Young people in Gaza reacted to my post immediately, sharing it and adding their own ideas. Just a week later, it seemed as if hundreds of people were talking about it. We established a youth committee and met with local agencies and institutions. We also met with the national political parties: We wanted to offer all sectors of society in Gaza the opportunity to be involved.

What has happened since we started the Great Return March is both what I hoped and expected — and not. It was not a surprise that Israel responded to our march with deadly violence. But I had not expected this level of cruelty. On the other hand, I was heartened by the commitment to nonviolence among most of my own people.

A couple of years ago, people here would have dismissed the idea that peaceful demonstrations could achieve anything significant. After all, every other form of resistance has produced nothing concrete. What amazes me is the transformation we are seeing in the way we resist. Our struggle previously was between armed Palestinian fighters and Israeli snipers, tanks and F-16s. Now, it is a struggle between the occupation and peaceful protesters — men and women, young and old.

The Great Return March reminds the world about the origin of the conflict — our uprooting from our lands and our lives, beginning in 1948 and sustained since then. We have chosen May 15 as the culmination of our protests because that is the day that Palestinians mark the “nakba,” the Arabic word for catastrophe, which is what we call the expulsions from our homes 70 years ago. Whatever solution we negotiate in the future to allow our two peoples to live together peacefully and equally must start with a recognition of this wrong.

Still, despite the response from Israeli snipers, I continue to be committed to nonviolence, as are all of the other people “coordinating” this march. I use quotation marks because when a movement becomes this large — attracting what we estimate to be as many as 200,000 people on Fridays — it cannot be completely controlled. We discouraged the burning of Israeli flags and the attachment of Molotov cocktails to kites. We want peaceful, equal coexistence to be our message.

We have also tried to discourage protesters from attempting to cross into Israel. However, we can’t stop them. It is the action of an imprisoned people yearning for freedom, one of the strongest motivations in human nature. Likewise, the people won’t go away on May 15. We are intent on continuing our struggle until Israel recognizes our right to return to our homes and land from which we were expelled.

Desperation fuels this new generation. We are not going back to our subhuman existence. We will keep knocking at the doors of international organizations and our Israeli jailers until we see concrete steps to end the blockade of Gaza.

Update: The byline on this essay has been changed to reflect the author’s preferred transliteration, Ahmed Abu Artema, instead of Ahmed Abu Ratima.