March 27, 2018•Update: March 27, 2018
GAZA CITY, Palestine
Palestinian Muslim scholars in the Gaza Strip staged a rally on Tuesday to show their support for mass demonstrations -- dubbed the "Great Return March" -- slated for Friday.
Tuesday’s rally, organized by Gaza’s Religious Affairs Ministry and the Association of Palestinian Scholars, an NGO, was intended to drum up support for Friday’s mass demonstration during which Gazans plan to converge on the Gaza-Israel border.
“We call on the Palestinian people to take part in the upcoming ‘Return’ march with a view to breaking the decade-long siege of Gaza,” association member Saber Ahmed said on the rally’s sidelines.
“Participation in the Friday march is a patriotic -- and humanitarian -- obligation,” he said.
He also stressed the planned demonstration’s “peaceful” nature, asserting: “We have no plans to confront the [Israeli] enemy.”
Ahmed also called on Muslim scholars around the world to “show their support for the Palestinian people and their legitimate demands”.
He went on to urge Arab and Muslim institutions to support the planned Friday march, thus reaffirming the Palestinians’ right to return to their homes in historical Palestine.
All major Palestinian factions have endorsed the planned march, during which demonstrators will converge en masse on the Gaza Strip's roughly 45-kilometer-long eastern border with Israel.
Since 2007, the Hamas-run Gaza Strip has groaned under a crippling Israeli/Egyptian blockade that has largely destroyed the enclave's economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of basic commodities.
Reporting by Nour Abu Aisha; Writing by Ali Abo Rezeg
