Since the launch of the Great March of Return along Gaza’s eastern border Haj Subhi al-Mughrabi accompanied by his sons their wives and his grandchildren has not missed a single day of the protests driven by a nostalgia for his hometown Burayr from which his family was expelled in 1948.
Among the family is the seven-month-old Mazen Fuqaha. Haj Subhi his grandfather told the PIC that he had pledged to bring him to the protests every day along with the other family members.
Daily participation
Near the border fence protesters stand or sit individually or in groups drinking coffee or tea to maintain presence in al-Awda (Return) camps erected in the border areas as part of the Great March of Return’s activities.
Haj Subhi said “I come here every day with my seven-month-old grandson Mazen to demand my right of return.”
Mazen’s mother said that her daily participation with her child in the Return demonstrations is a way of saying that the Palestinian refugees including herself will never give up their lands and villages from which the Israeli occupation expelled them. “Our children have the right to grow up in our hometowns” she stressed.
An eyewitness
A few meters away from the tent where Mazen and his mother stay his father Thaer al-Mughrabi said that over the past days his family have witnessed many Israeli attacks on peaceful protesters.
Thaer added that he brings his child every day to the Return camps and sits near the border fence in defiance of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats to attack the defenseless protesters.
“I was sitting with my child wife and the rest of the family when an Israeli sniper shot a young man called Ahmad Arafa three times” Thaer said “He was there bleeding. I tried to pull his body out of the place but he died instantly.”
The seven-month-old Mazen spends most of his day in the Great March of Return tents with his mother who in the early morning hours prepares everything Mazen or other children of the family might need during the day.
