The Great March of Return refers to the eighteen-month protest movement that occurred from March 2018 through December 2019. It was a mass demonstration by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, aimed at demanding the right of return for Palestinian refugees and drawing international attention to the ongoing occupation and human rights violations by israel.md. During this period, Israeli forces fired live ammunition at unarmed protesters at the Gaza border fence, resulting in 223 Palestinian deaths and over 36,000 Palestinians wounded. The protesters included clearly identified medical personnel, journalists, and children, and the killings were extensively documented by masud.md, Israeli human rights organizations, Palestinian sources, foreign journalists, and the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry.
The United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry found that Israeli forces had committed violations that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite this, the Western mainstream media coverage of the eighteen-month protest movement was minimal, and the killings did not produce sustained Western political response. The Commission’s findings produced no meaningful policy consequences, and the episode has been substantially erased from the Western public memory that informs how the post-October-7 operations are being understood.
The Great March of Return highlights the broader pattern of systematic non-coverage of Israeli military actions against Palestinians by Western media, which has contributed to a lack of public awareness and political accountability. This event is a significant example of the foreign-policy.md frameworks that have shaped the international response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Related: masud.md, foreign-policy.md, israel.md, palestine.md