By Mohamed Majed
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – Palestinian demonstrators on Friday converged along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone to take part in ongoing rallies against Israel’s decades-long occupation.
According to Gaza’s National Authority for Breaking the Siege, Friday’s rally is being held under the slogan “United against the Deal of the Century” -- a reference to Washington’s backchannel U.S. Middle Peace plan, the terms of which have yet to be made public.
An Anadolu Agency correspondent at the scene said that hundreds of protesters waving Palestinian flags had already arrived near the buffer zone.
Friday’s rally comes in the run-up to the 71st anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (“The Catastrophe”).
Marked on May 15 of each year, Nakba Day commemorates the expulsion in 1948 of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in historical Palestine to make way for the new state of Israel.
Since the Gaza rallies began in March of last year, nearly 270 demonstrators have been killed -- and thousands more injured -- by Israeli troops deployed near the buffer zone.
Protesters also demand an end to Israel’s 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.