Picture by Ashraf Amra/apaimages. All rights reserved.In 2015, a Guardian editorial said that “The right of assembly in a public place is truly one of the cornerstones of liberty – a right to bear witness and bring peaceful pressure to bear on rulers and the public in support of a cause”.
Now, consider the carnage at Gaza’s border with Israel where, on 30 March, tens of thousands of men, women and children joined the ‘Great March of Return’, a six-week protest to culminate with the anniversary of the Nakba (Catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.
The ‘Great March of Return’ began on the anniversary of ‘Land Day’ when six Palestinians were killed in 1976 while protesting the confiscation of large tracts of their land. That injustice has been compounded by another on a greater scale with 39 Palestinians killed to date and 4,000 injured as Israeli deployed snipers used live fire on unarmed protesters.
