Gaza has made its choice: It will continue to resist

A wounded Palestinian boy is evacuated during a protest at the Israel-Gaza fence, in the southern Gaza Strip on May 3, 2019. (photo: Reuters / Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)
Weekly peaceful protesters continue to resist settler-colonial occupation.

By Haidar Eid | Al Jazeera | May 6, 2019

What is happening in Gaza is incremental genocide, not a ‘security operation’.

We have spent sleepless nights under Israeli bombs before – in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2018. On Saturday, apartheid Israel decided to launch yet another murderous campaign of bombardment against one of the most densely populated areas on earth.

Again, the victims were children and women. Fourteen-month-old Palestinian toddler, Siba Abu Arrar, was killed along with her pregnant aunt, Falastine, who succumbed to her wounds shortly after American-made, Israeli warplanes targeted their home in Zeitoun neighbourhood.

On Friday, like all the previous 57 Fridays, I joined thousands of peaceful protesters at the eastern fence of the Gaza concentration camp, where Israeli snipers shot and killed four Palestinians and injured 51, including children. One of those killed was 19-year-old Raed Abu Teir, who was walking on crutches, having been injured during previous protests.

Calls for a ceasefire were made as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to launch “massive strikes” in the hope of killing the largest possible number of Palestinians by targeting residential areas.

As with previous truce initiatives, this time once again Israel and the Palestinians – the oppressor and the oppressed – were equated as “two sides to a conflict” and what constitutes legitimate resistance under international law was put on the same level as a brutal illegal occupation. The fact that Israel has an actual army, disproportionately bigger firepower and is an occupier was neglected as usual, and so was the stark difference in the death toll: 24 Palestinians and four Israelis.

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