GAZA: Israeli troops shot dead four Palestinians and wounded
150 others with live fire on Friday, medical officials said, as
protests over US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital entered a second week.
Most of the
casualties were on the Gaza Strip border, where thousands of
Palestinians gathered to hurl rocks at Israeli soldiers beyond the
fortified fence. Medics said two protesters, one of them
wheelchair-bound, were killed and 150 wounded.
In the
occupied West Bank, another area where Palestinians are seeking
statehood along with adjacent East Jerusalem, medics said two protesters
were killed and 10 wounded by Israeli gunfire. One of the dead was a
man who Israeli police troopers said was shot after he stabbed a member
of their unit. Witnesses said the Palestinian held a knife and wore what
looked like a bomb belt. A Palestinian medic who helped evacuate the
man for treatment said the belt was fake.
Palestinians —
and the wider Muslim world — were incensed at Trump’s Dec 6
announcement, which reversed decades of US policy reticence on
Jerusalem.
Washington’s European allies and Russia have
also voiced worries about Trump’s decision. Gaza’s dominant Hamas, which
reject coexistence with Israel, called last week for a new Palestinian
uprising, but any such mass-mobilisation has yet to be seen in the West
Bank or East Jerusalem.
There have been almost nightly
Gazan rocket launches into Israel, so far without casualties. Israel has
responded with air strikes on Hamas facilities, one of which killed two
gunmen.
The Israeli military said that, on Friday, about 3,500 Palestinians demonstrated near the Gaza border fence.
“During
the violent riots IDF (Israel Defence Force) soldiers fired selectively
towards main instigators,” the military said in a statement.
A
military spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the wheelchair-bound
protestor, Ibrahim Abu Thuraya. Abu Thuraya, 29, was a regular at such
demonstrations. In media interviews, he said he had lost both his legs
in a 2008 Israeli missile strike in Gaza.
In the West
Bank, the Israeli military said that about 2,500 Palestinians took part
in riots, rolling flaming tyres and throwing fire bombs and rocks at
soldiers and border police.
Israel captured East
Jerusalem, an area laden with Jewish, Muslim and Christian shrines, from
Jordan in the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move not recognised
internationally.
Palestinians hope that part of the city
will be the capital of a future independent state and Palestinian
leaders say Trump’s move is a serious blow to a moribund peace process.
