al-Mashharawi said that the bricks will reduce the environmental pollution in Gaza, because ash is usually disposed of either by burying it in the soil or dumping it in landfills. Both methods are harmful because ash can pollute groundwater.

Some of the Bedouin children will be forced to live in a semi-urban environment next to a garbage dump, without their animals, in what the American social anthropologist Dawn Chatty has dubbed ‘cultural genocide’. Godfrey-Goldstein: “There’s no way they can maintain their traditional lifestyle over there. The Bedouins can’t graze their animals. So they are less sustainable. Their children are being urbanized. In essence, they won’t be Bedouins anymore. All the herbal knowledge is vanishing, the ability to track. They’re no longer out there. Dawn Chatty has said this is the worst case of forcible displacement she has witnessed in 30 years.”

When asked what they thought about the series, Palestinians were divided. While some pointed to the credible portrayal of their society, others warned of normalization of the Israeli occupation. This works on two levels: Palestinian actors who participated in the series have been accused of collaborating with the occupier. Moreover, the depiction of the mustaribeen ‘normalizes’ this kind of unacceptable Israeli infiltration into Palestinian society, critics say.

A 2015 report published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development on assistance to the Palestinian people warned that the Gaza Strip could become ‘uninhabitable’ by 2020 if current economic trends persist. It seems that the Great March of Return is the beginning of the Gazans’ final scream for assistance before they fall into oblivion.

It seems clear that the momentum that has been building will be difficult to stop. However, it remains to be seen what the final impact of the protests will be, and whether organizers will succeed in harnessing the anger into non-violent resistance or whether it will escalate once again into armed conflict.

In July 2017, Abbas dismissed more than 6,000 employees working in health, education and other public sectors in Gaza, by sending them into early retirement. This followed an earlier decision to cut the salaries of the around 50,000 PA employees in the enclave by more than 30 per cent.

Despite the intense emotions the issue evokes, the Palestinian leadership’s continued tiptoeing around the international grandstanding, while largely accepting a deteriorating political and humanitarian reality, has not gone unnoticed in Palestine.

Palestinians wondered whether al-Sinwar’s 24 years in Israeli prisons had affected his ability to make wise, reasonable decisions that served public interests. Furthermore, they questioned his suitability to lead Hamas, given the many years he had spent away from Palestinian society.

The balancing act that Hamas and Fatah are now forced to play requires some external pressure, and it appears that the Egyptians are willing to apply this pressure, especially against Hamas. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is able to exert similar pressure on the PLO, mostly by means of its financial support to the Palestinian government.

The PA security services consist of three main branches: the Interior Security Forces, the General Intelligence Service and the National Security Forces, in addition to a non-executive supervisory body, the National Security Council, which oversees all of the PA’s security organs.