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West
Bank Rises, Tens Of Thousands Join Largest March Since Last Intifada
Amid
the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, the West Bank has risen.
Tens
of thousands of Palestinians marched with President Mahmoud Abbas's
Fatah movement from the West Bank city of Ramallah toward Jerusalem
to protest Israel's war on Hamas in Gaza, which has claimed the lives
of nearly 800 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
The
protest appears to be the largest mass demonstration since the 1980s.
The uprising promises to be different from previous intifadas, partly
because it comes in the wake of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street
and other mass protest movements around the globe. But the way in
which the world engages with protest has also evolved, due to the
advent of Twitter and cell phone video, which can focus attention on
raw conflict in a way that bypasses the mainstream media. Today's
march is being live tweeted at the hashtag #48kMarch.
Reuters
reported that protests also broke out in Jerusalem itself, near the
old walled city and outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Haaretz
reported that several protesters have already been killed by Israeli
military forces. Reuters quoted hospital officials saying one person
had been killed and three others were in critical condition and on
life support. Some 200 protesters were injured, a hospital doctor
told the news service.
Heather
Hurlburt, a national security fellow at Human Rights First, said that
Palestinian civil society and non-violence activists have been
talking about massive, peaceful marches as a protest tactic since the
Arab Spring in 2011. "No one in Israel or the West has much
excuse to be surprised or unprepared for this tactic. They've had
years to think about how to handle it peacefully," Hurlburt told
HuffPost..
Israel
captured the West Bank, along with Gaza, during a 1967 war.
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