Israel faces growing backlash

have occurred on both sides if there had been a breach in the border fence, Israeli Consul General Dani Dayan told reporters yesterday in New York.

‘‘We will defend our border and we will defend our population,’’ Dayan said. ‘‘By doing what we do we are saving human lives.’’

International criticism of Israel’s response followed back-to-back diplomatic victories it’s scored in recent days. Last week US President Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had tried to block. On Tuesday, the bloodiest day in Gaza in years took place as Israel celebrated another coup – Washington’s relocation of its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

While Israel saw the transfer as an important symbol of its sovereignty over the city, for the Palestinians, it undermined their own claim to Jerusalem’s Israeli-occupied east. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told his representative to the US, Hussam Zomlot, to return to Ramallah in response to the US embassy’s opening, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said.

Israel says at least 24 of the dead were militants, most affiliated with the Hamas group that rules Gaza. Gaza’s Hamas-run Interior Ministry said 10 were members of the group.

Yesterday was to have been the climax of six weeks of protests in Gaza meant to dramatise their refugee status on the day Palestinians mark the ‘‘nakba,’’ or ‘‘catastrophe,’’ of their displacement by Israel’s 1948 creation. But the number of Palestinians venturing to the border with Israel dropped to about 4000, according to the Israeli army. Two Palestinians were shot dead, the Gaza health ministry said. Clashes also took place across the West Bank.

French Foreign Minister JeanYves Le Drian said Israel’s need for security doesn’t justify the ‘‘unacceptable violence’’ used by Israeli forces. – Bloomberg