Chaos in the Gaza Strip: Twelve dead, more than a thousand wounded

Israel's military said it did not expect violent protests along the border with the Gaza Strip to end anytime soon, after XNUMX Palestinians were killed and more than XNUMX wounded in mass protests in the area today. Because of this, the forces on the border will continue to be reinforced, an unnamed Israeli military official announced to the Israeli media, expressing readiness for "any scenario", as he said. Meanwhile, the army attacked three Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip, claiming it was in retaliation for an attempted attack on Palestinians protesting on the border with Israel. The army carried out airstrikes and artillery fire. She expects continued attempts to cross the border, attacks with improvised explosive devices or rocket fire from the Palestinian territory ruled by the Islamic extremist Hamas. About thirty thousand Palestinians participated in today's protests, the Israeli army estimates. They threw oysters and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border and tried to damage the border fence with saws and setting fires. Israeli army spokesman Ronen Manelis said the army faced "violent terrorist demonstrations at six points along the border fence" and that soldiers responded with accurate fire wherever there were attempts to breach the fence. All the dead were between the ages of 18 and 30, and allegedly several victims were known to the Israeli side, and at least two were members of the Hamas commandos, the spokesman said in a statement. There were no wounded on the Israeli side. Ahead of the protest, dubbed the "March of Return," an allusion to the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel, Israeli officials have expressed concern that it could escalate into violence and revenge attacks if it gets out of hand. Israel holds Hamas responsible for the violence stemming from the protests. Mass demonstrations and violence erupted at a time of heightened tension as the US prepares to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in the eastern part of which the Palestinians plan to base their future state. Organizers have said the protests will be peaceful, but they have escalated into clashes that observers say have not been seen since the 2014 Gaza war. years. It has been announced that there will be protests until mid-May until Israel's Independence Day, when the new American embassy will be inaugurated. Mid-May is the anniversary of the Nakba, or "catastrophe," as Palestinians call the founding of Israel, after which a war broke out that forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes. According to UN data, about 1,3 million of Gaza's 1,9 million inhabitants are refugees and their descendants. The leader of Islamic Jihad, a smaller extremist organization in the Gaza Strip, Khaled al-Bach, said the protesters were calling for Palestinians to be allowed to return to what is now Israel. "We left 70 years ago and today we decided to return to our country," he told AFP. In previous peace negotiations, the Palestinians always demanded, among other things, the right of return of Palestinian refugees, not only for those who are still alive, but also for their descendants, who number in the millions. No Israeli government would likely ever agree to that because Israel would no longer be a Jewish majority country. The Israeli position was that Palestinian refugees and descendants should become citizens of a Palestinian state at the end of the peace process.

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