The demonstrators gathered in different cities across the Middle East to commemorate the May 15, 1948 occupation of Palestine, known as the Nakba Day.
In 1948, the Zionist regime forced 760,000 Palestinians out of their homeland to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab states as well as to many other countries in the world, and hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated and destroyed. The vast majority of Palestinian refugees, both those outside the 1949 armistice lines at the war's conclusion and those internally displaced, were barred by Israel from returning to their homes or reclaiming their property. This dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian people is known to them as al-Nakba, meaning “the catastrophe,” or “the disaster.”
On Sunday, a group of Palestinians, including children, marching to mark the “Nakba” were shot by the Israeli army after crossing a Hamas checkpoint and entering what Israel calls a “buffer zone” -- an empty area between checkpoints where Israeli soldiers generally shoot trespassers, Al Jazeera's Nicole Johnston reported from Gaza City on Sunday.
“We are just hearing that one person has been killed and about 80 people have been injured,” Johnston said.
According to AFP, tensions along the Israeli-Syrian frontier spiraled as thousands of protesters who massed on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights plateau tried to break through to the Israeli side, prompting the Zionist army to open fire.
Syria lashed out at Israel for opening fire on the protesters, warning that the Zionist regime would bear full responsibility for its “criminal” actions in which twelve people were killed.
A Druze doctor from Majdal Shams who rushed to the scene told AFP he saw at least two bodies, with local paramedics confirming the same toll, saying one had been shot in the head, and the second in the chest.
They also said had treated another 20 people for light to moderate injuries, with the Israeli army confirming that “dozens” had been injured.
Along the Lebanese border, Israeli gunfire killed six people and wounded another 71 as thousands of mainly Palestinian refugees demonstrated along the tense frontier, local medical sources said.
And along Gaza's northern border with Israel, 90 people were injured, five of them seriously, when troops opened fired as more than a thousand Palestinians marched on the Erez crossing.
At least half of the wounded were minors, medics said.
In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military killed two protesters, including a Palestinian teenager, and injuring at least 65 others, Press TV reported.
Israeli Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter planes flew over the demonstrators, whereas troops fired tank shells near marching protesters.
Troops reportedly open fire on Gazans marching on Erez border crossing the coastal strip's northern border with Israel.
A journalist suffered critical injury from Israeli fire in the northern city of Beit Hanoun.
Two Palestinians died and scores were wounded by Tel Aviv fire in the occupied West Bank.
Protesters in southern Lebanon had tried to cross the border into Israel, the statement added, saying troops had fired warning shots towards them.
During the two incidents, three army officers and 10 soldiers had been injured, it said, placing the blame for the violence squarely on the Damascus and Beirut.
In the West Bank, protesters there were calling for an end to the Israeli occupation and aggression as well as the release of all Palestinian prisoners -- who number around 9,000.
One person had been killed and at least 150 hurt in the Qalandiya village near the city of Ramallah in central West Bank.
The Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas' Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urged Palestinians to carry on with their resistance against the Tel Aviv regime. He also expressed hope that Palestinians would one day return to their homes and homeland.
“The Palestinian people know what their path is. They know the path to liberation and to resolving the conflict with the occupation, which can only be done under the banner of Islam. The struggle for freedom cannot happen unless this requirement mentioned in the Holy Quran is achieved,” he said.
GJ/GJ
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MNA
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