Iraq News Now

Tens of thousands of Palestinians rallied at the Israel-Gaza

border on Saturday, facing off against Israeli tanks and troops on the first

anniversary of the ‘Great March of Return’ demonstrations, Reuters reported.

Israeli forces had massed the other side of the fortified

frontier, with tensions already high after a rocket attack from Gaza and

Israeli airstrikes earlier in the week.

Three Palestinians were killed on Saturday, Gaza medical

officials said. Two were 17-year-olds shot dead by Israeli troops while

protesting, they said, adding another person was killed at an overnight protest

hours before the main rally.

But Saturday’s rally was smaller than expected, despite

concerns that the anniversary would see a major escalation.

Loudspeakers at border protest camps played Palestinian

nationalist songs and Hamas, the armed Islamist movement which controls Gaza,

had ordered schools to shut for the day to encourage participation.

The protesters are demanding the end to a security blockade

imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt, and want Palestinians to have the right to

return to land from which their families fled or were forced to flee during

Israel’s founding in 1948.

Israel rejects any such return, saying that would eliminate

its Jewish majority.

Hundreds of Palestinian men, some from Hamas, were deployed

in bright orange vests to deter people from going near the fence. There was

also less acrid black smoke swirling around with little sign of tire-burning,

as on previous weekends.

The Israeli military said there had been around 40,000

protesters, some hurling grenades and explosives.

Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military

spokesman, said the day had “lots of rioters but significantly less violence”,

adding that it showed Hamas was able to stop violence when it wanted to.

But many protesters still managed to get near the border and

throw stones at Israeli soldiers.

YEAR OF PROTEST

Around 200 Gazans have been killed by Israeli troops since

the protests started on March 30 last year, according to Palestinian Health

Ministry figures. An Israeli soldier was also killed by a Palestinian sniper.

“In a year I will finish school. My father is unemployed so

I will be unable to go to university. Who is responsible? Israel,” said

16-year-old protester Mohammed Ali.

“I don’t know how many years will pass before our lives

improve but we should continue (protests) as long as the occupation and the

blockade exist.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the

protest was under close scrutiny at home in the build-up to Israeli elections

on April 9.

The veteran Israeli leader faces a serious challenge from a

centrist party led by a former general and pressure from hawkish allies in his

right-wing coalition to be tough on security.

Netanyahu said the Israeli military’s massive deployment had

ensured violence at the protests remained relatively low.

TENSE BUILDUP

The week before the anniversary saw a flare-up of

cross-border violence after a rocket fired from Gaza wounded seven Israelis

north of Tel Aviv on Monday. In response, Israel launched a wave of air strikes

and ramped up its forces at the border.

Egyptian mediators intervened to avoid further escalation,

and to ease tensions by persuading Israel to lift restrictions on the movement

of goods and people in and out of Gaza.

A long-standing Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza is cited

by humanitarian agencies as a key reason for impoverishment in the narrow

coastal enclave, into which 2 million Palestinians are packed.

Hamas leaders said on Saturday progress had been made in the

Egyptian talks but that they still had a list of demands from Israel.

“In the coming days we hope to conclude the negotiations and

achieve a real breaking of the blockade,” Yehya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza,

told Reuters at one rally.

Israel seized Gaza in a 1967 war and pulled out its troops

in 2005. It says the security blockade is necessary to stop weapons reaching

Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel and fired thousands of rockets

at it in the past decade.

Israel’s use of lethal force at the protests has drawn

censure from the United Nations and human rights groups. UN investigators last

week said Israeli forces might be guilty of war crimes for using excessive

force.

Israel says its troops have no choice because they are

trying to stop militants breaching the fence and attacking Israeli communities

nearby. Palestinians have also launched incendiary balloons and kites into

Israel.

March 30 also marks “Land Day”, an annual commemoration of

six Arab citizens of Israel who were killed by Israeli security forces during

demonstrations over land confiscations in 1976.