Mass protests in Gaza reject US-sponsored Bahrain economic workshop

GAZA - Thousands of Gazans protested on Wednesday against the economic workshop organized by the United States in Bahrain for the second day in a row under the title of "Peace for Prosperity".

The demonstration, which was called for by the High Commission of the Great March of Return, included all Palestinian factions.

The protests took place in front of the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in central Gaza city, and went toward the United Nations headquarter in the west of Gaza.

The participants in the demonstrations held black flags and banners reading "Together to drop the Deal of Century," "The Bahrain conference will be failed" and "Palestine and Jerusalem are not for sale."

Mohammed Haneyia, a 28-year-old participant, said to Xinhua that "we are here to send our message to the US, Israel, Bahrain and all the Arab countries that we will not accept to give up any inch of our Palestinian lands for money."

All the Palestinian factions, including Fatah party, Islamic Hamas movement, Islamic Jihad movement and the leftist factions, participated in the mass rally in a rare scene since the beginning of the Palestinian division in 2007.

Mushir al-Masri, the leader of Hamas, told Xinhua that "the conference will be failed, especially as we are in the process to build a national liberation strategy to address the serious repercussions of the conference."

The economic workshop, kicked off on Tuesday, was attended by the host country Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Morocco.

Jared Kushner, senior advisor to US President Donald Trump, underlined Washington's 50-billion-US-dollar economic vision for the Palestinians, saying the 10-year vision aims to more than double the GDP of the Palestinians, create over 1 million jobs for them, reduce their unemployment rate to nearly single digits and cut their poverty rate by half.

Analysts believe that the "Deal of the Century" will face great obstacles in its implementation, especially in light of the Palestinian consensus on its rejection.

However, the political analyst Ibrahim Abrash expected that the US administration will impose the "Deal of the Century" as a reality in light of its military and economic hegemony on the countries of the world, noting that this may occur if the Palestinian division continues.

He said "the continued internal Palestinian division may allow Trump to pass the 'Deal of the Century' by betting that some Palestinian parties may accept the economic part of the deal under the pretext of the poor economic situation."