The demonstrations along the Israel–Gaza border dubbed the ‘Great March of Return’ are a calculated and desperate propaganda move, largely organised and funded by Hamas alongside other terrorist organisations.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, is designated in part or entirely a terrorist organisation by the United States, the European Union and Australia. It’s using the campaign to respond to its own international isolation, recent Arab–Israeli rapprochement and more overt American support for Israel’s position, such as the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
This ‘march’—a series of demonstrations that began on 30 March and that are intended to continue until mid-May—is neither a grassroots campaign against ‘occupation’ nor a demand for amelioration of the admittedly difficult living conditions in Gaza, as some have implied. It’s also certainly not ‘a rebuke aimed at Hamas’, as Mohammed Ayoob said in his 3 April article, ‘Gaza points the way to Palestine’s future’. Hamas is authoritarian and forbids independent political actions in Gaza—and senior Hamas figures have been both leading the protests and organising them to ensure they occur.
Ayoob is correct that the protests are a ‘rejection of the two-state solution’. That’s Hamas’ position, and Hamas is the leading force behind the protests.
The demonstrations are explicitly about championing the ‘right of return’—a legally baseless demand that descendants of refugees from the 1948 war return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. While a key part of Palestinian discourse, the right of return is simply a euphemism for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state by demographic means—an effort to reverse the outcome of the 1948 War and turn all of Israel into an Arab-dominated state called Palestine.
Read the article by Tzvi Fleischer in The Strategist.