The Popular Committee Against the Siege organised the demonstration with the aim of putting pressure on Israel to resume the flow of fuel, food and building materials into the blockaded Strip and restore the electricity supply to previous levels.

Fifty thousand were expected to turn up and form a 42-kilometer human chain stretching from one end of the Strip to the other. Only 5,000 attended.

Most Palestinians do not believe peaceful protest works with Israel.

Israel warned the demonstrators that they would be shot if they attempt to breach the fence which surrounds the Gaza Strip and deployed 6,500 troops and artillery pieces along its side of the fence.

Israel fears a repeat of the January 23rd storming of the southern border between Gaza and Egypt. During the 11 days the border remained open, 700,000 Palestinians crossed into Egypt and shopped for essential goods barred from the Strip by Israel.

Monday’s peaceful rally was a rare event.  During more than 120 years of Palestinian-Israeli confrontation and conflict, there was only a short period when Palestinians attempted to use Gandhian strategies and tactics to secure their objectives.

This was in the early months of the first Intifada (1987-93) when the leadership organised mass demonstrations to call for an end of the Israeli occupation and the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Confrontation

Instead of addressing the reasons for Palestinian protest, the Israelis confronted demonstrators with heavily armed troops, armoured vehicles, live fire, tear gas and percussion grenades.

The then Israeli Defence Minister Yitzak Rabin ordered his troops to beat Palestinians and break their arms and legs.  While Palestinian men and women took punishment without retaliating, youths responded by throwing stones, causing the rising to be called the “Intifada of the Stones”.

Gandhian strategies

During an interview more than a decade ago with Faisal Husseini, a leader of the Intifada of the Stones, the Deccan Herald asked why Palestinians do not strictly follow Gandhian strategies. He replied: “We have no Gandhi. We are not Indians. We have a different history and culture. Our enemy is not Britain but Israel” which can do whatever it pleases without incurring the wrath of its own citizens or the international community.
His assessment is borne out every Friday when Palestinians and Israeli leftists peacefully protesting Israel’s West Bank wall are viciously attacked by Israeli troops. Before Monday’s event began, Israeli airstrikes killed at least four Gazans, bringing the toll since the resumption of negotiations to 190, and one Israeli boy was wounded by a rocket fired at the town of Sderot.