The experience of Gazans over the past fifty-two weeks has been another grim reminder of how easily popular mobilization is crushed and how staggering the cost can be, with lethal force unleashed on Palestinian civilian demonstrators. What thus started as a social movement with genuine grassroots support in Gaza, the Great March of Return, one year later risks being subsumed into the nihilistic closed-loop system of episodic belligerence that characterizes relations between Israel and Hamas. Yet the rightward trajectory of Israel’s politics and the growing consensus behind Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank are unwittingly beginning to transform Palestinians, formerly fragmented into territorial and political silos, into a single collective entity facing different aspects of the same oppressive power: an Israeli state that discriminates in favor of Jews over Palestinians across the entire land.
Source : One Year of Gaza Protests. A New Era of Palestinian Struggle?
