The Desperation of the Manipulated

Palestinians carry the body of Hamdan Abu Amsha, said killed a day earlier by Israeli fire during a mass border protest along the security fence, in Beit Hanun in the northern of Gaza Strip on March 31, 2018. (AFP/ MAHMUD HAMS)

"[The army faced] a violent, terrorist demonstration at six points [along the fence. The IDF used] pinpoint fire [wherever there were attempts to breach or damage the security fence]."
"All the fatalities were aged 18-30, several of the fatalities were known to us, and at least two of them were members of Hamas commando forces."
"[If violence drags on along the Gaza border, Israel will expand its reaction to strike the terrorists behind it. If attacks continue, the IDF will go after terrorists] in other places, too. [Israel] will not allow a massive breach of the fence into Israeli territory."
“We will not be able to continue limiting our activity to the fence area and will act against these terror organizations in other places too." 
IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis

A Palestinian protester slings stones towards Israeli soldiers during clashes with Israeli troops along the Gaza Strip border with Israel, east of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Friday, March 30, 2018. (AP/Adel Hana)

"The large crowds ... reflect the Palestinian people's determination to achieve the right of return and break the siege and no force can stop this right."
Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas Spokesman

"Hamas is using you and distracting your attention from its responsibility to take care of you and govern the Gaza Strip. Hamas is sacrificing you to move forward with useless agendas and wasting millions instead of investing in your well-being."
"Don’t let Hamas use you! Don’t put yourselves in danger for nothing. You deserve a better future than what Hamas has planned! You deserve more than a reality of violence, incitement and terrorism."
Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, IDF Arabic spokesperson

"[The protests mark the beginning of the Palestinians’ return to] all of Palestine."
"We are here to declare today that our people will not agree to keep the ‘right of return’ only as a slogan."
Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (C) shouts slogans and flashes the victory gesture as he takes part in a tent city protest near the Gaza border on March 30, 2018 to commemorate Land Day. (AFP PHOTO / Mohammed ABED)

The Israel Defence Forces, performing the function for which it was formed, is defending its borders along the Gaza coastal strip from penetration by Gazan Palestinians incited to 'protest' Palestinian-style by rioting and acting as human shields and coerced, manipulated civilians, giving cover to the 'militants' among them who throw Molotov cocktails and rocks at Israeli troops while rolling burning tires toward the barriers that restrain them from infiltrating the Israeli border.

There are casualties in numbers; an estimated 17 dead with hundreds wounded; numbers given by the Islamist jihadi group Hamas, which Israel is unable for obvious reasons to verify, but the IDF does know that among those dead are members of the Hamas fighting forces. This is Hamas doing what it does best; combatively and rhetorically challenging Israel, to provoke its forces to respond with the kind of force that results in casualties among civilians to bring censure to Israel by the watching international community.

The people of Gaza are fed an unvarying diet of propagandist hatred against Israel, to ensure they view the Jewish State as an impediment to their own strictured prosperity by denying them all that they have been taught since childhood to expect from life; above all, that the prosperity on which Israel is based is the Gazans' own heritage. And that only if they return to those places where those originally from areas in what is now Israel, a good life would be restored to them; the presence of the Jews preventing them from achieving their destiny.

That the terrorist group dedicated to vanquishing the IDF and destroying the State of Israel, which dominates their daily life with actions and activities focused on that goal, ignoring the purpose of a responsible government to provide the template of infrastructure for the delivery of social support to the governed, is what has impoverished the people of Gaza bypasses them. For the lifetime of the oldest among them the international community has been providing funding and material support which their leaders have waylaid to fulfill their own designs.

The desperation of indigent life in Gaza contrasts sharply with the wealth acquired by their leaders, by the sidelining of material support for the population toward Hamas projects, both costly in materials and upkeep and purposeless for the well-being of the subjugated held in thrall to the Hamas version of 'justice' seeking to destroy a nation, and enabling in the process tribal-religious conquest and a restoration of Arab 'honour'.

Hamas has enjoined Gazan Palestinians to march on Israel's border and to continue their barrage of protests and violence for six weeks until the day of Palestinian mourning and Israeli celebration is reached; for the former the Naqba, for the latter the establishment of the State of Israel. Persuading an estimated 20,000 Palestinians to march on the border throwing stones, firebombs and rolling burning tires toward troops on the opposite side. Sending children into the fray and toward danger; a tactic beloved by Hamas.

The "right of return" insisting that millions of the progeny of the original 70,000 Palestinians who fled, overwhelm Israel, as simply another vehicle of destruction.

Rising unemployment, miserable poverty, lack of power, and questions about the availability of potable water all make life intolerable in the Gaza Strip. Israel has done what it too does best; warning that it intended to make use of live ammunition, and scattering leaflets explaining that to come within 300 metres of the fence is to court direct danger. In response to which some of the Gazan civilians are indifferent, claiming their lives are so dire, death would be a relief.

Not far from the border where protesting Gazans in family groups assemble, there is a different atmosphere, one of gaiety and celebration with family picnics, with stalls erected to sell ice cream, smoothies, nuts and sandwiches. Those gathered there seemingly unperturbed as ambulances screech beyond them carrying injured, and even while drones drop tear gas canisters. 

"We are here to say we want to return to our land", 65-year-old Suheila Abu Rish said of her family displaced from Ashdod 50 kilometres up the coast, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

A war where Arab armies coalesced after persuading Palestinians they could soon return, once the Jews had been torn away from the land, vanquished and bleeding, to surrender their new state, returned to Arab rule. This was before Suheila Abu Rish's birth; it occurred 80 years ago, but the fallacy of return is kept alive and burning in the consciousness of a people whom other Arab states never had any intention of welcoming as citizens.

As Jews embark on their annual celebration of Passover, their release from tyranny and renewed pledge as a people exiled from their traditional heritage landscape, the symbolism and rage of Arab displacement exemplifies the entitlement of a religion which had not existed until a thousand years later and a people for whom the land was foreign, to now claim it as their birthright. Even so, there is no coordination or singleness of purpose to benefit Palestinians between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

No reconciliation possible between the West Bank and Gazan Palestinians with their leaders planning to demolish one another's leadership rights and lives. The latest efforts at peace between them destroyed when Hamas launched a bomb to kill the PA prime minister and intelligence chief in a convoy on a road in Gaza. Typically, the Palestinians choosing lethal violence to settle matters of disagreement and restore tribal 'honour'.

Palestinian demonstrators face IDF soldiers near the fence in the northern Gaza Strip, March 30, 2018. JACK GUEZ/ AFP

Hamas announced on Saturday that five members of its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, were among 16 Gazans they said  were killed on Friday along the security fence with Israel, claiming those killed were taking part "in popular events side-by-side with their people". Maj.Gen.Eyal Zamir of IDF's Southern Command spoke of Hamas planning attacks under the shield of demonstrations: "We recommend to civilians not to come near [the fence], and warn Hamas that it is responsible for everything that happens in the Gaza Strip with all its consequences." 

For their part, and unsurprisingly, Egypt, Jordan and the Arab League have condemned what they term 'excessive use of force' against demonstrators on Israel's part, while the organizers of the march have appealed to the United Nations and Arab League to establish an international commission of inquiry to investigate their charges of Israel's excessive force against Palestinian demonstrators. A well-orchestrated and familiar choreograph that will ensure further censure of Israel by the general assembly of the UN.