Palestinian protests on Gaza-Israel border cancelled for 3rd week, organizers say

Palestinian protests along the Gaza-Israel border have been cancelled for the third week in a row, organizers said on Thursday. The statement comes amid declining turnout and fears of a fresh conflict in the Gaza Strip, AFP said.

The organizing committee said it had decided to postpone this Friday’s marches to avoid giving an opportunity to Israel and due to “the very dangerous security conditions,” after a deadly flare-up in Gaza earlier this month.

The protests, which began in March 2018 and are backed by Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas, initially attracted tens of thousands of people weekly, but numbers have declined dramatically. Protesters called for Israel to lift its decade-long blockade of Gaza, as well as for a return to their ancestral homes now inside Israel.

The rallies were cancelled the two previous weeks after a flare-up between Israel and Islamic jihad, a Hamas-allied militant group in Gaza.