15 March, 2011
Tens of thousands of Palestinians were rallying in Gaza City and Ramallah on Tuesday in a mass show of strength to call for end to the division in their national movement.
The biggest gathering was in Gaza City, where officials from the Hamas-run interior ministry said vast crowds had packed into the city’s Square of the Unknown Soldier.
“There are tens of thousands of people already there, and there may be more on the way,” interior ministry spokesman Ihab al-Ghussein told AFP.
In Ramallah, which lies some 90 km (55 miles) further north, around 3,000 people had gathered in Manara Square, with hundreds more pouring in all the time, an AFP correspondent said.
The rallies, called by the March 15 protest movement and planned through Facebook by young activists demanding an end to the division between the rival Fatah and Hamas factions, are taking place simultaneously in the two cities.
In Gaza, demonstrators got a head start, beginning their rallies on Monday out of concern they might be prevented by Hamas security forces from gathering on the day.
As darkness fell, many went home, but around 60 people slept the night there in small tents under banners reading “Stop the division” and “Yes to Palestinian national unity.”
Among them were a number of people who on Monday began a hunger strike to pressure the two factions to unite, activists said.
Organiser Hossam Khadra told AFP they had finally received a permit to demonstrate after previously being refused.
“Yesterday the interior ministry told us we have permission to demonstrate until 5:00 pm (1500 GMT),” he said.
“But we don’t want anyone from the factions interfering. We are young people who want to end the division. We don’t want this demonstration to become political.”
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, around 12 protesters slept the night in Manara Square, all of whom have been observing a hunger strike since Sunday.
“We are hunger striking to prove that we exist in the real world and not just online, and to show that we are ready to die to end the division,” organiser Fadi Quraan told AFP.
“We slept here to prove that we are the ones running this campaign,” he said, while expressing concerns about other political groups trying to co-opt Tuesday’s rallies.
The March 15 demonstrations, organised by youth activists who say they have no political affiliation, are expected to receive widespread support across the territories, with similar protests planned outside Palestinian delegations overseas.
The movement was inspired by the recent wave of uprisings in the Arab world which brought down the regimes of Egypt and Tunisia and sparked the revolt in Libya.