Israeli troops have shot dead a Palestinian protester in Gaza as thousands in the Palestinian territories, Israel and neighboring countries participated in an annual protest against the Jewish state’s land policies.
On Friday, security forces in riot gear deployed in high numbers along the frontiers of Israel and the Palestinian territories in anticipation of a repeat of violence from different protests last year, in which at least 38 people died near the borders with Lebanon and Syria.
However, for the most part, protests were small and organizers kept demonstrators from actually marching on the borders.
The “Land Day” rallies are an annual event marked by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who protest what they say are discriminatory Israeli land policies.
Gaza health official Adham Abu Salmia said Israeli forces shot and killed Mahmoud Zaqout, 21, and critically wounded another man as they were approaching the Israel-Gaza border during a demonstration of a few thousand people organized by the territory’s Hamas rulers.
The Israeli military said troops fired warning shots before shooting directly at Zaqout, in accordance with the army’s rules of engagement.
The military said it responded to protesters with tear gas in addition to gunfire.
Abu Salmia said an additional 37 protesters throughout Gaza were lightly injured, while the Israeli military put the number at about 29.
By midday, skirmishes had broken out between protesters and security forces in the Jerusalem area. Palestinians threw rocks and Israeli troops responded with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber pellets.
Dozens of Palestinians were treated for light wounds in hospitals throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem, including four with serious head wounds from rubber pellets and one hit in the head by a tear gas canister, said Mohammed Ayyad, a spokesman for the Red Crescent medical service in Ramallah.
Last year, demonstrators from Lebanon and Syria tried twice to break across the borders into Israel, setting off clashes with Israeli troops in which at least 38 people were killed.
The first unrest occurred in May, on the anniversary of Israel’s birth in 1948, a day the Palestinians refer to as the nakba, or catastrophe. The second took place a month later when demonstrators marked the naksa, or setback, the term the Palestinians use for the defeat in the 1967 Middle East war.
During that war, Israel conquered the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai peninsula from Egypt in just six days of fighting. Israel returned Sinai to Egypt under a 1979 peace accord and withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
In southern Lebanon on Friday, thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians gathered outside the Crusader-built Beaufort castle 15km from Israel. Lebanese security forces kept them from moving any closer to the border.
Sobhiyeh Mizari, 70, said she always taught her 12 children “never to forget Palestine.”
“We will liberate our land against the will of Israel and its backers,” said Mizari, who said her husband was killed in Israeli shelling of Lebanon in 1978.
Among the protesters in Lebanon were rabbis from the Orthodox Jewish sect Neturei Karta, a radical anti-Israel group that believes Jews must live without a country of their own until the coming of the Messiah.
In Jordan, thousands of demonstrators gathered a few kilometers east of Jordan’s border with the West Bank, chanting: “Death to Israel.”
Israel controls the West Bank side of the border.
“Get out, Jews, get out. Jerusalem and the West Bank are in the land of virtue, in Arab-Muslim land, and your dirt will stain it,” Hammam Saeed, a hawkish Muslim Brotherhood leader in Jordan, told the cheering crowd.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing