ISRAELIS THREATEN TO INVADE GAZA STRIP
Day of mourning after troops kill 15 Palestinians and wound hundreds
Israel yesterday threatened to carry out military operations inside Gaza, a day after its forces killed 15 Palestinians and wounded hundreds of others at a demonstration.
Israeli army spokesman Brig Gen Ronen Manelis said about 30,000 Palestinians gathered along the Israel-Gaza border on Friday and “if it continues, we shall have no choice but to respond inside the Gaza Strip”.
At least another 35 people were wounded in Israeli fire near the border yesterday, the Gaza Health Ministry said. Meanwhile, thousands marched through the streets of Gaza at the funerals of those killed on Friday, while doctors at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital continued to operate on some of the 750 people health officials said were injured by live rounds.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a day of national mourning and shops in the West Bank were closed as residents observed a general strike to protest against the killings.
The death toll was the highest in a single day since the 2014 Gaza war, the most recent of three wars fought between Hamas, the militant group that
controls the strip, and Israel. The armed wing of Hamas said five of its members were among the dead on Friday.
“If they are going to continue with more killing then we cannot tolerate such aggression forever,” senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told The National.
Mr Zahar said it was a matter of logic that if more Palestinians were killed, there would be a response.
The Palestinians gathered at five points near the Gaza-Israel border on Friday to begin a six-week protest endorsed by Hamas to highlight the right of refugees to return to their homes in what became Israel.
Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said the march had sent a message to the world that Palestinians would not accept a US peace plan being formulated, which is expected to leave refugees in the lurch and try to impose Israeli conditions.
“There is no place for an initiative that harms our national rights,” Mr Hamad said. “We paid a price, but all the time we are sacrificing and we will continue to do so until we achieve our national goals.”
The protest ends on May 15, the 70th anniversary of Israel’s
establishment, which Palestinians observe as the Nakba, or catastrophe, when 700,000 people were expelled or fled to become refugees.
While organisers had called for Friday’s march to be peaceful, smaller groups rushed toward the fence, throwing stones and rolling burning tyres. Israeli troops army responded with live fire.
Yesterday, the Palestinians released a video of a young man collapsing after being shot while he had his back to soldiers and was moving away from the border fence. The Israeli army had no immediate response.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for an independent investigation of the Israeli army’s conduct, but the US shielded Israel from any censure by the Security Council at an emergency meeting on Friday evening.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the army’s actions were illegal.
“Shooting at unarmed demonstrators is illegal and any command allowing such an action is manifestly illegal,” said the group’s spokesman, Amit Gilutz.
“Israel is trying to portray this as warfare and a war zone. But it isn’t really fighting between armed soldiers and demonstrators. It looks like some people were shot in the back and at long distances while they were going away from the fence.”
Meanwhile, Palestinian rescue teams were being denied access to two Palestinians who were either killed or wounded in Friday’s gunfire.
The two were lying 150 metres from the fence in an area that is part of a 300m zone Israel prevents Palestinians from entering, the Arab rights group Adalah said in Haifa.
“The Israeli military continues to prevent Palestinian civil defence and medical teams from entering the area to evacuate the two men,” Adalah said in a statement. The army said it was checking the matter.
Despite the mourning in the crowded coastal enclave, Hamas was regarded as being strengthened by the tragic events, with popular anger focused on Israel instead of on the inability of the ruling group to stop a deterioration in daily living conditions.
“Hamas is the biggest winner,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University in Gaza City. “It succeeded in diverting attention from poverty, unemployment, closure and lack of electricity.”
Before the protest, Hamas was under increased pressure after Mr Abbas, who blamed the organisation for an assassination attempt against Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, announced he had decided to take further “legal, national and financial” measures against the group.
Last year Mr Abbas took action he said was aimed at Hamas but which hit the civilian population hard. This included reducing salaries to civil servants and cutting payments to Israel for electricity supplied to Gaza.
Now, after Friday’s events, Mr Abbas will not move ahead with the sanctions, his adviser Nabil Shaath told The National.
“There is no chance he will take any measures that would hurt the Gazans,” Mr Shaath said.
He described Friday’s demonstration as “a real non-violent uprising, the likes of which we have not seen since 1987” when the first intifada broke out.
“If this non-violent method of resistance continues and Israel continues with its brutal military force, it will make a major change in world opinion towards the occupation,” he said.