Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of downtown Gaza City this Thursday to protest against Israel’s plans to take the capital of the Strip, call for an end to the war, and show their rejection of having to relocate. “We (protest) to express our rejection of the occupation of Gaza and the displacements. We don’t want to be sent to Egypt or another country,” assures EFE Mahmud Salim Abdelkarim, a 19-year-old Gazan displaced to the capital from the Jabalia refugee camp, in the north, an area that Israel has almost completely occupied. IMAGES: AHMAD AWAD. CONTAINS STATEMENTS FROM:
- MAHMUD SALIM ABDELKARIM, 19 YEARS OLD, FROM JABALIA CAMP.
- “(We protest) to express our rejection of the occupation of Gaza, the displacements, and we refuse to be settled in Egypt or another country, and here I carry the photo of my cousin who died (as a martyr) two weeks ago while looking for food in Zikim and was 13 years old. Any Palestinian has the right to education, food, and healthcare, and any other right that a Western person has, an Arab person deserves it, and in particular the oppressed Palestinian.”
- “This is a despicable being, it is pure evil. He deserves nothing more than God’s punishment. He is a true war criminal who kills innocent children
- “We are not going to leave Gaza but to heaven. The first time we left, we suffered calamities and injustices. Now we will not leave Gaza no matter what, because leaving means destruction and death. Between dying there or here, we prefer to die here, in northern Gaza. They destroyed my house, killed all my family and friends, and we were left alone in the street.”
- MAHMUD ABU NADA, PROTESTER.
- “We are now in Saraya Square because we want to get our message across to the whole world and to all lovers of peace, and the Arab and Islamic community. We shout and say: stop the war against Gaza, stop the war against our children, our women and our elderly.”
- “After two years of massacres and assassinations, we were surprised that the enemy, instead of retreating in the face of what it has done in Gaza and in the face of global silence and US support, has instead received encouragement to use the most brutal methods of murder in Gaza. The time has come to shout to the world: Where are they? Why this silence?”
- “The Gazan people have come to the firm conviction that any solution to the aggression and the war passes through the unity of the word. Today the people went out, with all their sectors and forces and unions and unions to say: Enough! and to reaffirm before the world that we are a people who deserve to live.”
- “It is a war against the Palestinian people who remain firm in their land, confident in their nation. There are no excuses for the occupation, the occupation fabricates pretexts to carry out these atrocities.”
- “Netanyahu missed a historic opportunity, and with it he lost his own people, he lost the world and he lost the lovers of peace. This time, if he underestimates THE POSITION OF THE ARAB WORLD, he will also lose HIS SUPPORT in the neighboring countries, and the consequences will be disastrous for him and for his party.”
