The protests in Gaza, which have left more than twenty Palestinians dead and scores more wounded, have reminded the world of several key facts. Eighty percent of Gazans are refugees expelled to make room for Israel’s creation in 1948. Gazans remain under Israeli military occupation and are still being killed by their occupiers. And lastly, Gazans continue to be besieged on all sides, mainly by Israel but also by Egypt. They are prevented from freely traveling in and out of the most densely populated place on earth, from leading normal lives, and from living in dignity and safety without Israeli state terror.

The sight of Israeli army snipers casually picking off peaceful protesters (sometimes in the back) has been hard for the Israeli propaganda machine to spin. It is clear for all to see that the protesters do not constitute any kind of military or security threat to Israel. It is also clear that these border demonstrations are popular and that, despite Israel’s loudly articulated and premeditated murder policy, they have mobilized many Gazans — not just supporters of Hamas.

Nonviolent struggle against violent occupiers is politically effective. That is why Israel fears it, represses it, and seeks to push it into violent confrontation (as they did in 2000, in the first weeks of the “second intifada,” in which a million bullets were fired against unarmed demonstrators). Nonviolent struggle changes the prevailing Israel-Palestine narrative from an occupiers’ fight against terrorism to an anticolonial struggle against occupation. It uses an instrument of resistance that cannot be easily demonized (unlike Hamas’s rockets, Palestinian suicide bombings, or operations against Israeli civilian targets, which are both futile and morally unacceptable ).