THE aims of the Great March of Return protests, which began in Gaza on March 30 2018 are to put an end to the suffocating Israeli siege and to implement the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their homes and towns in historic Palestine 70 years ago.

But there is much more to the March of Return than a few demands, especially bearing in mind the high human cost already associated with it — according to Gaza’s ministry of health, over 250 people have been killed and 6,500 wounded, including children, medics and journalists.

Aside from the disproportionately covered “flaming kites” and youth symbolically cutting through the metal fences used to besieged them for many years, the march has been largely non-violent.

Despite this, Israel has killed and maimed protesters with impunity.

A UN human rights commission of inquiry said last month that Israel may have committed war crimes against protesters which resulted in the killing of 189 Palestinians within the period March 30 and December 31 2018.

As reported by BBC online, the investigators concluded that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at children, medics and journalists, even though they were clearly recognisable as such.”

Many in the media, however, still do not understand what the Great March of Return really means for Palestinians.

A cynically titled report in the Washington Post attempted to offer an answer. The article, “Gazans have paid in blood for a year of protests. Now many wonder what it was for,” selectively quoted wounded Palestinians who supposedly feel that their sacrifices were in vain.

Aside from providing the Israeli military with a platform to blame the Hamas movement for the year-long march, the long report ended with these two quotes: the March of Return “achieved nothing,” according to one injured Palestinian, and “The only thing I can find is that it made people pay attention,” said another.  

Had the Washington Post paid attention, it would have realised that the mood among Palestinians is neither cynical nor despairing.

It should have asked that if the march “achieved nothing,” why were Gazans still protesting and the popular and the inclusive nature of the march has not been compromised?   

“The Right of Return is more than a political position,” said Sabreen al-Najjar, the mother of young Palestinian medic, Razan, who, on June 1 2018, was fatally shot by the Israeli army while trying to help wounded Palestinian protesters.

It is “more than a principle: wrapped up in it, and reflected in literature and art and music, is the essence of what it means to be Palestinian. It is in our blood,” she added.

Indeed, what is the Great March of Return but a people attempting to reclaim their role and be recognised and heard in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine?

What is largely missing from the discussion on Gaza is the collective psychology behind this kind of mobilisation, and why it is essential for hundreds of thousands of besieged people to rediscover their power and understand their true position, not as hapless victims, but as agents of change in their society.

The narrow reading, or the misrepresentation of the March of Return, speaks volumes about the overall underestimation of the role of the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom, justice and national liberation, lasting a century.

The story of Palestine is the story of the Palestinian people, for they are the victims of oppression and the main channel of resistance, starting with the Nakba — the creation of Israel on the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages in 1948.

Had they not resisted, their story would have concluded then, and they, too, would have disappeared.

Those who admonish Palestinian resistance or, like the Post, fail to understand the underlying value of popular movement and sacrifices, have little understanding of the psychological ramifications of resistance — the sense of collective empowerment and hope which spreads among the people.

In his introduction to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Jean-Paul Sartre describes resistance as a process through which “a man is recreating himself.”

For 70 years, Palestinians have embarked on that journey of such recreation of the self.

They have resisted and their resistance in all of its forms has moulded a sense of collective unity, despite the numerous divisions that were created among the people.

The signing of the Oslo accord in 1993 shattered the relative cohesiveness of the Palestinian discourse, thus weakening and dividing the Palestinian people.

It proved a worthless exercise in empty cliches, aimed at sustaining US political dominance in Palestine as well as in the rest of the Middle East.

In the Israeli zionist narrative, Palestinians are depicted as drifting lunatics, an inconvenience that hinders the path of progress — a description that regularly defined the relationship between every Western colonial power and the colonised, resisting natives.

Within some Israeli political and academic circles, Palestinians merely “existed” to be “cleansed,” to make room for a different, more deserving people.

From the zionist perspective, the “existence” of the native people is meant to be temporary. “We must expel Arabs and take their place,” wrote Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion.

Assigning the roles of dislocated, disinherited and nomadic to the Palestinian people, without consideration for the ethical and political implications of such a perception, has erroneously presented Palestinians as a docile and submissive.

Hence, it is imperative that we develop a clearer understanding of the layered meanings behind the Great March of Return. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza did not risk life and limb over the last year simply because they required urgent medicines and food supplies.

Palestinians did so because they understand their own centrality in this struggle. Their protests are a collective statement, a cry for justice, an ultimate reclamation of their narrative as a people — still standing, still powerful and still hopeful after 70 years of Nakba, 50 years of military occupation and 12 years of unrelenting siege.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.