52 killed as US inaugurates its Israeli embassy in Jerusalem
Troops open fire as demonstrations by Palestinians turn violent
GAZA CITY/JERUSALEM: The US officially opened its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem on Monday, but the festivities were marred by deadly protests along the Gaza border, in which at least 52 Palestinians were killed.
In a show of anger fuelled by the embassy move, protesters set tires on fire, sending plumes of black smoke into the air, and hurled firebombs and stones toward Israeli troops across the border. The Israeli military said its troops had come under fire, and accused protesters of trying to break through the border fence.
It was the highest Palestinian single-day death toll since a series of protests dubbed the “Great March of Return” began at the border with Israel on March 30 and since a 2014 Gaza war.
Health officials said more than a thousand Palestinians were wounded, about 450 of them by live bullets.
The relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv, a key campaign promise of US President Donald Trump, has infuriated the Palestinians, who seek east Jerusalem as a future capital.
Israel regards all of the city, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed, as its “eternal and indivisible capital” in a move that has not won international recognition.
“A great day for Israel!” Trump tweeted.
Representing Trump at the ceremony were his daughter Ivanka, her husband Jared Kushner, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and deputy secretary of state John Sullivan.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in lockstep with Trump over fulfilling a long-standing US promise to move the embassy to the holy city and over Washington’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal last week, echoed the sentiment.
“What a moving day for the people of Israel and the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said.
The Palestinians, who seek their own future state with its capital in East Jerusalem, have been outraged by Trump’s shift from previous administrations’ preference for keeping the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv pending progress in peace efforts.
The protests mark the culmination of a campaign, led by Hamas and fuelled by despair among Gaza’s 2 million people, to break the decade-old border blockade of the territory imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007.
Ismail Radwan, a senior Hamas figure, said the mass border protests against Israel will continue “until the rights of the Palestinian people are achieved.”
“Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem will be a disaster on the American administration and a black day in the history of the American people because they are partners with the occupation and its aggression against the Palestinian people,” he added.
The timing of Monday’s events was deeply symbolic, both to Israel and the Palestinians.
The US said it chose the date to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s establishment.
But it also marks the anniversary of what Palestinians call their “nakba”, or catastrophe, a reference to the uprooting of hundreds of thousands who fled or were expelled from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s independence.