Demonstrators gather for Palestine

Ramez Abuhashem

Photos and words by Sean Rayford

“Is this my family's house? If it's not, it's going to be my neighbor's house,” says Ramez Abuhashem about recent Israeli rocket strikes in his hometown of Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. Each day this week he’s grown more worried about his mother and father, brothers and sisters, and extended family living in the Palestinian city at the border with Egypt. “I keep calling them everyday, but sometimes the electricity is out and there is no internet.”

“Free! Free! Palestine!” he chants repetitively, others responding with the like on each iteration — until he changes gears, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

It would be a scene repeated in cities across the world on Saturday. In London, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Cape Town, Brussels, Bagdad, Toronto, New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Boston, and D.C.— and in Columbia, SC, groups gathered to support Palestinians facing the worst violence since the Gaza War in 2014. Organized by Students for Justice in Palestine at University of South Carolina, Abuhashem joined the statehouse rally that also commemorated Nakba Day.

Recent conflict in the region reemerged after protests over an impending decision of the Supreme Court of Israel, regarding the eviction of Palestinian residents in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The Associated Press reports that in the recent conflict, more than 187 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 55 children and 33 women and eight killed in Israel, including a 5-year-old boy and a soldier.

Sean Rayford is a photojournalist based in Columbia, South Carolina. See more at seanrayford.com