Politic?

Friday Prayers Ramping Up 'Resistance'

“Rioters have attempted to damage and cross the security fence under the cover of smoke from their burning tires. They also attempted to carry out terror attacks and hurl explosive devices and firebombs."
“Our forces prevented breaches [of the fence]."
"Our forces are using riot disposal means and live fire in accordance with the rules of engagement."
Israel Defence Forces

Palestinian protesters burn tires during clashes with Israeli security forces during clashes on the Gaza-Israel border in the southern Gaza Strip on April 6, 2018. (AFP/Said Khatib)

"[The Strip was ready to] explode in the face of the occupation." "[The world should] wait for our great move, when we breach the borders and pray at Al-Aqsa [mosque in Jerusalem]."
"[We are] following in the path of martyr Yasser Arafat in resisting the enemy. [The] conspiracy of besieging the Gaza Strip, with the hope that its residents would revolt against Hamas, has failed."
"They thought that by putting pressure on the Gaza Strip, the masses would revolt against the Palestinian resistance."
"They thought the people would launch an uprising against the tunnels and the rockets and the commandos [Hamas’s military wing]. They thought that if the Gaza Strip is starved, it would give up its principles and would abandon the project of liberation and return."
"[Friday’s demonstrators on the border between Gaza and Israel, the second in the past week], have come out to say that this is the enemy that is besieging us, and that if we explode we will explode in its face."
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar

Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, speaks during a protest east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip on April 6, 2018. (AFP/Said Khatib)

Once again, thousands of Gazan Palestinians came out to demonstrate along the Gaza border. First Friday prayers in the mosques where imams stimulated and motivated Palestinians to heed Koranic dictates to free land consecrated to Islam from the presence of non-Muslims, and to enjoin the faithful to remember their duty to Islamic jihad, both of which represent cardinal values of the Prophet Mohammad's call to obey Allah and do their duty as Muslims, to engage in conquest in the name of Islam, the religion of peace, setting out to bring peace to places of conflict representing anywhere in the world where Islam does not dominate.

Of course, in Israel, Muslims are free to pray in their mosques, so boasting that Gazans and the Hamas terrorist group would soon be praying at Al-Aqsa mosque only means that with the destruction of Israel the terrorists now refused entry will have free reign. When Hamas speaks of the 'occupation' it means, of course, the presence of Israel itself, an insult to Islam which cannot be tolerated. But Sinwar's message resonates mightily with Palestinians who were weaned on hatred of Jews and Israel, and his appearance at one of the demonstrations brought adulation and cries of "We are going to Jerusalem, millions of martyrs".

Protesters from Gaza chanted, waved flags and set fire to piles of tires. They have changed the international conversation to one in which Gaza is portrayed as a prison, with Israel as the jailer. Credit Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

And so, once again, today after prayers an estimated 20,000 Palestinians joined the demonstration, a demonstration meant to emphasize just how catastrophic it is to Arabs that Jews live in a Jewish State on their ancestral geography. That Arabs, Druze and Kurds and Christians also live within that Jewish State with full rights of citizenship, freedom to worship as they please, is of no moment to Hamas for whom Israel will always be an 'apartheid state' because it plays well in their public relations and propaganda aimed at sympathetic Europe.

When Israel's then-prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered the evacuation of all Jews -- soldiers and settlers -- from the Gaza Strip, leaving it entirely to the Palestinians themselves to rule, chaos resulted. Lawlessness and crime was endemic. And then in 2007, Hamas entered Gaza, wresting it from Fatah control, and laid down its iron-fisted theistic rule bringing the order of forced subjugation to Palestinian Gazans, along with poverty and closure when it commenced attacking Israel across the border from Gaza, eventually digging tunnels to infiltrate the border and threaten Jewish communities.

It is Hamas's fanatical charter-driven directive of destroying Israel that has impoverished Gazans, not Israel's existence. The violent threats augmented by rocket attacks and suicide missions so beloved of the martyrdom-complexed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Fatah Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that has mandated the purely defensive 'occupation' of the IDF to keep violence against Jews to an absolute minimum, despite which lone actors incited to violence by the Palestinian Authority still martyr themselves by killing Jews.

In that vein, though most of those Palestinians who came out at the behest of Hamas to register their protests against the existence of Israel and their demands for the 'right of return' alongside their grief at the upcoming 70th anniversary of Israel's creation -- named by Palestinians as the 'catastrophe', or Naqba -- did dedicate themselves to peaceful assembly. But among them were Palestinians burning tires, throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at Israeli soldiers over the border fence. And the IDF responded, as promised, with tear gas and where required, live fire.

Palestinian men collect tires and burn them at the Israel-Gaza border during a protest east of Gaza City, on April 6, 2018. (AFP/Mahmud Hams)

Hamas's calculated provocation, hoping that the Israeli military would end up killing greater numbers of Palestinians beyond the Hamas fighters already 'martyred', plans to persuade Palestinians to continue coming out each Friday until the anniversary date in May, to aggravate the situation still further. They will, promised Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem, dedicate themselves to their "struggle until they achieve their freedom and restore all their lands". The Palestinians' "right to all of the soil of Palestine was absolute and clear", he said.

Any Palestinians who have been wounded while demonstrating can anticipate cash gifts from Hamas in appreciation of their dedication to the cause. "The "March of Return", according to Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, "affirms that our people can't give up one inch of the land of Palestine". Palestinians, he vowed colourfully barbaric, would "eat the livers of those besieging" them. The masses of car tires dumped along the fence were set alight to emit the toxic black cloud that Hamas hoped would enable them to breach the border.

Just watch us, he said. On May 15, the culmination of what began as 'peaceful' demonstrations on March 30, will be so overwhelming in its rage, it will cause Israel to shrink back in fear at the dire consequences.