Israeli forces killed 18 Palestinians and injured over 700 during a mass demonstration at the border.
By
Jennifer Williams@jenn_ruthjennifer@vox
A
protest along the tense border between Israel and Gaza turned violent Friday,
leaving 18 Palestinians dead and more than 700 wounded. Now Israelis and
Palestinians are sparring over what caused the bloodshed in the first place —
and preparing for the possibility of new violence that could kill even
more.
Israeli
soldiers shot and killed the Palestinians at a massive protest largely organized
by Hamas, the Islamist extremist group that controls Gaza. The rally was meant
to kick off weeks of sit-ins and demonstrations calling for the “right of
return” for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their descendants who
were displaced from their homes, or fled, during the creation of the state of
Israel.
The
30,000 Palestinians who took part in the protests also condemned the crippling
land, sea, and air blockade that Israel and Egypt have imposed on Gaza since
2007, when Hamas took power and kicked out the US-backed Palestinian Authority
government.
The
blockade, along with Hamas’s mismanagement, has turned Gaza into an open-air
prison: Residents have access to only four hours of electricity per day, only 10
percent have access to clean drinking water, and the unemployment rate is a
whopping 46 percent.
The
vast majority of protesters demonstrated peacefully in a tent city set up
hundreds of meters from the heavily fortified border, but smaller groups of
predominantly young Palestinians reportedly rolled burning tires and threw
stones and Molotov cocktails at nearby Israeli troops.
Israeli
forces — which included 100 military snipers who’d been deployed to the border
in advance of the protest — responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, and live
ammunition, killing 18 Palestinians and wounding hundreds more. No Israeli
soldiers were hurt.
Lt.
Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, had
publicly stated before the demonstration that the military would not allow “mass
infiltration” of Israel over the border or tolerate damage to the border fence
during the protests. “If lives are in jeopardy, there is permission to open
fire,” he added.
But
human rights groups say Israeli security forces illegally used deadly force
against protesters who didn’t pose an imminent threat.
“This
was an incident where soldiers were firing from behind the fence, separated by
buffer zones and other objects, firing on individuals well behind the fence, in
some cases retreating, not moving forward, or advancing without posing imminent
threat,” Omar Shakir of the international group Human Rights Watch told the
Washington Post.
The
bloodshed — the worst since the two sides fought a full-blown war in 2014 — has
triggered calls from the United Nations and the European Union for international
investigations into the incident.
The
question now is whether it will also spark new violence — and send the death
toll even higher.
Israelis
and Palestinians have vastly different explanations of why 18 people were shot
dead
Beyond
the actual violence, there’s now a social media war going on, with each side
releasing videos to bolster their explanations of what happened.
The
Israeli military has rejected accusations of excessive use of force and said
that it was acting “against violent protests and terrorists activities which
included live fire towards its soldiers [and] attempts to infiltrate
Israel.”
“The
forces acted according to open-fire protocols and in a reasonable manner as they
avoided harming civilians posted there by Hamas, who wish to embarrass Israel
while risking those civilians,” an IDF spokesperson said in a statement.
“[A]nyone who partakes in violent protests puts themselves at risk.”
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