Three Palestinians killed on fifth Friday of protest
Rights and Accountability 27 April 2018
Palestinians protest east of Bureij in central Gaza on 27 April.
APA images
Three Palestinians were reported killed during the fifth consecutive Friday of mass protests as part of the Great March of Return demonstrations along Gaza’s eastern boundary with Israel.
Nearly 1,000 were injured during Friday’s protest, nearly 200 of them by live fire, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Eleven were reported to be seriously injured.
One of those killed, Abd al-Salam Eid Zuhdi Baker, 33, from Khan Younis refugee camp, was shot in the stomach.
Two Palestinians were killed east of Gaza City, where Palestinians defied Israel’s shoot-to-kill-and-maim policy and placed their national flag on the boundary fence:
The two slain men were identified as Khalil Naim Mustafa Atallah, 22, from Gaza City and Muhammad Amin Ahmad al-Muqid, 21, from Beach refugee camp. Al-Muqid was wounded by a live bullet to his head and Atallah was injured by shrapnel.
Israel claimed that its forces “operated in accordance with the rules of engagement and thwarted the attempted infiltration” by “rioters” who “approached the security fence, hurled rocks and firebombs, and tried to light the fence on fire.”
The New York Times, citing four unnamed witnesses, said that two Palestinians with handguns opened fire during the incident. Two other witnesses denied to the paper that anyone fired a gun toward the Israelis.
The Israeli military published its own video of the incident, showing protesters approaching the boundary fence as a military jeep fires on them from the other side:
The rioters approached the security fence, hurled rocks and firebombs, and tried to light the fence on fire. In response, IDF troops operated in accordance with the rules of engagement & thwarted the attempted infiltration
The video does not appear show, and the Israeli military did not claim, any Palestinian had a gun.
None of the videos and photos from Friday’s protests seen by The Electronic Intifada indicate that any participants were armed with guns.
The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights stated that its researchers did not see any militants or armed protesters in civilian clothes during Friday’s protests.
The Israeli government has justified the use of lethal force against the Great March of Return by saying that protesters are “trying to infiltrate into Israel, damage our infrastructure and kill Israelis,” as a military spokesperson told The New York Times on Friday.
In order to support that narrative, an Israeli government spokesperson tweeted a video on Friday which he falsely claimed showed a Palestinian girl saying of Israelis, “we want to kill them.” As Arabic speakers pointed out, the girl in the video did not say those words.
Israel bombed multiple sites across Gaza on Friday night, claiming that it was in response to “extensive attempts to breach Israeli territory” earlier in the day.
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