Protests on Gaza’s border with Israel turn deadly

THEY ran up the hill to burn tyres or cut the coils of barbed wire that mark the start of Israel’s frontier with Gaza. They came down on stretchers, bleeding from leg wounds: seven the first hour, nine the next. A westerly wind blew acrid smoke into Israel. Tear-gas canisters whizzed overhead into Gaza while kites sailed out, dangling cans of burning fuel meant to ignite the farms across the fence. Sniper rifles cracked, men shouted, ambulances blared.

Such was the scene at Malaka, in northeastern Gaza, and at points all along the armistice line with Israel. This week is the climax of two months of protests by the strip’s 2m residents. Monday was the bloodiest day yet. By mid-afternoon Israeli soldiers had killed more than 50 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, the highest single-day toll since the Gaza-Israel war of 2014. Around 2,000 others were hurt.

Palestinians call it the “Great Return March”, an effort to go back to their historic lands (70% of Gazans are refugees or their descendants) in modern-day Israel. In fact, few tried to return. There was no mass attempt to storm the fence. Most people hung well back in fields and dusty lots, where vendors sold sandwiches and soft drinks. “People came to watch other people,” joked one man, himself only watching.

Though it has a reputation as a war zone, Gaza is more often a place of grinding boredom. Most of its people cannot leave the 365-square-kilometre enclave because of Israeli and Egyptian blockades. The Rafah crossing with Egypt was open for just 17 days in the first four months of this year. Israel tightly controls the movement of goods and people over two crossings, at Erez and Kerem Shalom. There is little work—44% are unemployed—and little to do in crowded, impoverished cities. Trapped inside, Gazans lurch from one crisis to the next. The latest is self-inflicted: during a protest on Friday they torched their own gas terminal, cutting the supply from Israel. Distributors have rationed what remains. Families wonder how they will cook during Ramadan, which starts this week.

Despair brought Mujahid Abu Shuayb to a protest last month. His story is a familiar one. Last year he lost his job at a marble factory. He cannot afford to start a family. “I was bored and this was something new in Gaza,” he says. Now Mr Abu Shuayb, 30, is in a hospital bed watching his leg swell and blacken from necrosis, the result of being shot. Doctors expect to amputate it this week. A better hospital could probably save it—but he cannot get permission to cross into Israel for treatment.

Most businesses were closed in support of the protests. In the few cafés that stayed open, patrons watched a surreal split screen on television: on one side, blood and smoke; on the other, well-dressed diplomats at the official opening of the new American embassy in Jerusalem. Donald Trump, the American president, defied decades of precedent in December and recognised the contested city as Israel’s capital. It was a diplomatic coup for Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and for the entire Israeli right, which insists that Jerusalem will never be divided in a peace agreement, should there ever be one.

Mr Trump scoffed at experts who said the move would ignite the region. He was right. There was no mass unrest in the Arab world, not even in the occupied West Bank—only in Gaza. A local activist dreamed up the protests, but Hamas, the militant Islamist group that runs Gaza, quickly co-opted them. It sent mass text messages urging Gazans to attend and organised free buses to bring them to the frontier. “There is a wild tiger that was besieged and starved through 11 years, and now it has been set free,” says Yahya Sinwar, the group’s second-in-command.

But some Hamas leaders fear even they cannot control the tiger. The group’s own cadres are angry that Hamas has not tried to avenge weeks of bloodshed. On a radio station run by Islamic Jihad, a rival militant group, hosts urged their comrades to retaliate. Israeli jets carried out at least one airstrike against a Hamas outpost. An army spokesman threatened more if the protests continued—which they will. A larger one is planned for Tuesday.

Update (May 15th, 2018): This piece has been amended to reflect a higher death toll.