The March to Al-Quds (Jerusalem) slated on Friday will be peaceful, a Gaza spokesman for the event reiterated on Sunday.

Majid al-Zibdah said that the rally has been organized to protest against "ongoing Israeli assaults and efforts to judaize the city of Al-Quds, as well as the escalating threats against Palestinian land and the Palestinian people.

"We urge Palestinian men, women, elderly people and children to join the rally which will set out from all districts of the Gaza Strip."

Organizers of the event want participants to avoid contact with Israeli forces, in order to save themselves from "possible harm," he added.

Last week, a spokesman from the group had stressed that they were not interested in confrontation with the Israeli army.

"We are after all not an army, but popular peaceful international forces aiming to show solidarity with Palestine and with Al-Quds," spokesman of the Global March to Jerusalem Zahir Al-Birawi said.

The group, who list Noble Laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mairead Maguire as advisers, say they are organizing simultaneous rallies in 60 countries on March 30, which marks Palestinian Land Day.

Land Day commemorates the death of six Palestinian citizens of occupied Palestine, who took part in a general strike in protest of an Israeli decision to confiscate privately owned Palestinian lands in 1976.

Last Land Day, Palestinians protested across the West Bank, Gaza Strip and occupied Palestine without casualties.

But two months later simultaneous rallies to commemorate the Nakba -- the 'catastrophe' when thousands of Palestinians were forced out or fled in fighting that led to the killing of 13 people by Israeli fire.

In June, hundreds of protesters in Syria stormed the ceasefire line with "Israel" in the occupied Golan Heights, on (Naksa Day), the memory of the 1967 war when Israeli forces seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai and Golan Heights.

Ma'an/AB