RNA - “We will not leave a stone unturned. We have the right to demonstrate peacefully, to express our views and the large crowd of this week in Gaza --- larger than last week --- is a demonstration that the Palestinian people in a civilized, peaceful way, are expressing their opinion in the Gaza Strip, and they do not deserve to receive bullets for doing so,” the Palestinian envoy said.
"Shame" on "those cowards who are hiding behind the hills and armed to the teeth, protected to the teeth with high velocity rifles to use them as snipers against civilians... They are the cowards who are facing defenseless civilians and killing them as one would go hunting in the open fields,” Mansour stressed.
Four Palestinians were killed and some 1,000 others were wounded on Friday by Israeli fire as thousands particiapted in the rally along the Israel-Gaza border, as the "Great March of Return" demonstrations enter a fifth week.
The United Nations top human rights official has strongly condemned Israel’s use of “excessive force” on Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein has stressed that Israel had to stop the practice and hold to account those responsible for the many deaths and injuries.
42 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,500 injured along the fence in Gaza, with no reports of Israeli casualties, according to the official.
Palestinian and foreign doctors have reported that the live fire used by Israeli troops has caused unusually severe injuries among protesters in the besieged Gaza Strip over the past month.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also stated its medical teams have given post-operative care to people “with devastating injuries of an unusual severity, which are extremely complex to treat".
"The injuries sustained by patients will leave most with serious, long-term physical disabilities,” the aid group stressed.
“Half of the more than 500 patients we have admitted in our clinics have injuries where the bullet has literally destroyed tissue after having pulverized the bone,” Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, the organization’s head of mission in the Palestinian territories, said.
Thousands of Palestinians launched the Great March of Return in the besieged Gaza Strip to demand their right of return to their villages and towns they were forcibly displaced from in 1948.
The peaceful protests began on March 30, which coincided with the 42nd anniversary of the Land Day, which marks the day Israeli forces killed six Palestinians during protests against land confiscation in 1976.
The 46-day mass protests are expected to continue until May 15, which marks the 70th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe), in which over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes in 1948.
Despite ongoing international condemnation, Israel continues to use lethal force in suppressing the protesters, who are unarmed and are vulnerable in the face of the heavily armed Israeli soldiers stationed at the borders.
Israel had previously deployed military vehicles and special forces, including 100 snipers, to Gaza’s border, while the regime’s forces had also been authorized to shoot at the demonstrators.
According to Fars News Agancy, multiple human rights organizations have come out in full condemnation of Israel’s violent raid on the massive unarmed civilian protests in the besieged sliver.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) slammed Israel’s killing of Palestinian protesters as “unlawful” and “calculated”, saying those officials who authorized the Israeli military to use lethal force ahead of the mass rallies in Gaza are to blame for the bloodshed.
The HRW added that footage of the Gaza demonstrations includes no evidence of protesters using firearms, questioning the Israeli claim that the number of Palestinians injured by live ammunition was likely in the dozens.
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