Israeli snipers may be encouraged to shoot & kill protesters by court’s decision–Palestinian NGO
86 Palestinian demonstrators were injured in violence on the Gaza border on Friday. It’s the eighth week of anti-occupation protests known as The Great March of Return. Hind Kudury has been following events.
Since the beginning of The Great March of Return on the 30th of March at least 9000 Palestinian protesters have been injured with live ammunition, teargas canisters, and other weapons the Israeli forces have been using against the Palestinian protesters. And since....the last death toll of today is -115 Palestinian protesters were killed.As you see tensions are rising. The Palestinian protesters are throwing rocks and the Israeli forces are reacting to these rocks with live ammunition. And I can clearly see the Israeli snipers. And we can hear also the live Ammunition. They are stationed right here. We can see at least 8 Israeli soldiers trying to walk towards the fence. There are also all the ambulances here ready to take any injury. It is very obvious that Palestinians will continue to protest and won’t give up on protesting.
The Israeli defense forces defended their handling of the protesters. They said in a tweet that the use of riot dispersal means and fire is in line with standard procedures. Just hours before Friday’s demonstrations, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition by human rights groups against the use of lethal military force targeting unarmed protesters in Gaza. In the ruling Judges also rejected the idea that the demonstrations have been peaceful claiming the situation amounts to an armed conflict against Hamas, which Israel sees as a terror group. The decision has outraged the human rights groups.
The Israeli supreme court completely ignored the broad factual basis presented to it by the petitioners, which include multiple testimonies of wounded and reports of international organizations involved in documenting the killing and wounding of unarmed protesters in Gaza. Since the protests began on March 30th, Israeli forces have killed at least a hundred Palestinians.
We use this kind of decisions by the Israeli judicial system. This is not the first time to be on the side of the military system again the civilians. We have this many times and now we have very serious concerns about the lives of the civilians more and more. This is a kind of encouragement and green light to the Israeli snipers shooting toward the civilians. Not only shooting, also killing. So this is the time that international community in order to be on the side of the Palestinian civilians against such grave violations committed by the Israeli court and Israeli military.