[Editors` Note: Since the writing of this report, the Lebanese Army declared the border area a closed military zone. Several Palestinian groups have cancelled their plans to organize and participate in the event and instead have chosen to hold protests in their respective refugee camps. Several of those injured on May 15, as well as their relatives and friends, have decided to reach whatever check-point is closest to the border and hold a sit-in there.]
“I’m going to attend on Sunday, of course I am,” said Um Mohamed, with a smile. “I have already given one martyr for this, I don’t mind dying for Palestine.”
Um Mohamed, sitting in her cramped living room surrounded by a flock of women in Burj al-Shmali, one of the refugee camps in the south of Lebanon, spoke in detail about the moment her son, seventeen-year-old Mohamed Samir Saleh, was killed by the Israelis on the border on May 15, 2011. Recounting the events of that fateful day, she explained how he was breaking rocks into smaller stones when the bullet hit him in his back and travelled through his heart, killing him.
“He had told me the night before that he was going to be a martyr and wasn’t coming home the next evening,” she said. With a look of determination, she was adamant about the fact that they, as Palestinians, as refugees, as women, will go back to the border on the June 5, Naksa Day (the anniversary of the 1967 war), to continue what was started three weeks prior.
“I want to do what they did on Nakba Day, if not more. We are doing this for our land, and our nation,” she said, “I have no fear of bullets.”
Um Mohamed is not alone in her quest to continue the unarmed marches to the border. Many of the Palestinians who were shot and injured by Israeli soldiers on the May 15th have sworn they will return on Sunday, keen to show everyone that Israeli bullets cannot prevent them from demanding their right to return.
This Sunday, June 5th, the Day of Naksa, has been selected as the second march to the Lebanese-Israeli border to protest for the Palestinian right of return. While there has been a flurry of diplomatic and military manoeuvres on both sides of the border in an attempt to stifle the march, many expect it to not only proceed, but to numerically exceed the thousands who attended three weeks ago.
Miled Majthoub, from Ain al-Hilweh camp, was shot twice while at the border on the May 15th; once in the stomach with live ammunition and once in the chest with a rubber bullet, both coming from the Israeli side of the fence. He had managed to get to the fence and grab the Israeli flag that was hanging there, which he threw back to his friends. “We tore the flag up, tied the pieces around stones, and threw them back at the Israelis,” he said, laughing. “It was when I went back a second time that I was shot.” Those around him were so convinced he was on his death-bed, a nearby shaykh asked him to recite the declaration of faith, usually done prior to death.
“Do I want to go back? Of course I want to go back!” he declared. His father tried to explain the feeling they all felt when they saw their land for the first time. “You can’t describe it, there’s something that pulls you towards it.” he said. For many, this was the first time they had ever laid eyes on their land. “My younger son was also there on Nakba Day, and he refused to leave. He told me, ‘as long as there are rocks, I’m not leaving.’ I understand this feeling.”
While not discouraging people from returning on the June 5th, he urged people to do so with caution, as a number of those going are doing so as a reaction to what happened on the May 15th. “As this is the case, the Israelis are prepared, so this time approaching the fence in the same manner as last time entitles you to a bullet.”
Miled’s neighbour, Mohamed Sleiman, twenty-seven years old, was one of the few who arrived at Maroun al-Ras early in the morning of the May 15th. He descended the hillside with one of the martyrs, Imad Abu Shakra, and together they reached the fence. Through the fences, the Israeli soldier on the other side spoke to him in Arabic, “Go away!” before laughing at him. When Mohamed refused to move, the soldier shot him. The bullet hit him sideways in his right leg. “I didn’t fall right away,” he said, describing how it took him about fifteen minutes before he fell, not being able to withstand the pain. Today he is still on crutches, but this will not prevent his determination to take part, once again, this Sunday.
“Nothing but God will stop me from going down on Sunday,” he said, with fierce resolve. “My goal is to return back all of Palestine, and I won’t stop until this happens.”
Israel, having voiced its fears over the return of the protestors to the Lebanese side of the border on Sunday, has doubled its efforts in protecting the border by adding more barbed wire to the already existing fence. Furthermore, it has stated in no uncertain terms that it will hold both the Lebanese and Syrian governments responsible for any infringement and will "use all means necessary to prevent any attack on its sovereignty."
But these threats have not dampened the spirits of those who were injured by the Israelis the last time. Bilal al-Ali, twenty-one years old and from Burj al-Shmali camp, was hit by shrapnel in his thigh while at Maroun al-Ras. He had run down the hillside, blood boiling, after having seen dead and injured bodies being carried up. “Nothing could stop me,” he said. He began throwing stones at the fence when a bullet exploded past him, shrapnel getting lodged in his leg. “I didn’t feel it at all. People started to notice the blood and pointed it out to me,” he described, explaining that he refused to be loaded into an ambulance as there were other people more seriously injured than him.
“I’m going back on the 5th [of June] no matter what the price is,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Last time I got shot there, next time who knows, but whatever the result, I will take it. I am going for myself, and I am going for Palestine, nothing will stop me.”