2nd November 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

(Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
Israeli
forces fired tear gas to disperse a march in the “buffer zone” east of
Gaza City, by the Nahal Oz checkpoint, on Friday afternoon.
The
demonstration, which began at Shujaya square in the city after Friday
prayers, was organized by the Intifada Youth Coalition to protest
today’s anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
In the 2 November
1917 letter, Arthur James Balfour, foreign secretary of the United
Kingdom, then occupying Palestine, told Walter Rothschild, a leader in
the British Zionist movement, that the British government “view[ed] with
favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the
achievement of this object.”

(Photo by Joe Catron)
“We
went to the buffer zone to tell the occupation that this date is
unforgettable after 96 years,” said Majed Abusalama, a Coalition
spokesman.
“Every generation that comes will remember it again,
and remember every Israeli crime against unarmed Palestinians. Yes, it
is our land, the buffer zone is for Palestinians, and we should farm
it.”
Demonstrators overcome by the effects of tear gas were
treated by Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances waiting outside
the “buffer zone.”

(Photo by Joe Catron)
“The
Israeli response to our unarmed protest appeared from the start, when
we were about 800 meters away from the fence,” Abusalama said. “They
shot tear gas directly at us.”
Protesters kept trying to reach the
checkpoint, which Israel closed at the beginning of 2010, retreating
only after several hours of tear-gas fire.
The event followed a
27 September march
organized by the Coalition to commemorate the thirteenth anniversary of
the second Intifada and protest Israeli incursions into the al-Aqsa
mosque in occupied east Jerusalem.
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Joe Catron)
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- (Photo by Joe Catron)
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- (Photo by Joe Catron)
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- (Photo by Joe Catron)
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- (Photo by Joe Catron)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
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- (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)