Gaza death toll reaches 18 amid int’l condemnations
Israel’s killing of Palestinian protesters in Gaza last week caused a global outcry as the death toll rose to 18 on Monday.
More than 750 Palestinians were also wounded by Israeli fire in Friday’s protest, according to Gaza health officials, making it the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 Israeli invasion of the enclave, AP reported.
Around 30,000 Gazans marched to the fence with the occupied territories at the start of a six-week protest, dubbed “The Great March of Return,” demanding the right to return to their homeland.
The rallies coincided with the 42nd anniversary of Land Day, which commemorates the murder of six Palestinians by Israeli forces in 1976.
Friday’s demonstrations turned violent after Israeli forces used tear gas and live fire to force back demonstrators who had approached within a few hundred meters of the heavily-fortified fence.
The Israeli military’s open-fire policies came under more scrutiny as two amateur videos emerged purportedly showing two Palestinians being shot – one killed and one wounded – while not posing any apparent threat to soldiers.
UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, and the EU’S top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, called for independent inquiries into the bloodshed. But Israel on Sunday said that there will not be an inquiry. Israeli military officials have said troops would not allow protesters to cross or damage the fence, and that protesters would not be permitted to get closer than 100 meters to the fence.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday said last Friday’s protests had a “limit,” but that “next time, we won’t know where that line would be.”
Rights groups said it’s unlawful to use lethal force when Palestinian protesters don’t pose an imminent threat to the lives of Israeli soldiers.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif hit out at “Zionist tyrants” who “murder peaceful Palestinian protesters whose land they have stolen as they march to escape their cruel and inhuman apartheid bondage,” Press TV reported.
“Dangerous plot” in region
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani denounced the Israeli regime’s “criminal and inhumane” actions, warning that Zionists and US President Donald Trump are hatching a “dangerous plot” against the Middle Eastern countries.
Larijani said on Sunday that the latest deadly attacks by the illegitimate Israeli regime were continuation of the Zionists’ repeated crimes backed by the US government.
The Israeli regime’s policy for creating tension and crisis and Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Al-quds constitute a dangerous plot, which threatens regional stability and security, he said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist” on Sunday, escalating an exchange of insults that started after he criticized Israel’s lethal military response to the Palestinians’ demonstration, Reuters reported. Israel defended the killing of Palestinians. Erdogan told supporters on Sunday: “We don’t have the shame of invading on us, Netanyahu. You are an invader and right now are present in those lands as an invader. At the same time, you are a terrorist.”
In another speech he said: “You are a terrorist state. It is known what you have done in Gaza and what you have done in Jerusalem [Al-quds]. You have no one that likes you in the world.”
Several Arab countries also condemned the killing of Palestinians by Israeli troops.
Pope Francis, in his Easter address on Sunday, called for peace in the Holy Land, saying the conflict there “does not spare the defenseless.”
The death toll for Friday rose to 18, after a 29-year-old man died Monday of his injuries.
The protests are to continue until May 15. The date is mourned by Palestinians as their “Nakba,” or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands were uprooted in the 1948 Mideast war over Israel’s creation.
Most of Gaza’s two million people are descendants of Palestinian refugees.
Life in the Gaza Strip has deteriorated further in recent months, with rising unemployment, grinding poverty and daily blackouts that last for hours.