{"id":110369,"date":"2018-05-07T12:01:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T11:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=110369"},"modified":"2018-05-02T10:51:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T09:51:33","slug":"the-latest-gaza-massacre-there-is-no-better-life-but-for-dead-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/05\/the-latest-gaza-massacre-there-is-no-better-life-but-for-dead-people\/","title":{"rendered":"The Latest Gaza Massacre: \u2018There Is No Better Life but for Dead People\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past month, Israel has slaughtered almost 50 unarmed Palestinians protesting the theft of their land and the oppression under which they live.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

An unarmed Palestinian protestor is gunned down by Israeli snipers.<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Apr 2018 – <\/em>Good Friday for Christians, the beginning of Passover for Jews, the \u2018Land Day\u2019 for Palestinians: On March 30, a bloodshed descended upon Gaza which the Mediterranean enclave had not experienced since the end of the last major war in the summer of 2014<\/a>. At the kick-off of a multi-weeks protest campaign against the longest military occupation in the world, 18 people were killed by Israeli security forces, hundreds more seriously injured. The total number has risen to 45 people killed and more than 6,000 wounded in the last five weeks of protests.<\/p>\n

Gaza will soon be uninhabitable<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2015, the United Nations announced in a ground-breaking report that with ongoing developments, the Gaza Strip would literally become uninhabitable<\/a> by 2020. After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the following year Hamas won the parliamentary elections. Israel established a comprehensive blockade that hermetically sealed off the air, sea and land routes of the tiny stretch of coastline.<\/p>\n

Since then, the Egyptian government has been cooperating with the Israeli government in the crippling blockade. As a result, the local economy finally collapsed. With over 40 per cent, Gaza has the highest unemployment rate in the world<\/a>. All movement of goods is controlled and maximally limited by the Israeli government. So is any movement of persons. The approximately two million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are literally imprisoned on an area less than 4 per cent the size of Melbourne.<\/p>\n

Add to this the periodic bombing raids against Gaza. According to the Israeli government\u2019s narrative, they are a response to shelling from within Gaza. The weapons are usually home-made rockets that cause property damage only in exceptional cases, let alone result in human casualties.<\/p>\n

Since the end of the Second Intifada in 2005 alone, there have been three full-blown wars in Gaza, in addition to many small and medium-sized operations carried out by the Israeli military.<\/p>\n

In the 51-day bombing of 2014<\/a>, 2,251 Palestinians were killed, including 1,462 civilians. More than 11,000 were injured, and more than 200,000 people were rendered homeless by systematic home demolitions. By contrast, 69 Israelis were killed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Palestinians search through the rubble of their destroyed homes hit by Israeli strikes in the northern Gaza Strip, during the 2014 assault.
(IMAGE: UN Photo\/Shareef Sarhan, Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

Furthermore, there are systematic bombings of civilian targets in Gaza, such as schools, mosques, public squares, as well as residential and hospital buildings. The only airport was destroyed in 2001, and the only power plant was destroyed in 2014 on top of 360 industrial plants<\/a> and tens of thousands of acres of croplands.<\/p>\n

Officially, the Israeli bombing campaigns are aimed at disarming and weakening Hamas, but they should instead be understood as a war against the Palestinian economy and the Gaza Strip, and its population in their entirety.<\/p>\n

Gaza is dominated by Hamas on one side, and the hermetic blockade and periodic wars on the other side. It is crucial to understand this structural violence, this hostile environment that reigns in Gaza because otherwise it is impossible to grasp the recent events even to the least extent.<\/p>\n

70 years of independence \u2013 70 years of Nakba<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1976, the Israeli government in Galilee, northern Israel, launched a massive wave of confiscation of Arab lands with the intention of incorporating it into Jewish communities, resulting in a general strike and six people killed by Israeli security forces. With \u2018Land Day\u2019 held every year on March 30, Palestinians at home and abroad commemorate this historical event and the ongoing daily land grab by the state of Israel.<\/p>\n

And so it was in 2018. Hamas and many other organizations called for peaceful demonstrations on \u2018Land Day\u2019 in Gaza. Tent camps were set up on the border with Israel, initiating a six-week protest campaign with the aim of bringing the daily suffering of the Gazans to the world consciousness.<\/p>\n

The protest will end with on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, mourned by the Palestinians as an equally historic day each year. Because what is one\u2019s Independence Day, is the other\u2019s \u201cNakba\u201d (Arabic for \u201ccatastrophe\u201d): the violent expulsion and killing of around 750,000 Palestinians by Jewish militias in 1948.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A Gazan is carried away after being sniped by Israeli soldiers on March 30.<\/p><\/div>\n

The protests on 30 March, to which around 30,000 people gathered in Gaza near the border fence to Israel, were largely peaceful and often resembled public festivals, with free food, water and WiFi. However, larger groups of people also moved closer to the border fence.<\/p>\n

Teenagers threw Molotov cocktails and fired stones from sling shots. Tires have been set on fire and rolled towards the border. What the Israeli military claimed to be an attack on its security infrastructure must be understood from the Palestinian point of view as a smokescreen to protect them from Israeli sharpshooters.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military then fired tear gas grenades at the demonstrators. Occasional artillery and even tank fire<\/a> were reported, and snipers positioned around the fence opened fire.<\/p>\n

\u00a0March 30 Was a Massacre<\/strong><\/h2>\n

At the end of the day, 17 Palestinians were killed<\/a>. The Israeli military claims it fired exclusively at the \u201cmain instigators<\/a>\u201d of the protests but identifies only 10 of the dead<\/a> as members of terrorist groups, while Hamas stated that five of the dead<\/a> were part of their armed wing.<\/p>\n

Among the dead were teenagers and men who undoubtedly belonged to no armed organization. A farmer was killed by artillery fire while working on his field. An unarmed youngster was killed while smoking a cigarette by a shot to his head. \u201cThere is no future for the youth, it was destroyed, they wanted just a better life. Unfortunately there is no better life but for dead people,\u201d the father of the slain teenager described<\/a> the desperate situation in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch cites<\/a> figures from the Ministry of Health in Gaza City, which claims that 1,415 people were injured, 758 of whom by live ammunition. Most of the others were injured by rubber bullets and tear gas.<\/p>\n

Just two days before the massacre, Gadi Eizenkot, the Israeli military\u2019s supreme commander, announced<\/a> he had \u201cdeployed more than 100 sharpshooters\u201d to the Gaza border and explicitly gave them a shoot-to-kill order if individuals approached the border fence. The following day, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu\u2019s office posted on Twitter a video<\/a> of an unarmed, motionless Palestinian shot in the leg with the caption in Arabic, \u201cThis is the least that anyone who tries to cross the security fence between Gaza and Israel will face.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cmore than 100 sharpshooters\u201d finally made the threats of their superiors come true. Videos spread like wildfire on the internet, showing a group of youngsters shot while praying<\/a>, an empty-handed man<\/a> being shot walking toward the border, several teenagers shot while lying on the ground<\/a>, a woman shot<\/a> while waiving a Palestinian flag, a juvenile shot in the back running in the opposite direction of the border fence<\/a>, or a famous soccer player shot in the knee<\/a> while standing isolated filming himself.<\/p>\n

\n

Target practice on humans!!! Israeli occupation forces used live bullets against Palestinian protesters near the borders of Gaza pic.twitter.com\/Q42WMuFJqO<\/a><\/p>\n

— Robert Martin \ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf8 (@Robert_Martin72) December 23, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n