10 dead as Gaza clashes continue
PALESTINIANS CLAIM 1,000 WOUNDED
>> NAHAL OZ: With tear gas and burning tyres fouling the air and gunfire periodically ringing out from one direction, Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers faced off along the fence hemming in the Gaza Strip for a second week on Friday. Ten Palestinians were killed, including two teenagers, and 1,000 were wounded, Palestinian officials said.
The demonstrations were smaller than those last week, when 21 people were killed. But the death toll was significant, despite a pledge by Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, that the protest would be peaceful, and by Israel that it had learned from last week and would use live fire judiciously.
Hamas insisted that demonstrators would be unarmed, though it carved out an exception for rock throwing.
“Today we are sending a message that our struggle is without arms and guns, and we will wait and see if the world receives the message, and pressures Israel to stop its crimes against our people,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas leader, told reporters at the protests in Gaza City. “And if the world fails to do so, we then will be obliged to use our arms.”
Israeli military officials had said they would use live ammunition if necessary to stop Palestinians from penetrating or damaging the barrier fence, which is actually at least two fences — one a crude barrier of barbed wire; the other, some metres behind, a more complicated structure equipped with electronic sensors.
The Israelis released surveillance video clips late in the day that they said showed attempts to cut openings in the barrier, and military officials said that some demonstrators were throwing firebombs.
In one instance, in the Shejaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City, Palestinians appeared to try to cross the fence and Israeli soldiers responded with live fire. Hundreds of protesters fled from the barrier en masse. Children cried and families took cover behind parked cars until the shots ceased.
“I believe I’m going to cross the fence, even if they shoot me or cut me in half,” said Bilal Abu Zaher, 26, who came to the protest on crutches.
He said he had been disabled since his house was damaged by an Israeli airstrike in the 2008 Israel-Gaza war. On Thursday, he said, Israeli soldiers shot at his wheelchair, damaging it. On Friday, he was back at the fence.
“I’m here for dignity,” he said. “My goal is to return to the land.”
A Palestinian journalists’ association said that six Palestinian journalists had been shot and wounded by the Israeli army, local news media reported. One of them, a video journalist, had died, bringing the death toll for the day to 10.
The protests are aimed at Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which began after Hamas seized control in 2007. Billed as a six-week “March of Return”, the demonstrations are to culminate May 15 with Nakba Day, which commemorates the flight and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during Israel’s 1948 war for independence.
By Friday, it was clear that they had already achieved one Palestinian aim: shifting the focus of international attention away from the struggle between Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority — and onto the stark image of Gaza as a prison with Israel as its jailer.
Palestinian protesters flocked to the barrier fence on Friday, chanting, waving flags, flying kites — and setting fire to piles of tires.
Hamas, which has been effectively running the protests, said the smoke screen was a defensive measure to protect unarmed Palestinians from being shot, as many were on March 30, the first day of the demonstrations.
Israeli officials insisted the smoke screens were used as cover for militants trying to make it across the barrier fence to attack soldiers and Israeli civilians living in farming communities nearby.