Haidar Eid is an associate professor of English literature at Al Aqsa University in Gaza. He and his students joined the Great March of Return protests near the Israeli border. Eid’s statement below was read out at the Socialist Alliance’s May 18 screening of the Palestinian film The Wanted 18 in Geelong.
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We, the victims of a multi-tiered system of oppression, occupation, colonisation and apartheid, are fighting on behalf of the international community for the rule of law.
In just over 24 hours on May 14 and 15, the single greatest number of deaths and injuries of Gazans at the hands of the Israeli military since the start of the Great March of Return protests on March 30 occurred. Lisa Gleeson writes Israel’s latest crimes must be a catalyst to strengthen the struggle for Palestinian freedom.
The world saw two starkly opposed moral cultures on May 14, writes Barry Sheppard.
A group of young Palestinians in Gaza has founded “The Crutches”: the first football (soccer) team for amputees injured during the last three Israeli attacks on the besieged territory.
“Israel is carrying out a murderous assault against protesting Palestinians, with its armed forces killing and maiming demonstrators who pose no imminent threat to them,” Amnesty International said on April 27 as thousands of Palestinians taking part in Great March of Return rallies in Gaza faced Israeli bullets for the fifth week in a row.
Over those weeks, Amnesty said, “the Israeli military has killed 35 Palestinians and injured more than 5500 others — some with what appear to be deliberately inflicted life-changing injuries”.
Fifty Palestinians have been killed in Gaza’s eastern perimeter since March 30, five of them children and two journalists, writes Maureen Clare Murphy. The vast majority were participating in the Great March of Return protests, during which no Israelis have been killed or injured.
Palestinians in Gaza had hardly begun their “Great March of Return” campaign before Israel responded with a level of violence and brutality not seen for some time, writes Lisa Gleeson. Yet their protests continue.
What began as a protest in 1976 after a rash of land confiscations by Israel — met by Israel with the killing of six unarmed Palestinians — Land Day each March 30 is an annual focal point for Palestinian frustration at being forcibly displaced and unable to return home.
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time supporter of Palestinian rights, posted a statement on Facebook that was to be read out April 7 demonstrations across Britain against Israel's latest killings of Palestinians in Gaza. By April 8, the death toll of Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces while protesting in Gaza since March 30 had risen to 22.
Israel’s massacre of peaceful protesters in Gaza on March 30, in which 18 people died and almost 1500 were injured, has spread outrage across the world.
At least 18 Palestinians have died in Gaza after Israeli forces opened fire on Friday, March 30 on a protest near the Gaza Strip’s eastern border with Israel. As many as 1700 Palestinians were wounded, with videos posted online showing unarmed Palestinians being shot in the back while taking part in a protest that day.
Faten Ahmed was a 26-year-old with a rare form of cancer. She died in August while awaiting an Israeli permit to travel for chemotherapy and radiotherapy not available in the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to a crippling Israeli siege since 2007.
She had previously missed eight hospital appointments after Israeli “security approval” was delayed or denied, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Ahmed was one of five women who died from cancer in that month alone while waiting for Israeli permission that never came.
Every Friday for nearly a decade, the villagers of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank have gathered to walk across a road to a water spring.
The water spring has long been a part of Palestinian life, but the villagers of Nabi Saleh are prevented from accessing it by illegal Israeli settlers, who take more and more land every year.
As the water spring is now for settlers only, every Friday the soldiers prevent the villagers from walking across their own land to access what was their own water.