Rafah: Palestinian parkour enthusiasts have performed a special show on the Israeli-Gaza border, close to a site where mass protests and deadly clashes have occurred since late March.
Dozens of Gazans on Tuesday evening watched four members of a parkour team flip and twist their way around the site of the camp of what Palestinians have dubbed the Great March of Return.
Israeli occupation soldiers in military observation towers or behind sand barriers surveyed the scene, with the performance several hundred metres from the border fence in Rafah in southern Gaza.
“We came here in the camp of return in Rafah to show our parkour,” said 27-year-old Naji Muammar.
“This is our message to the world that we will return to our country and practise our sport there.”
Mohammad Bbu Jihad, another of the performers, said “we don’t have anything to resist with except parkour.”
Gazans have set up tents in five main areas along the Gaza border for the Great March of Return, which is calling for Palestinian refugees to be able to return to their former homes which are now inside Israel.
In 1948, upon the creation of the Jewish state, Israel forcibly displaced Palestinians living there triggereing a mass exodus of refugees.
Mass peaceful protests peaking on Fridays have drawn deadly fire from Israeli forces killing 31 Palestinians. No Israelis have been hurt.
The protests are expected to continue until mid-May, when US President Donald Trump plans to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Occupied Jerusalem, a move that has deeply angered the Palestinians.
