 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. This March 30th was the first anniversary of the Great March of Return protests in Gaza. Over the past one year, Israeli forces have killed over 200 people who mobilized demanding their right to return, which has been assured by the United Nations. To talk more about these protests, we have with us Professor Haider E. Professor Haider is a member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and is a BDS activist. Hello Professor Haider, thank you for joining us. Hi, thank you for having me. So like we said, it's been one year since the protests began and there have been a number of demonstrations on every single Friday. So could you talk a bit more about the trajectory of the protests over the past one year? What is the factor that has bought so many hundreds of thousands to the streets and to the border every Friday? Yeah, well thank you for having me again. We need to put the Great March of Return within a context. We need to understand that Gaza has been transformed into the largest concentration camp on earth. Now according to mainstream human rights organizations from Amnesty to Human Rights Watch, even Israeli mainstream human rights organizations, Israel has decided to transform the Gaza Strip into the largest open open air prison on earth. You need also to take into consideration that the population of the Gaza Strip amounts to about two million people living in about 360 square kilometers, which makes the Gaza Strip the most densely populated area on earth. But in order to understand why people have decided to demonstrate on the fence, and I refuse to call it a border because it's not an internationally recognized border between the state of Israel and the state of Gaza. Gaza is not a state. Gaza is an area where two million people live, more than 75 percent of whom are refugees entitled to their right of return in accordance with international law and United Nations Resolution 194, which grants them their right of return and compensation. Now people also need to understand that all those refugees, I myself, I am a refugee. My parents, my late parents were refugees who were ethnically cleansed in 1948 from one of the more than 500 villages that were ethnically cleansed back in 1948 by Zionist by Zionist gangs. And this is the main reason why people in the Gaza Strip decided to march on the on the fence separating Gaza from Israel. But also Gaza has been under a hermetic medieval siege imposed imposed on it since 2000 since 2007 when people decided to go to the polling station and vote for the representatives. Well, the problem is that people of Gaza and the West Bank decided to vote against the two state solution against the occupation of Palestine against the façade and the corruption of the Oslo Accords signed back in 1993 between the leadership of the PLO and Israel. And this is the reason they decided to vote against the Fatih organization against the PLO and vote for what they thought at the time would be the alternative to the Oslo Accords. And that's why most people decided to vote for Hamas. And that is the reason why Israel, in cahoot with the reactionary Arab regimes supported by the United States of America, decided to impose this deadly siege which has led so far to the death of more than 2000 innocent people. And between 2008 and 2014 Israel also decided to launch three genocidal wars against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, ultimately leading to the death of more than 4,500 civilians and people in Gaza are fed up. And because they are fed up the international community has done absolutely nothing. The Arab world has done absolutely, absolutely nothing. And they decided to show that it is time for the people on the ground exactly like what happened in South Africa against the apartheid system of South Africa to show that people on the ground want to take power into their own hands and send a strong message to the international community and to Israel that enough is enough. And after 70 years of an ongoing process of ethnic cleansing, we want the international community to intervene and implement international law. So this is basically the reason why people have decided to march. And as you mentioned, this is not specifically a protest of one part. You also written about it or one organization. It's actually a protest where the common people actually have come out on the streets and have moved towards the fence, as you said. Although I suspect there's been a lot of criticism that this is instigated by Hamas and all that, but the situation on the ground is very different. Well, absolutely. You know, I think, you know, when Western media, especially Israeli media actually claim that Hamas is behind this march, this is a claim tainted with racism because it is, you know, it's based on the premises that, you know, Palestinians of Gaza do not have a civil society. And by the way, I mean, by definition, the Great March of Return is a civil society initiative supported by all sectors of civil society. I myself, I am secular and, you know, and I have never supported the religious organization, you know, neither Hamas nor Islamic Jihad. But I insist on going to the fence every single Friday because, yes, I want my right of return to be implemented. But at the same time, you need to understand the leadership of the Great March of Return consists of all political nationalists and Islamist organizations and the representatives of civil society exactly like the leadership of the BDS campaign by Codavis Minnan section, which is another form of popular resistance. But Israel, you know, insists on, you know, it's a propaganda. It's a Zionist propaganda. So Israel insists on, you know, spreading these lies, disseminating these lies that, you know, this is initiated by Hamas. This is initiated by fundamentalists, et cetera, et cetera. In order to justify the reason why Israel has been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. And that is what a United Nations Commission has said actually only last week. And I'm sure you and your audience know this very well. So Hamas is only one, you know, one organization that is supporting the Great March of Return. And one of the more horrible impacts of this, especially in the last one year, has been the impact on infrastructure in Gaza. And as it is, as you mentioned, it's been under siege. And the last one year has been worse. So could you talk a bit more about that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I just told you, I mean, Israel has decided to impose this deadly siege since since 2007, where, you know, 95 percent of our water has become undrinkable. We are getting, you know, how difficult it was for us to have this interview because we needed we needed to organize. And I told you that we don't have electricity and that affects our internet connection, et cetera, et cetera. We, you know, you know, we are getting only four hours of electricity, you know, per day. And then more than 45 percent of our people here in the Gaza Strip are are are unemployed. So 45 percent of unemployment, 46 percent of our kids suffer from malnutrition and actually from anemia. More than 40 is according to World Health Organization, you know, report. And and, you know, what is really, really sad is the impact that this deadly siege is having on our children. You know, I was just reading a report about, you know, 50 percent of our kids are expressing no will to live. I mean, can you imagine that? You know, the courageous Israeli historian and Ilan Papay, the author of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, has made it absolutely clear that what Israel is doing to us amounts to a kind of what he calls incremental genocide. In 2008, 2009, when Israel decided to impose this deadly siege, destroying the infrastructure of Gaza, as you mentioned yourself, Richard Faulk, the ex-U.N. special reporter for human rights in the occupied territories. He told us at the time, and he wrote a piece, by the way. I can't remember where he exactly published it. And he called it a prelude to genocide. But the difference, my friend, is that, you know, this is a slow motion genocide. So two million people, the population of Gaza, are denied freedom of, you know, of movement. And, you know, and I can go on and on, you know, telling you about, you know, the destruction of the infrastructure and the difficulties that we are facing on a daily basis here in Gaza. And one of the key characteristics, especially over the past one year, has been the fact that, and it's also very inspired in fact, that these protests are taking place, even as around the world, we see the neighbor, the neighbors of Palestine, the U.S., Israel, all combining together to suppress the aspirations of the Palestinian people. And this is happening at a rate which is unprecedented, even the idea of the Arab NATO, for instance, and the Trump deal that he's been talking about. So how do the people on the ground actually see the role of these foreign players, so to speak? You know, luckily, you are talking to somebody who spent about five to six years in South Africa. I am a graduate of the University of Johannesburg. And I had all these discussions with those anti-apartheid activists because of the similarities between what happened to South Africa, to blacks of Africans, including Indians, Carolans, Africans, et cetera, et cetera, as a result of the inhumane apartheid system. And I almost, you know, I almost asked them the same question that you are raising right now. They told me, you know, it took the international community more than 30 years to heed our call for BDS, boycott, divestment and sanctions in order to isolate the apartheid system until it complied with international law and ultimately, you know, crumbled. The first time a handful of AMC and activists issued a call was in the late 50s. I think it was 1950, 1958 or 1959. It took the international community more than 30 years. You know, you need to remember that in the mid 80s, Ronald Reagan considered Nessan Mandela a terrorist. You know, Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister of the UK at the time, said that she would never be shaking hands with the terrorist like Lackness and Mandela. And then, you know, in the late 80s, you know, I'm talking about 1985, 1986. In 1919, Nessan Mandela was released. The apartheid system was forced to release Nessan Mandela. 1994, Nessan Mandela became the first black president of multiracial, multi-religious, multicultural, multi-ethnic South Africa. And this is exactly what I'm telling you right now in Palestine. We strongly believe that this is our South African moment. That the international, excuse me, international civil society is heeding our call for BDS. The international community has decided and we need to, you know, to differentiate between the official international community that is to say United Nations, you know, United States of America, European, you know, we are not banking on these governments. We are not banking on the right wing government of India. We are not banking, you know, in the government of Pakistan or the Arab world. But we are banking on civil society and people. And international civil society has decided to heed our call. When it took the international community 30 years to heed the South African call, the international community now after about 10 years of the issuance of our BDS call is heeding our call. And this is why I'm telling you and we believe that this is our South African moment. And currently, the situation is quite perilous to say. So on the one hand, you have Israel moving in much more to the right almost every single day, looking at the pronouncements of many of its leaders. Yeah, exactly. You know, you know, before you told me I was just checking the news, et cetera. And the breaking news is that they were shilling the eastern the eastern side of the Gaza Strip. Look, I mean, this is happening, my friend, on a daily basis. And this is why we we insist on continuing our struggle. Again, I mean, my favorite comparison is with the anti-apartheid movement and with the struggle against the apartheid system. The South Africans, the AMC, the SACP, South African, you know, Communist Party, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and even globally relied on what they called four pillars of the struggle, the armed struggle, you know, BDS, mass mobilization and, you know, what they called political underground. And we now rely heavily on, you know, BDS and, you know, mass mobilization. And the Great March of Return is a conscious act of, you know, mass mobilization where you have hundreds of thousands of people gathering every Friday in order to send a strong message, one to the international community, that it's time to implement international law. And the other message is to apartheid Israel, that it is time for Israel to get rid of its apartheid character and settler colonialism. And this is why I'm telling you, I mean, the goals of the of the Great March of Return are very clear. One, we want an end to this diddly medieval siege. Two, we want the implementation of the United Nations Resolution 194, which calls for our right of return and compensation for 71 years of exile. And so what do you see as a trajectory in the coming months? What do the organizers, for instance, and the people on the ground see as happening in the coming months? Yeah, what I see is happening is that you cannot separate the Great March of Return from, you know, the growing BDS campaign. And I can tell you this very, very clearly. We have stopped banking on the so-called international community, United Nations Security Council, United States of America, European Union, court, et cetera, et cetera. So what I'm saying happening is that now we will continue with our Great March of Return until the main goal is achieved. That is to say the implementation of United Nations Resolution 194. So the goal is very clear. But before reaching that moment, I mean, we want an end to this, we want an end to this deadly siege. And that comes within a political solution, because people keep asking me, you know, about, you know, the two-state solution and the one-state solution. And I'm telling you this, the two-state solution is exactly like the Bantostan solution in South Africa, where you had four Bantostans. The international community never recognized the infamous Bantostans of South Africa. The two-state solution is a racist solution par excellence, where you have a separation between two ethnic groups, national groups, Palestinians on 22 percent of the historic land of Palestine and Israeli Jews on 78 percent of the historic land of Palestine. And what we, as I allow me to say as conscious activists, what we are offering is a completely different alternative. And that is a secular democratic state for all of its citizens. Exactly like what you have in India. I mean, what you have in India, you have secular democracy, regardless of the right wing or, you know, government ruling, you know, India right now. Exactly like what happened in South Africa. And I personally cannot separate the goals of the Great March of Return from this political vision. Thank you so much, Professor Haider. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.