Israel kills four more Gazans
15-year-old among victims; more than 100 Palestinians also wounded by gunfire
Four Palestinians, including a teenager, were killed by Israeli fire on the Gaza border yesterday, the territory’s health ministry said as weeks of deadly clashes with protesters continued.
Among the dead was 15-year-old Haitham Al Jamal, who was shot on the border in southern Gaza east of the city of Khan Younus, the ministry said.
It said more than 100 Palestinians were also wounded by gunfire, including an AFP photographer, Mohammad Abed Al Baba, who was shot in the leg.
Al Baba, who has worked for AFP in Gaza since 2000, said he was shot in the leg while wearing
a clearly identified press vest and helmet around 200 metres from the border east of Jabalia in northern Gaza.
“We want to remind the world that the Israeli occupation is committing the same massacres that the Nazis committed,” said activist Ahmed Abu Artima. Around 10,000 Palestinians gathered in five places along the border, with clashes ensuing.
Israeli occupation forces yesterday used live fire and tear gas against protesters at the Gaza border, killing four Palestinians and wounding hundreds of others, medics said.
Israel claimed that militants had attacked its forces with guns and grenades as Palestinians attended another mass demonstration along the fence with Gaza on the occasion of ‘Jerusalem Day’.
The Palestinians killed yester were three adult men and a 15-year-old boy, medics said. Of 618 people wounded, 120 were from live fire, they said.
Among those wounded by gunfire was an Agence FrancePresse photographer and a 23-year-old man who was on life support after a tear gas canister penetrated his face.
Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, has been incensed by the US recognition in December of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. “There is no such state called Israel that could have a capital called Jerusalem,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said.
He added that the Gaza demonstrations, launched on March 30, would continue until Palestinians achieve their demand for a right of return to ancestral lands lost to Israel in the 1948 war of its creation.
Two million Palestinians have sunk into poverty as Israel has clamped down on Gaza’s borders. “We are not asking for the moon,” said Amer Abu Khalaf, a 20-year-old business administration student who took part in yesterday’s protest, saying it aimed to “break the siege and have the world recognise our right to return”.
Life is tougher than ever for most of the two million Palestinians locked into tiny, blockaded Gaza, where there is no electricity for most of the day and unemployment nears 50 per cent.
Over 120 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli sniper fire during near-weekly demonstrations that began March 30.
On Monday, Israeli snipers shot and killed Ramzi Najjar days after his cousin Razan Najjar, a paramedic, was murdered on the border fence of Gaza, while she was trying to help a demonstrator who was injured. Israeli occupation soldiers fired two or three bullets across the fence, hitting Razan in the upper body. She was pronounced dead soon after.
The United Nations and human rights groups have criticised Israel for using “excessive force” against the unarmed protesters.
Fragile economy
Along with the Palestinian National Authority, the UN has been instrumental in propping up Gaza’s fragile economy. About two-thirds of Gaza’s residents are eligible for health, education or welfare services from UNRWA, the agency that aids descendants of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.
Need has grown exponentially, with some one million people in Gaza now receiving UN food aid, compared to 80,000 two decades ago, said agency spokesman Chris Gunness.
At the same time, the Trump administration has blown a $305 million hole into the agency’s annual $1.2 billion budget — the result of a decision earlier this year to suspend most aid to the Palestinians until further notice. Washington has said it’s linking future funding to UNRWA reforms.
UNRWA has raised more than $200 million from other donors, but is still struggling.