Orchestrating what were supposed to be “peaceful” protests, Hamas organized some 30,000 demonstrators to camp out on the Israeli border and protest miserable conditions in the Gaza Strip. When Hamas evicted the Palestinian Authority June 14, 2007 from Gaza, the militant group promised to improve living conditions, only to make things worse July 9, 2014 fighting a bloody war with Israel, practically destroying what’s left of Gaza’s crumbling infrastructure. Hamas has a penchant for taking rich Gulf-state donors cash and squandering it on tunnel-building and rockets. When Hamas talks about peaceful protests, they’re talking about showing beleaguered Gazans promised land in Israel. Israel is considered by most metrics the most prosperous and free country in the Middle East. When Israel declared independence June 14, 1948, it was a wasteland much like most of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians talk about peaceful protests but for the last seventy years since Israeli declared its independents and the received U.N. statehood May 11, 1949, they’ve fought one terrorist war after another to return the land given to Israel by the British in 1948. Once ruled by the Ottoman Empire for 500 years until Jan. 21, 1920, when the Treaty of Versailles ended WW I and broke up the Ottoman Empire, the Holy Land was never sovereign territory of local Arabs. Yet Palestinians claim the former British Mandate of Palestine and the lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War as Palestinian lands. When it fact, the lands were captured from Egypt, Jordan and Syria. “We want to return to our lands without bloodshed or bombs,” said Palestinian rights group Adalah. Returning to lands in the British Mandate and lands captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War doesn’t sound peaceful.
Amassing 30.000 Palestinians to hurl stones and Molotov Cocktails across the Israeli border fence constitutes a breach of Israeli national security. “Well done by our soldiers,” said Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, accused to massacring peaceful 17 Palestinian protesters with live ammunition. “I strongly condemn the Israeli government over the inhumane attack,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodgan. Erdogan’s been wiping out the Kurdish population in the once peaceful borderlands in Iraq and Syria. Erdogan’s active war in Syria has massacred the defense-minded Kurds, once the primary U.S.-backed fighting force battling the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. No one wants bloodshed on Gaza’s border with Israel, blaming Israeli for a decades-old blockade. But the Egyptian border, Egypt also blockades Palestinians from their terror war against President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Hamas only amasses protesters on Israel’s Erez border crossing, demanding Israel’s sovereign territory as Palestinian land. Spending much of Hamas’s cash on tunneling into Israel or buying rockets from Iran, Palestinians want Israel’s prosperity but lack the technological and cultural institutions to achieve functional state. Squandering billions in donors’ cash until launching another war with Israel, Hamas finds itself unable to create a functional state in Gaza, rejecting the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. If foreign governments want to stop the bloodshed on the border, they need to keep the demonstrations peaceful away from Israel’s border. There’s no pretense with Hamas about what they want. They want to return to Israel to reclaim land lost during the 1948 War of Independence. Hamas tells demonstrators that they can conquer Israel, until facing live fire by Israeli Defense Forces.
Calling for mass protests on the Great March of Return, Hamas turned the demonstrations into a revolt on the Israeli border, hoping to breach the border fence and stream into Israel. No country—certainly not Israel—wants its sovereignty breached, no matter what the justification by angry protestors. Palestinian rage was stirred when President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital Dec. 6, 2017. Calling the demonstrations on the Erez border “violent riots to camouflage terror,” U.S. representative to the U.N. Walter Miller called out Palestinians for breaching Israel’s border security. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wants an ‘independent and transparent investigation,” on the loss of life and injuries in the border uprising. Hamas calls Israel’s 1948 independence “Nabka” or “catastrophe,” continuing its mission to destroy the Jewish State.
Instead of staging dangerous publicity stunts for Gaza residents, Hamas should join 82-year-old Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to get back to the peace table. Telling Gaza residents that rioting, tunnels and rockets will one day conquer Israel continues the misery of Palestinians seeking improvement in intolerable conditions. Blaming Israel why Hamas rules over a failed state in Gaza does nothing to improve the lives of Gazans. “When I saw the beauty of our stolen lands, the trees and the picturesque nature of it all, I wondered why are we trapped here in a coup,” said campaign organizer Ahamad Abu Artema, looking at today’s Israel as Palestinian land. Before Israeli engineers irrigated the desert, planted trees and developed its collective farming system, Israel was no paradise. If Palestinians want paradise in Gaza or the West Bank, they need to return to the peace table.
