Sometime between March 30 and May 15, Hamas plans to organize a protest in which some 100,000 Palestinians will amass at the fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel and attempt to cross into Israeli territory. The marchers will be trying, at least symbolically, to return to the homes from which their ancestors were supposedly expelled in 1948. Hillel Frisch comments:
The immediate objective of the prospective fence-stormers is not so much to kill Israelis (though if that can be achieved, even better) but to get killed themselves. Their hope is that Israel will resort to force to maintain the border (as would any sovereign state) and thereby create the graphics and funerals that delegitimize Israel.
The long-term objective of the event is, in fact, to kill and maim Israelis and damage their property. Hamas and other factions are hoping [Israel’s response to the march] will lead to mass waves of violent protest and self-initiated suicide terrorist acts in the West Bank and among Israel’s Arab citizens. Ideally, from the perspective of the Palestinian organizations, it will yield a full-scale intifada. . . .
Israel wants to maintain the status quo in which people go about their lives peacefully. The Palestinian terrorist organizations want to change the status quo. Gaza, after eleven years of Hamas rule, is meant to become another Ghouta, another bloody Baghdad, or even another full-fledged failed Palestinian state.
This project is fraught with difficulty because the Palestinians are divided, even more so after the attempted assassination of the Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah in Gaza. So divided are they that the major actors—the Palestinian Authority and Fatah on the one hand and Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the other—can’t even agree on the date on which the fence-storming should take place.
Read more on BESA Center: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/gaza-march-return/