say we’ve already passed that point. This is no way to live. We have nothing to lose, so we must keep struggling for the better world we know is possible.
I’m one of the lucky few in Gaza who have experienced the taste of freedom. After many failed attempts, I was given a permit to travel at the invitation of the American Friends Service Committee and recently toured the United States to raise awareness of our plight in Gaza. Each day, I met people from different cultures living side by side, struggling together for a better, more just America and a better world. These activists saw our struggle as their struggle. With raised voices and persistent action, they have shared this message with members Congress, who are beginning to speak out in support of Palestinian rights.
During my tour, I visited the First Church of the Brethren in Chicago, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had an office. As I stood in the room where my hero once stood, I thought of King’s famous "I Have a Dream" speech and how much he sacrificed to achieve something remarkable for humanity. We in Gaza are left with the legacy of this shared dream of freedom. We will carry on in King’s footsteps until the walls of separation fall and justice prevails.
But justice requires accountability. A report recently released by U.N. Commission of Inquiry concerning Israel’s crackdown after the Great March of Return offers a glimmer of hope that the impunity Israeli leaders currently enjoy will one day end. It found evidence that Israeli forces may have committed war crimes, including injuring and killing protesters. For this report to have a real effect on Palestinian lives, Israel and its leaders must be held accountable by the United States and the international community.
I dream of a future in which Israelis and Palestinians live together in freedom and equality, so that our children may realize their full potential in shared safety. This is a dream worth realizing but, for it to succeed, those who believe in freedom and justice need to speak out against Israeli leaders who have callously disregarded our rights. Let us stand together on the right side of history.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/30/year-after-great-march-return-palestinians-are-still-fighting-freedom/
Opinion | A year after the Great March of Return, Palestinians are still fighting for freedom
Today, thousands in Gaza continue to brave Israeli sniper fire to march peacefully every Friday.
www.washingtonpost.com
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2019.march.30. 귀향 대행진. 반환(귀향,귀국)을 위한 대행진. Gaza’s Great March of Return protests explained
Here’s the backstory of the Great March of Return protests and the conditions that have brought Gaza to this point.
By Huthifa Fayyad
Published On 30 Mar 2019
30 Mar 2019
Every Friday for the past year, Palestinians in Gaza have protested along the fence separating the besieged strip from Israel.
They are demanding the right to return to their ancestors’ homes, which they were expelled from in 1948 when Zionist militias forcefully removed 750,000 Palestinians from their villages to clear the way for Israel’s creation.
The protesters are also demanding an end to the 12-year-long Israeli blockade, which the United Nations says amounts to collective punishment.
The demonstrations started on March 30, 2018, and have continued since, despite the Israeli army’s deadly response.
Israeli snipers opened fire at protesters during the demonstrations, killing 266 people and injuring almost 30,000 others in one year, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israeli blockade
The Gaza Strip is a small Palestinian territory with a total area of 365sq kilometres.
It shares its northern and eastern borders with Israel, its southern border with Egypt, and to the west lies the Mediterranean Sea.
It is home to almost two million people, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
About 70 percent of its population are registered refugees.
Israel, which occupied Gaza in 1967, retains control of coastal enclave’s airspace, seafront, vehicle and pedestrian access despite ending its military presence and removing illegal settlements in 2005.
In 2007, Hamas, a self-described “Islamic national liberation and resistance movement” took control of Gaza, prompting Israel to impose an air, land and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip, isolating the enclave from the rest of the world.
Restriction on movement
Palestinians in Gaza are not allowed to move between Palestinian territories except in rare medical cases or for limited business activity.
That is mainly due to restrictions imposed by Israel on the two main crossings it shares with Gaza: Beit Hanoun in the north and Karem Abu Salem in the south.
Egypt, which also shares borders with Gaza, has closed the Rafah crossing for the majority of the last 12 years. The Rafah crossing is the only passenger crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
The restriction on movement means that many students and patients can’t leave Gaza to pursue an education or seek treatment.
Israel also controls imports to Gaza and bans almost all exports, which has led – in part – to the collapse of Gaza’s economy.
According to the World Bank, every other person in Gaza is living in poverty and the besieged strip has the world’s highest unemployment rate at over 50 percent, with youth unemployment at over 70 percent.
The UN says Gaza has become profoundly dependent on aid.
Only five percent of Gaza’s water is safe to drink and 68 percent of its population suffers from food insecurity, according to UN figures.
People also get as little as four hours of electricity a day.
Israeli military offensives
The effects of the blockade on daily life in Gaza have been amplified by Israeli military offensives on the besieged strip.
Three major operations in 2008/09, 2012, and 2014 have killed more than 3,500 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, and injured more than 15,000 people, mostly civilians.
The effect on infrastructure has been devastating with schools, mosques, UN facilities, and hospitals being hit.
More than 90 Israelis were killed and hundreds injured in the three operations. Most of them were members of the Israeli army.
Israel said the operations were meant to stop Palestinian rockets being fired from Gaza towards Israel.
Political divisions
Political divisions between Fatah and Hamas have only fuelled the public’s frustrations further. The two parties have failed time and time again to reconcile their decade-long differences, despite several agreements that were signed over the years.
In April 2017, the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah took a series of punitive measures, including cutting salaries of employees in Gaza, in a bid to pressure Hamas to hand over its control of the enclave.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian human rights lawyer, said that while the Fatah-Hamas split is adding to the problem in Gaza, it is not the source of it.
“The source of the problem is the [Israeli] occupation, that Israel is shooting and killing with impunity, that Israel is maintaining a blockade with impunity,” Buttu told Al Jazeera.
March of return
2018년 1월, 팔레스타인 언론인이자 시인 아메드 아부 아테마 (Ahmed Abu Artema)가 매주 금요일 이스라엘과 맞닿은 벽에 모여 평화시위를 하자고 제안. 그 운동은 1948년 이전 팔레스타인인들의 고향으로 돌아가자는 의미에서 "귀향 대행진"이라고 이름붙였다.
In January 2018, a Facebook post by Palestinian journalist and poet Ahmed Abu Artema prompted a widespread protest movement.
Abu Artema called on Palestinian refugees to gather peacefully near the fence with Israel and attempt to return to their pre-1948 homes.
His call led to weekly Friday protests, which became known as the “Great March of Return” rallies.
Jehad Abusalim, a Palestine-Israel programme associate at the American Service Committee, said the protests were another episode in the Palestinian history of popular resistance.
“The Great March of Return has been a grassroots social movement that included the various and diverse components of the Palestinian civil society,” Abusalim told Al Jazeera.
“Political factions, NGOs, people from all across the political spectrum participated in the March,” he added.
Buttu thinks that while the protests have not achieved their stated goals, their influence on shifting public opinion has been important.
“While Israel is not being held to account yet before the International Criminal Court or in the international arena, one thing that has happened is that we are seeing a sea change,” Buttu said.
“This is beginning to shed a little bit of light and open a door for people to open their eyes and see what Israel is really about,” she added.
Inside Story: Have protesters in Gaza achieved their goal? (25:00)
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/3/30/gazas-great-march-of-return-protests-explained
Gaza’s Great March of Return protests explained
Here’s the backstory of the Great March of Return protests and the conditions that have brought Gaza to this point.
www.aljazeera.com
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