Clashes Erupt at Gaza Border on ‘Return’ Protest Anniversary

(Bloomberg) -- Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers clashed at the Gaza border on Saturday, the one-year anniversary of Hamas-led protests to draw attention to the territory’s plight.

More than 40,000 protesters joined the rally at its afternoon peak, with two Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces and another 64 injured by live fire, according to Palestinian reports. The army said it was using live fire and riot-dispersal methods to control those hurling grenades and explosives.

Still, the day passed far more quietly than expected. For the first time since the protest campaign began a year ago, hundreds of Hamas security men in orange vests kept demonstrators away from the frontier fence and limited their confrontations with soldiers. That came amid reports of progress by Egyptian mediators to arrange a package of economic incentives from Israel if the border remained peaceful.

The protests demand a return to lands Palestinians left or were expelled from in the 1948 war around Israel’s creation, but their more immediate goal is to refocus attention on the fate of stateless Palestinians.

The anniversary march comes at a sensitive time for both sides, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing a tight April 9 re-election battle in which his restraint in the face of repeated rocket fire from Gaza has drawn criticism. Hamas, meanwhile, has been the target of rare public outrage over wretched conditions in the blockaded coastal strip they have run for 12 years.

The protests’ original goal “was to remind the world of the Palestinians’ legitimate ‘Right of Return’ back to their homes they were forced to leave,” said Jamal Abu Lasheen, a political analyst at Gaza’s Abdulla Hourani Center for Studies and Research. “This goal was neglected and the marches were used to exert pressure on Israel” to improve living conditions, he said.

Blockade

Israel and Egypt have blockaded Gaza since Hamas seized power in 2007, confining 2 million people to a patch of land that’s the third-most densely-populated polity in the world. Towns and cities are marked by neglect and damage from repeated wars pitting the Islamist militants against the Israeli military. Infrastructure is shattered, power is spotty and clean water a luxury.

Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and European Union, has spent tens of millions of dollars on rockets and attack tunnels meant to cross the border into Israel, while almost 80 percent of the population depends on aid.

Conditions worsened two years ago when the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority set out to suffocate Hamas financially and force it to cede control of Gaza. When the border protests began last March as a largely grassroots effort, Hamas quickly took control of them as a useful outlet for popular dissatisfaction.

Earlier this month, Hamas brutally suppressed rare anti-regime protests about living conditions in Gaza, then fired a missile deep into Israel, drawing retaliatory airstrikes that refocused attention on that conflict. As with a March 14 rocket attack on Tel Aviv, Hamas said this week’s launch was an accident.

“Tension with Israel distracts from the outrage with Hamas’s rule,” said Fathi Sabba, a political analyst and president of the Gaza-based Palestinian Institute for Communication and Development. “In times of escalation with Israel, no one criticizes Hamas and all the Palestinians unite against the Israeli aggression.”

Victory Sign

More than 260 Palestinians, including many militants, have been killed in the protest campaign. In recent months, the weekly Friday protests have been augmented by night-time riots in which Hamas-led “confusion units” hurl explosives at soldiers and try to cut through the border fence. Two Israelis have died in the violence and thousands of acres of land have been razed by burning kites and balloons flown over the border from Gaza.

Tensions spiked earlier this week when Gaza militants fired a rocket 100 kilometers (60 miles) into central Israel, flattening a house and injuring seven people. Israel responded with airstrikes that destroyed Hamas military installations and the empty office of the group’s chairman, Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh emerged from hiding several days later, flashing the victory sign amid the rubble.

On Saturday, senior Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar appeared at a rally near the border, saying the coming year of protests “would not be like the last” and threatened more rockets on Tel Aviv.

Israel has reinforced its troop presence along the Gaza border and deployed additional Iron Dome missile-defense systems in case of further escalation. Netanyahu issued a statement Saturday evening praising the army’s preparedness and saying Israel’s determined response had kept the day’s events from getting out of hand.

To contact the reporters on this story: Michael S. Arnold in Tel Aviv at marnold48@bloomberg.net;Saud Abu Ramadan in Jerusalem at sramadan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Riad Hamade at rhamade@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Rene Vollgraaff

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