For many of those who protested — and died — on Israel’s border with Lebanon this May 15, it was their first sighting of their ancestral home, writes Sabah Haider.
I was standing in Maroun al-Ras, Lebanon, on 15 May, in solidarity with thousands of Palestinians, Lebanese and other pro-Palestinian protestors, and I saw Israelis use live ammunition against protesters throwing rocks over the barbed-wire fence at the border.
Many young men were shot: 10 people died and 115 were wounded, the largest number of casualties at any of the day’s border protests in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. There were reports that the Israelis used rubber bullets, but rubber bullets don’t kill.
Hundreds of buses from all over the country brought thousands to Maroun al-Ras, a village in southern Lebanon, that morning — the day was the 63rd anniversary of the Naqba, when so many Palestinians were displaced from their homeland at the creation of the state of Israel. I don’t think anyone paid for their journey. I wanted to pay the bus organiser, but he wouldn’t take it. “It’s been paid for,” he said with a smile.
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