29 july 2019
The Israeli military says its so-called Southern Command’s engineering unit has been erecting a sand barrier near the fence between the occupied territories and the besieged Gaza Strip.
The Arabic-language Ma’an news agency, citing Israeli websites, said the barrier is reportedly aimed at preventing the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas from obtaining intelligence on the Israeli forces operating in the area.
According to the report, an Israeli journalist said in a tweet posted on Monday that the barrier is a response to missiles fired from Gaza towards the occupied territories and an attempt to prevent their launch. Video
Israel’s latest military aggression against Gaza was met by a barrage of missiles, many of which beat the regime's multi-billion dollar missile defense shields.
Hamas said in May Tel Aviv scrambled to seek a ceasefire in the wake of its military aggression against Gaza through mediators after the Palestinian resistance increased the range of its retaliatory rockets.
Israel has launched three major wars against the besieged enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.
Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards.
The besieged Gaza Strip has been witnessing weekly protests since March 30 last year. The Palestinians demand the right to return for those driven out of their homeland by Israeli aggression.
Israeli troops have killed at least 305 Palestinians since the beginning of the rallies and wounded nearly 18,000 others, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.
The Arabic-language Ma’an news agency, citing Israeli websites, said the barrier is reportedly aimed at preventing the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas from obtaining intelligence on the Israeli forces operating in the area.
According to the report, an Israeli journalist said in a tweet posted on Monday that the barrier is a response to missiles fired from Gaza towards the occupied territories and an attempt to prevent their launch. Video
Israel’s latest military aggression against Gaza was met by a barrage of missiles, many of which beat the regime's multi-billion dollar missile defense shields.
Hamas said in May Tel Aviv scrambled to seek a ceasefire in the wake of its military aggression against Gaza through mediators after the Palestinian resistance increased the range of its retaliatory rockets.
Israel has launched three major wars against the besieged enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.
Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards.
The besieged Gaza Strip has been witnessing weekly protests since March 30 last year. The Palestinians demand the right to return for those driven out of their homeland by Israeli aggression.
Israeli troops have killed at least 305 Palestinians since the beginning of the rallies and wounded nearly 18,000 others, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.
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A new report by the group ‘Forensic Architecture’ has found that widespread pesticide contamination from Israel into Gaza has occurred over decades, severely impacting the food grown in Gaza.
The full report follows below: Staging the terrain Over three decades, in tandem with the Madrid and Oslo negotiation processes, the occupied Gaza Strip has been slowly isolated from the rest of Palestine and the outside world, and subjected to repeated Israeli military incursions. These incursions intensified from September 2003 to the fall of 2014, during which Israel launched at least 24 separate military operations targeting Gaza, giving shape to its surrounding borders today. |
The borders around Gaza—one of the most densely-populated areas on Earth—continue to be hardened and heightened into a sophisticated system of under- and overground fences, forts, and surveillance technologies. Part of this system has been the production of an enforced and expanding military no-go area—or ‘buffer zone’—on the Palestinian side of the border.
Since 2014, the clearing and bulldozing of agricultural and residential lands by the Israel military along the eastern border of Gaza has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of crop-killing herbicides.
This ongoing practice has not only destroyed entire swaths of formerly arable land along the border fence, but also crops and farmlands hundreds of metres deep into Palestinian territory, resulting in the loss of livelihoods for Gazan farmers.
Tractors flattening land for the ‘buffer zone’ in eastern Gaza, in 2018. (Shourideh C. Molavi and Ain Media Gaza)Working closely with the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Tel Aviv-based Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, and the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Haifa, Forensic Architecture examined the environmental and legal implications of the Israeli practice of aerial spraying of herbicides along the Gaza border.
(Read the press release from Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement here.)
To this end, our investigation sought to answer the following questions: how do airborne herbicides travel into Gaza? How far into Gaza does it enter?
What is the concentration of the herbicide that drifts into Gaza? And what is the damage to the farmland on the Gazan side of the border?
Weaponising the wind
Our analysis of several first-hand videos, collected in the field, reveals that aerial spraying by commercial crop-dusters flying on the Israeli side of the border mobilises the wind to carry the chemicals into the Gaza Strip, at damaging concentrations.
The videos support the testimonies of farmers that, prior to spraying, the Israeli military uses the smoke from a burning tire to confirm the westerly direction of the wind, thereby carrying the herbicides from Israel into Gaza.
Our investigation shows that each spray leaves behind a unique destructive signature. No two aerial sprays will have the same effect, nor can their damage be reasonably predicted by the army, since the location where the toxic chemicals land, and their respective concentrations, depend heavily on the direction and speed of the wind relative to the flight path of the aircraft.
This practice weaponises herbicide spraying as a belligerent act, designed to ‘enable optimal and continuous security operations’.
Farm warfare
In November 2016, in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by the NGO Gisha, the Israeli Ministry of Defense confirmed that aerial herbicides are sprayed along the width of the perimeter of Gaza. Aerial spraying is conducted between the Erez crossing in the north and Kerem Shalom in the south, over an estimated area of 12,000 dunums (12 square kilometres).
The Israeli government’s response to an FOI request filed by the NGO Gisha. (Gisha)Following the advice of a contracted civilian agronomist, Israeli military spraying is conducted during key harvest periods, targeting spring and summer crops. Working with the private Israeli civilian aviation firm Chim-Nir (כימ-ניר), the army’s destruction of vegetation along the eastern perimeter is carried out in a continuous manner, using two aircrafts simultaneously, each equipped with a GPS system to enable precision.
The Ministry of Defense also confirmed that the Israeli military sprays a combination of three herbicides: Glyphosate, Oxyfluorfen (Oxygal) and Diuron (Diurex).
Glyphosate, formulated as ‘Roundup’, is the most widely-used herbicide in the world, leaving traces in soil, foodstuffs, air, and water, as well as human urine. Roundup is the flagship product of the Monsanto Company, a leading agricultural chemicals business that previously produced herbicides and defoliants used by the US military in Vietnam.
In March 2015, the World Health Organization’s Cancer Research Agency classified glyphosate as ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’. Since then, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency have ruled it safe for use, although a number of European environmental groups have opposed this ruling.
Oxyfluorfen, formulated as ‘Oxygal’, is manufactured by the Israeli company Tapazol Chemical Works Ltd, and suppresses the growth of certain broad-leaf and grassy weeds. According to the Material Safety Data Sheet provided by Tapazol, Oxygal can cause ‘severe irritation’ upon contact with skin or eyes, and must be ‘kept out of water supplies and sewers’.
The Ministry claimed that it is ‘not carrying out any aerial spraying over the area of the Gaza Strip… [but] only over the territory of the State of Israel along the security barrier’. Citing Israel’s Plant Protection Law, 5716-1956, the Ministry claimed that its spraying practices along the Gaza border are identical to aerial spraying carried out in other Israeli-controlled areas.
However, wind direction is a key factor that determines the movement of aerial herbicides from the purportedly-targeted area, and when effective drift control techniques are not applied, the Israeli army cannot mitigate the reach of those chemicals into Gazan farmland.
Plant scientists have noted that under similar environmental conditions, and with all sprayers adjusted properly, herbicide drift is ‘generally greater from aerial application than from ground application’; the use of ground-based field crop sprayers through tractors reduces the likelihood of extensive drift.
The Israeli military has confirmed that it sprayed aerial herbicides at least thirty times in along the border with Gaza in the period from November 2014 to December 2018. The spring of 2019 season was the first spring season during which the military has not conducted aerial spraying in the past four years.
To date, no Palestinian farmers have ever been compensated for damages to their crops.
Tracking a single spraying
On 5 April 2017, standing on the Gazan side of the border area near Khan Younes, a fieldworker with the NGO Gisha recorded a video of an Israeli crop-dusters spraying herbicides.
Palestinian farmers in the area reported concerns that their crops would be damaged as a result of this spraying, once it was carried by the wind, considering that crops had already been harmed in a previous round of spraying that took place only months prior. Further, most of the crops in the area had been recently sown, making them particularly susceptible to damage from herbicide spraying.
To determine the unique destructive signature of this spraying event, we threaded together evidence derived from vegetation on the ground, the testimony of civilians living and working in the area, and the nature of the environmental elements mobilised in the event.
We identified the plane spraying herbicides along the eastern border of Gaza as a Model S2R-T34 Turbo Thrush.
Using the GPS location of the videographer as recorded on their smartphone, we were able to establish the camera’s cone of vision by comparing the dimensions of visible landmarks, such as a watchtower. Through a process of camera calibration we found the location of the plane and used motion-tracking to model its path, in time and space, as it sprayed.
Our analysis revealed that before each spray, the plane dives to roughly 20m altitude to get closer to the ground. Each spray goes on for a duration of 2–5 seconds, covering the area to be fumigated by travelling back and forth in linear paths.
For the spraying that took place on 5 April 2017, we were able to identify six such spraying paths during the course of the two videos. All six of the sprayings were conducted on the Israeli side, close to the eastern border of Gaza.
Drift analysis
With the assistance of a fluid dynamics expert, Dr Salvador Navarro-Martinez, we sought to determine the extent and concentration of herbicide drift.
To this end, each spray event was simulated using our flight path reconstruction, the local topology, the injector systems fixed to the plane, and meteorological conditions at the time of spraying. We then collected key variables such as wind direction and speed, droplet distribution, and ground chemical deposition to determine the extent of the drift.
The results showed that as the wind moves across the path of the herbicide spray, it carries chemicals westward that are then deposited onto Gazan farmland. The simulation indicates that for the spraying on 5 April, harmful concentrations of herbicide drift reached in excess of 300m into Gaza. This confirms that Palestinian crops could have been harmed as a result of herbicide drift.
Satellite imagery analysis
Analysis of satellite imagery corroborates the findings of our drift simulation. We compared satellite imagery 5 days after the spraying, and 15 days after the spraying, to reveal visual indicators for the presence and health of vegetation. When the two analyses are overlaid with one another, vegetation degradation becomes visible across much of the same area potentially affected by herbicide drift.
These findings suggest that herbicides carried by winds during and after the Israeli military spraying on 5 April contributed to the degradation of vegetation on the Gazan side of the border, in Khan Younes. We believe that these findings are largely generalisable, since similar vegetation degradation is also visible in other areas in Gaza which are close to the border and in the vicinity of known Israeli target areas for aerial herbicide spraying.
Ground truth
Following another confirmed spraying flight by the Israeli military on 9 and 10 January 2018, also in the Khan Younes area, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture actively surveyed dozens of farms that had reported crop damage. Gazan farmers living hundreds of metres away from the border reported damage to crops totaling 250 acres following the January spraying.
Three days after another spraying in December 2018, we gathered similar samples of leaves that exhibited characteristic damage from a contact herbicide.
Leafy crops sampled from two locations along the border with Israel in East Gaza and Juhor ad Dik, hundreds of metres into Gaza, revealed visible damage from fungal pathogens, insect feeding, and possible herbicide drift carried by the wind into Gaza. Corroborating human testimony on the ground, leaves of plants along the Israel-Gaza border function like sensors, recording memories of environmental violence.
Aerial spraying: Less control, unpredictable damage
When analysing the elements of a single spraying event on 5 April 2017, the testimonies of farmers, satellite imagery, and drift analysis we have gathered all confirm that agricultural lands more than 300m from Gaza’s eastern border experienced damage, and with concentrations of herbicides above the recommended amounts for drift, according to the European Union.
Evidence derived from vegetation on the ground, civilian testimony, and the environmental elements mobilized in the spraying event all correspond to show that the Israeli practice of aerial fumigation at times when the wind is blowing into Gaza causes damage to farmland hundreds of metres inside the besieged strip.
This confirms that as a practice for the clearing of vegetation, aerial spraying causes indiscriminate damage: the effects are less readily controllable, and the extent of damage to Palestinian farmland per spray is largely unpredictable. As such, the Israeli military cannot guarantee the reach of the chemicals it sprays by air, nor ensure that those chemicals remain proportionate to the declared objective of improving visibility for security operations.
Israeli military authorities continue to reject calls to end the practice of aerial herbicide spraying along the border with the Gaza Strip. Israel does not coordinate or share the proposed timing of planned operations with the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, the International Committee of the Red Cross, or with Gazan farmers, a practice which could mitigate some of the harm to those farmers’ property, and possibly to the surrounding environment as well.
Damage to land, health and livelihoods
The inability to control both the effects and reach of this ongoing military practice along the eastern border enacts a heavy price on Gaza’s farming community and the broader civilian population.
The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that between 2014 and 2018, herbicide spraying damaged upwards of 13,000 dunams of farmland in Gaza. The NGO Al-Mezan has further warned [pdf] that, in addition to crop damage, the long-term consumption by livestock of plants affected by the sprayed chemicals has negative effects that may harm the health of humans who then consume meat from those livestock.
In the context of an ongoing Israeli blockade—with restrictions on the movement of people and goods into Gaza, and diminishing possibilities for farmers to cultivate land, maintain livelihoods, raise livestock, and to fish—the agricultural lands along Gaza’s eastern border are an important part of the food security of its population.
Eruptive violence
Along with the regular bulldozing and flattening of residential and farm land, aerial herbicide spraying is one part of a slow process of ‘desertification’, that has transformed a once lush and agriculturally active border zone into parched ground, cleared of vegetation.
These practices have provided the Israeli military with visibility along the eastern border of Gaza—a visibility that has also left Palestinian civilians, including farmers, youth and families, further exposed to Israeli fire from hundreds of metres away.
The slow violence of spatial degradation through the mobilisation of environmental elements thus accelerates into an eruptive violence.
Since 2014, the clearing and bulldozing of agricultural and residential lands by the Israel military along the eastern border of Gaza has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of crop-killing herbicides.
This ongoing practice has not only destroyed entire swaths of formerly arable land along the border fence, but also crops and farmlands hundreds of metres deep into Palestinian territory, resulting in the loss of livelihoods for Gazan farmers.
Tractors flattening land for the ‘buffer zone’ in eastern Gaza, in 2018. (Shourideh C. Molavi and Ain Media Gaza)Working closely with the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Tel Aviv-based Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, and the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Haifa, Forensic Architecture examined the environmental and legal implications of the Israeli practice of aerial spraying of herbicides along the Gaza border.
(Read the press release from Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement here.)
To this end, our investigation sought to answer the following questions: how do airborne herbicides travel into Gaza? How far into Gaza does it enter?
What is the concentration of the herbicide that drifts into Gaza? And what is the damage to the farmland on the Gazan side of the border?
Weaponising the wind
Our analysis of several first-hand videos, collected in the field, reveals that aerial spraying by commercial crop-dusters flying on the Israeli side of the border mobilises the wind to carry the chemicals into the Gaza Strip, at damaging concentrations.
The videos support the testimonies of farmers that, prior to spraying, the Israeli military uses the smoke from a burning tire to confirm the westerly direction of the wind, thereby carrying the herbicides from Israel into Gaza.
Our investigation shows that each spray leaves behind a unique destructive signature. No two aerial sprays will have the same effect, nor can their damage be reasonably predicted by the army, since the location where the toxic chemicals land, and their respective concentrations, depend heavily on the direction and speed of the wind relative to the flight path of the aircraft.
This practice weaponises herbicide spraying as a belligerent act, designed to ‘enable optimal and continuous security operations’.
Farm warfare
In November 2016, in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by the NGO Gisha, the Israeli Ministry of Defense confirmed that aerial herbicides are sprayed along the width of the perimeter of Gaza. Aerial spraying is conducted between the Erez crossing in the north and Kerem Shalom in the south, over an estimated area of 12,000 dunums (12 square kilometres).
The Israeli government’s response to an FOI request filed by the NGO Gisha. (Gisha)Following the advice of a contracted civilian agronomist, Israeli military spraying is conducted during key harvest periods, targeting spring and summer crops. Working with the private Israeli civilian aviation firm Chim-Nir (כימ-ניר), the army’s destruction of vegetation along the eastern perimeter is carried out in a continuous manner, using two aircrafts simultaneously, each equipped with a GPS system to enable precision.
The Ministry of Defense also confirmed that the Israeli military sprays a combination of three herbicides: Glyphosate, Oxyfluorfen (Oxygal) and Diuron (Diurex).
Glyphosate, formulated as ‘Roundup’, is the most widely-used herbicide in the world, leaving traces in soil, foodstuffs, air, and water, as well as human urine. Roundup is the flagship product of the Monsanto Company, a leading agricultural chemicals business that previously produced herbicides and defoliants used by the US military in Vietnam.
In March 2015, the World Health Organization’s Cancer Research Agency classified glyphosate as ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’. Since then, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency have ruled it safe for use, although a number of European environmental groups have opposed this ruling.
Oxyfluorfen, formulated as ‘Oxygal’, is manufactured by the Israeli company Tapazol Chemical Works Ltd, and suppresses the growth of certain broad-leaf and grassy weeds. According to the Material Safety Data Sheet provided by Tapazol, Oxygal can cause ‘severe irritation’ upon contact with skin or eyes, and must be ‘kept out of water supplies and sewers’.
The Ministry claimed that it is ‘not carrying out any aerial spraying over the area of the Gaza Strip… [but] only over the territory of the State of Israel along the security barrier’. Citing Israel’s Plant Protection Law, 5716-1956, the Ministry claimed that its spraying practices along the Gaza border are identical to aerial spraying carried out in other Israeli-controlled areas.
However, wind direction is a key factor that determines the movement of aerial herbicides from the purportedly-targeted area, and when effective drift control techniques are not applied, the Israeli army cannot mitigate the reach of those chemicals into Gazan farmland.
Plant scientists have noted that under similar environmental conditions, and with all sprayers adjusted properly, herbicide drift is ‘generally greater from aerial application than from ground application’; the use of ground-based field crop sprayers through tractors reduces the likelihood of extensive drift.
The Israeli military has confirmed that it sprayed aerial herbicides at least thirty times in along the border with Gaza in the period from November 2014 to December 2018. The spring of 2019 season was the first spring season during which the military has not conducted aerial spraying in the past four years.
To date, no Palestinian farmers have ever been compensated for damages to their crops.
Tracking a single spraying
On 5 April 2017, standing on the Gazan side of the border area near Khan Younes, a fieldworker with the NGO Gisha recorded a video of an Israeli crop-dusters spraying herbicides.
Palestinian farmers in the area reported concerns that their crops would be damaged as a result of this spraying, once it was carried by the wind, considering that crops had already been harmed in a previous round of spraying that took place only months prior. Further, most of the crops in the area had been recently sown, making them particularly susceptible to damage from herbicide spraying.
To determine the unique destructive signature of this spraying event, we threaded together evidence derived from vegetation on the ground, the testimony of civilians living and working in the area, and the nature of the environmental elements mobilised in the event.
We identified the plane spraying herbicides along the eastern border of Gaza as a Model S2R-T34 Turbo Thrush.
Using the GPS location of the videographer as recorded on their smartphone, we were able to establish the camera’s cone of vision by comparing the dimensions of visible landmarks, such as a watchtower. Through a process of camera calibration we found the location of the plane and used motion-tracking to model its path, in time and space, as it sprayed.
Our analysis revealed that before each spray, the plane dives to roughly 20m altitude to get closer to the ground. Each spray goes on for a duration of 2–5 seconds, covering the area to be fumigated by travelling back and forth in linear paths.
For the spraying that took place on 5 April 2017, we were able to identify six such spraying paths during the course of the two videos. All six of the sprayings were conducted on the Israeli side, close to the eastern border of Gaza.
Drift analysis
With the assistance of a fluid dynamics expert, Dr Salvador Navarro-Martinez, we sought to determine the extent and concentration of herbicide drift.
To this end, each spray event was simulated using our flight path reconstruction, the local topology, the injector systems fixed to the plane, and meteorological conditions at the time of spraying. We then collected key variables such as wind direction and speed, droplet distribution, and ground chemical deposition to determine the extent of the drift.
The results showed that as the wind moves across the path of the herbicide spray, it carries chemicals westward that are then deposited onto Gazan farmland. The simulation indicates that for the spraying on 5 April, harmful concentrations of herbicide drift reached in excess of 300m into Gaza. This confirms that Palestinian crops could have been harmed as a result of herbicide drift.
Satellite imagery analysis
Analysis of satellite imagery corroborates the findings of our drift simulation. We compared satellite imagery 5 days after the spraying, and 15 days after the spraying, to reveal visual indicators for the presence and health of vegetation. When the two analyses are overlaid with one another, vegetation degradation becomes visible across much of the same area potentially affected by herbicide drift.
These findings suggest that herbicides carried by winds during and after the Israeli military spraying on 5 April contributed to the degradation of vegetation on the Gazan side of the border, in Khan Younes. We believe that these findings are largely generalisable, since similar vegetation degradation is also visible in other areas in Gaza which are close to the border and in the vicinity of known Israeli target areas for aerial herbicide spraying.
Ground truth
Following another confirmed spraying flight by the Israeli military on 9 and 10 January 2018, also in the Khan Younes area, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture actively surveyed dozens of farms that had reported crop damage. Gazan farmers living hundreds of metres away from the border reported damage to crops totaling 250 acres following the January spraying.
Three days after another spraying in December 2018, we gathered similar samples of leaves that exhibited characteristic damage from a contact herbicide.
Leafy crops sampled from two locations along the border with Israel in East Gaza and Juhor ad Dik, hundreds of metres into Gaza, revealed visible damage from fungal pathogens, insect feeding, and possible herbicide drift carried by the wind into Gaza. Corroborating human testimony on the ground, leaves of plants along the Israel-Gaza border function like sensors, recording memories of environmental violence.
Aerial spraying: Less control, unpredictable damage
When analysing the elements of a single spraying event on 5 April 2017, the testimonies of farmers, satellite imagery, and drift analysis we have gathered all confirm that agricultural lands more than 300m from Gaza’s eastern border experienced damage, and with concentrations of herbicides above the recommended amounts for drift, according to the European Union.
Evidence derived from vegetation on the ground, civilian testimony, and the environmental elements mobilized in the spraying event all correspond to show that the Israeli practice of aerial fumigation at times when the wind is blowing into Gaza causes damage to farmland hundreds of metres inside the besieged strip.
This confirms that as a practice for the clearing of vegetation, aerial spraying causes indiscriminate damage: the effects are less readily controllable, and the extent of damage to Palestinian farmland per spray is largely unpredictable. As such, the Israeli military cannot guarantee the reach of the chemicals it sprays by air, nor ensure that those chemicals remain proportionate to the declared objective of improving visibility for security operations.
Israeli military authorities continue to reject calls to end the practice of aerial herbicide spraying along the border with the Gaza Strip. Israel does not coordinate or share the proposed timing of planned operations with the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, the International Committee of the Red Cross, or with Gazan farmers, a practice which could mitigate some of the harm to those farmers’ property, and possibly to the surrounding environment as well.
Damage to land, health and livelihoods
The inability to control both the effects and reach of this ongoing military practice along the eastern border enacts a heavy price on Gaza’s farming community and the broader civilian population.
The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that between 2014 and 2018, herbicide spraying damaged upwards of 13,000 dunams of farmland in Gaza. The NGO Al-Mezan has further warned [pdf] that, in addition to crop damage, the long-term consumption by livestock of plants affected by the sprayed chemicals has negative effects that may harm the health of humans who then consume meat from those livestock.
In the context of an ongoing Israeli blockade—with restrictions on the movement of people and goods into Gaza, and diminishing possibilities for farmers to cultivate land, maintain livelihoods, raise livestock, and to fish—the agricultural lands along Gaza’s eastern border are an important part of the food security of its population.
Eruptive violence
Along with the regular bulldozing and flattening of residential and farm land, aerial herbicide spraying is one part of a slow process of ‘desertification’, that has transformed a once lush and agriculturally active border zone into parched ground, cleared of vegetation.
These practices have provided the Israeli military with visibility along the eastern border of Gaza—a visibility that has also left Palestinian civilians, including farmers, youth and families, further exposed to Israeli fire from hundreds of metres away.
The slow violence of spatial degradation through the mobilisation of environmental elements thus accelerates into an eruptive violence.
Ahead of the UN Human Rights Council meeting on 18 March 2019, on the findings of the UN commission of inquiry into the 2018 Gaza protests, B’Tselem has issued a position paper [pdf] explaining that Israel’s promise to “investigate” 11 incidents in which protesters were killed is mere propaganda.
In a letter [pdf], B’Tselem’s director, Hagai El-Ad called upon the head of the commission, Santiago Canton, to reject the tapestry of lies Israel has woven while killing more unarmed protesters: “A real change in Israeli policy will only take place if the international community demands it clearly and unequivocally, and if it stops allowing Israel to do no more than offer hollow promises of ‘investigation’.”
In the position paper, B’Tselem explains why announcing investigations is a standard ploy that Israel employs to ease international pressure whenever its unlawful policy elicits criticism.
For the past year, Israel has implemented an unlawful open-fire policy towards Palestinians protesting near the Gaza perimeter fence, which permits live fire at unarmed protesters who pose no danger to anyone. Mere days after the protests began, in response to an international outcry over the dozens of fatalities, Israel employed its tried-and-true tactic in such situations and swiftly announced it would “investigate exceptional incidents”.
Recently, leading up to the scheduled publication of the conclusions by the UN Human Rights Council international commission of inquiry on the matter, the IDF Spokesperson has again begun to flaunt this fig leaf: eleven Military Police investigations regarding “specific incidents,” all still pending. Meanwhile, the regulations remain unchanged and are still being implemented in the field. People are still being killed or wounded, and no one is questioning the policy or being held to account for it.
Israel’s announcement has, at least so far, achieved its goal: welcomed by the international community, it has eased pressure on Israel, enabling the policy that has led thus far to 200 persons killed and more than 6,300 injured to continue unchanged.
Earlier this year, Israel’s High Court of Justice found this hollow promise satisfactory in ruling on a petition against the open-fire policy, and refused to order that it be changed. In their ruling the justices relied, among other things, on the assurance that the military would investigate “exceptional incidents”, while Israel continues to implement its lethal policy.
The “investigations” carried out by the military whitewashing mechanism, under the leadership of the Military Advocate General (MAG), are meaningless other than their role in aiding Israel’s effort to silence international criticism. They do not lead to adopting any measures against any of the people responsible for harm to Palestinians, as from the very outset the investigations do not probe the responsibility at the level of officials who set out and approved the policy or the unlawful orders.
The investigations do not deter the troops serving on the ground, as they are so few and far between, and even in cases in which an investigation was actually launched, it was then almost invariably closed without any further measures. Nor do the investigations achieve justice for the victims or their families.
This is standard procedure for Israel:
In Operation Cast Lead, which ran from December 2008 to January 2009 in the Gaza Strip, Israel killed 1,391 Palestinians. At least 759 (55%) had been uninvolved in the hostilities, including 318 children under 18. Injured people bled to death while the military denied them passage to hospital.
Palestinians were shot while waving a white flag. The MAG Corps “examined” over 400 incidents, and ordered the launching of at least 52 “investigations.” Soldiers were convicted in three cases only – on charges of theft, using a child as a human shield, and unlawful use of a weapon.
In Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, Israel killed 2,203 Palestinians, including 1,392 (63%) who were uninvolved in the hostilities; 528 were under 18. Entire families were killed when their homes were hit in an air strike.
The MAG Corps established a “special examination mechanism” to examine and investigate instances defined as “exceptional” and then conveyed its recommendations to the MAG. As before, it was found that all had been lawful and above board, apart from one case in which three soldiers were convicted of stealing NIS 2,420. This episode of whitewashing is not yet complete: some of the “investigations” are still underway.
None of this is a random fluke: Israel does not wish to truly investigate, and therefore has created mechanisms that are incapable of carrying out full investigations. Israel’s sole purpose is to create a façade of an intention to investigate in order to silence criticism.
However, investigations and accountability are no merely theoretical issue or one of image. They are a matter of life and death. Investigations are necessary so that senior officials realize that they cannot give unlawful orders, and to demonstrate to the troops in the field the parameters of the use of force. When propaganda diversion tactics succeed in preventing accountability, there is a price to pay, and it is measured in human lives.
The international community must stop buying into Israel’s propaganda ploys concerning so-called “investigations”. There is no rational basis to expect Israel to carry out a real investigation. It does not have the slightest interest in investigating the policy itself, condemning it or demanding accountability from those responsible.
Therefore, the international community must make the most of its power and influence to compel Israel to change its policy and immediately cease the gunfire at protesters who pose no danger.
In a letter [pdf], B’Tselem’s director, Hagai El-Ad called upon the head of the commission, Santiago Canton, to reject the tapestry of lies Israel has woven while killing more unarmed protesters: “A real change in Israeli policy will only take place if the international community demands it clearly and unequivocally, and if it stops allowing Israel to do no more than offer hollow promises of ‘investigation’.”
In the position paper, B’Tselem explains why announcing investigations is a standard ploy that Israel employs to ease international pressure whenever its unlawful policy elicits criticism.
For the past year, Israel has implemented an unlawful open-fire policy towards Palestinians protesting near the Gaza perimeter fence, which permits live fire at unarmed protesters who pose no danger to anyone. Mere days after the protests began, in response to an international outcry over the dozens of fatalities, Israel employed its tried-and-true tactic in such situations and swiftly announced it would “investigate exceptional incidents”.
Recently, leading up to the scheduled publication of the conclusions by the UN Human Rights Council international commission of inquiry on the matter, the IDF Spokesperson has again begun to flaunt this fig leaf: eleven Military Police investigations regarding “specific incidents,” all still pending. Meanwhile, the regulations remain unchanged and are still being implemented in the field. People are still being killed or wounded, and no one is questioning the policy or being held to account for it.
Israel’s announcement has, at least so far, achieved its goal: welcomed by the international community, it has eased pressure on Israel, enabling the policy that has led thus far to 200 persons killed and more than 6,300 injured to continue unchanged.
Earlier this year, Israel’s High Court of Justice found this hollow promise satisfactory in ruling on a petition against the open-fire policy, and refused to order that it be changed. In their ruling the justices relied, among other things, on the assurance that the military would investigate “exceptional incidents”, while Israel continues to implement its lethal policy.
The “investigations” carried out by the military whitewashing mechanism, under the leadership of the Military Advocate General (MAG), are meaningless other than their role in aiding Israel’s effort to silence international criticism. They do not lead to adopting any measures against any of the people responsible for harm to Palestinians, as from the very outset the investigations do not probe the responsibility at the level of officials who set out and approved the policy or the unlawful orders.
The investigations do not deter the troops serving on the ground, as they are so few and far between, and even in cases in which an investigation was actually launched, it was then almost invariably closed without any further measures. Nor do the investigations achieve justice for the victims or their families.
This is standard procedure for Israel:
In Operation Cast Lead, which ran from December 2008 to January 2009 in the Gaza Strip, Israel killed 1,391 Palestinians. At least 759 (55%) had been uninvolved in the hostilities, including 318 children under 18. Injured people bled to death while the military denied them passage to hospital.
Palestinians were shot while waving a white flag. The MAG Corps “examined” over 400 incidents, and ordered the launching of at least 52 “investigations.” Soldiers were convicted in three cases only – on charges of theft, using a child as a human shield, and unlawful use of a weapon.
In Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, Israel killed 2,203 Palestinians, including 1,392 (63%) who were uninvolved in the hostilities; 528 were under 18. Entire families were killed when their homes were hit in an air strike.
The MAG Corps established a “special examination mechanism” to examine and investigate instances defined as “exceptional” and then conveyed its recommendations to the MAG. As before, it was found that all had been lawful and above board, apart from one case in which three soldiers were convicted of stealing NIS 2,420. This episode of whitewashing is not yet complete: some of the “investigations” are still underway.
None of this is a random fluke: Israel does not wish to truly investigate, and therefore has created mechanisms that are incapable of carrying out full investigations. Israel’s sole purpose is to create a façade of an intention to investigate in order to silence criticism.
However, investigations and accountability are no merely theoretical issue or one of image. They are a matter of life and death. Investigations are necessary so that senior officials realize that they cannot give unlawful orders, and to demonstrate to the troops in the field the parameters of the use of force. When propaganda diversion tactics succeed in preventing accountability, there is a price to pay, and it is measured in human lives.
The international community must stop buying into Israel’s propaganda ploys concerning so-called “investigations”. There is no rational basis to expect Israel to carry out a real investigation. It does not have the slightest interest in investigating the policy itself, condemning it or demanding accountability from those responsible.
Therefore, the international community must make the most of its power and influence to compel Israel to change its policy and immediately cease the gunfire at protesters who pose no danger.
Israel’s unlawful open-fire policy during the demonstrations along the Gaza perimeter fence – which were upheld by the Supreme Court – have so far resulted in hundreds of Palestinian deaths and thousands of injuries.
Official sources now admit that they were well aware that people were being killed when even the State did not claim that this is justified.
Despite this, no-one has taken action to amend the open-fire regulations. Instead, the military continued with its trial-and-error approach, ignoring the fact that human lives were at stake: people whose lives have been taken, and families who have been permanently devastated.
Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency reports that on 22 July, 2019, it emerged that the officials were fully aware, at every stage, of the gulf between their declarations and reality.
Carmela Menashe, a reporter for Kan News, reported that the military has now decided to change the open-fire regulations for snipers “after it emerged that firing at the lower limbs above the knee led, in most cases, to death, despite the fact that this was not the objective.
Going forward, soldiers have been briefed to shoot below the knee and then at the ankle.” A senior officer at the military’s Counter-Terrorism School stated that the snipers’ objective “is not to kill but to injure, and accordingly one of the lessons learned related to the direction toward which they fire…
At first, we told them to shoot at the leg. We saw that this can result in fatalities, so we told them to shoot below the knee, then we fine-tuned the regulations to shooting at the ankle.”
The decision to change the regulations only now, after more than a year during which they led to the deaths of at least 206 Palestinians, including 37 minors, and the injury of thousands, in no way suggests that the military attaches great value to human life.
On the contrary, it shows that the military consciously chose not to regard those standing on the other side of the fence as humans. In its naivety, the High Court of Justice approved this practice. Both the military and the courts bear the responsibility for this criminal policy.
Background
In March of 2018, thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip began demonstrating along the fence that separates Gaza from Israel, demanding an end to the siege of the Gaza Strip and the implementation of the right of return. From the outset, following the announcement of the first demonstration, Israel portrayed the protests as an existential threat to the state and regarded the participants as dangerous terrorists.
As a result of this approach, the military implemented lethal open-fire regulations from the first day of the protests: regulations that are patently unlawful and immoral.
As part of this policy, the military permitted the use of live fire against demonstrators on the other side of the fence and posed no danger to anyone, certainly not the armed and well-protected security forces stationed at a considerable distance from them.
B’Tselem urged soldiers to refuse to obey these regulations and to refrain from shooting at unarmed protestors.
The regulation were legally challenged at the High Court of Justice. In its response to the petition, the State defended the regulations, declaring that “there can be no doubt regarding their legality.”
The State emphasized that the regulations were approved by the Military Advocate General and the Attorney General, and that they permit live fire “solely in order to address violent disturbances that present a clear and present danger to IDF forces or to Israeli civilians.”
The State added that “the rules permit precise fire at the legs of a main rioter or main instigator in order to eliminate the danger from the violence disturbance of the peace.”
The State further added that “there is an orderly process in place for operational debriefing and implementation of lessons learned; ” that “forces have been provided with clarifications and highlights designed to further limit, insofar as possible, the scope of injuries;” and that incidents involving fatalities have been referred for “review by the General Staff Mechanism for Fact-Finding Assessments which investigates exceptional incidents.”
The Court accepted this position verbatim and made no attempt to challenge it. Supreme Court Vice President, Justice Hanan Melcer, held that the regulations permit live fire solely when “there is an immediate, clear and present danger to IDF forces or Israeli civilians,” and allow only “precise fire at the legs of a main rioter or main instigator in order to eliminate the danger from the violence disturbance of the peace, with the goal of eliminating the anticipated imminent danger.”
Supreme Court President Esther Hayut concurred with Justice Melcer, similarly accepting each and every one of the State’s claims regarding the great caution the military exercises in the use of life fire, “in order to minimize as far as possible the potential harm to uninvolved civilians who participate in [the demonstrations].”
In the months since the beginning of the demonstrations, a gap between the State’s claims and the horrifying outcomes of the actual implementation of the unlawful open-fire regulations approved by the High Court grew wider. To date, the military has killed at least 206 Palestinian demonstrators using live fire, 37 of whom were minors under the age of 18.
According to figures published by OCHA, more than 7,800 Palestinians have been injured by live fire. According to the World Health Organization, physicians have had to perform amputations in 139 cases – 30 of which involved minors and 121 involved the lower limbs. Moreover, 24 people have been left paralyzed as the result of spinal injuries.
Human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, as well as various media outlets, reported these outcomes in real time.
Despite this, officials refused to change the open-fire regulations, persistently repeating that the regulations are legal and proportionate, and that they permit live fire only as a last resort, in the absence of any other alternative.
Official sources now admit that they were well aware that people were being killed when even the State did not claim that this is justified.
Despite this, no-one has taken action to amend the open-fire regulations. Instead, the military continued with its trial-and-error approach, ignoring the fact that human lives were at stake: people whose lives have been taken, and families who have been permanently devastated.
Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency reports that on 22 July, 2019, it emerged that the officials were fully aware, at every stage, of the gulf between their declarations and reality.
Carmela Menashe, a reporter for Kan News, reported that the military has now decided to change the open-fire regulations for snipers “after it emerged that firing at the lower limbs above the knee led, in most cases, to death, despite the fact that this was not the objective.
Going forward, soldiers have been briefed to shoot below the knee and then at the ankle.” A senior officer at the military’s Counter-Terrorism School stated that the snipers’ objective “is not to kill but to injure, and accordingly one of the lessons learned related to the direction toward which they fire…
At first, we told them to shoot at the leg. We saw that this can result in fatalities, so we told them to shoot below the knee, then we fine-tuned the regulations to shooting at the ankle.”
The decision to change the regulations only now, after more than a year during which they led to the deaths of at least 206 Palestinians, including 37 minors, and the injury of thousands, in no way suggests that the military attaches great value to human life.
On the contrary, it shows that the military consciously chose not to regard those standing on the other side of the fence as humans. In its naivety, the High Court of Justice approved this practice. Both the military and the courts bear the responsibility for this criminal policy.
Background
In March of 2018, thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip began demonstrating along the fence that separates Gaza from Israel, demanding an end to the siege of the Gaza Strip and the implementation of the right of return. From the outset, following the announcement of the first demonstration, Israel portrayed the protests as an existential threat to the state and regarded the participants as dangerous terrorists.
As a result of this approach, the military implemented lethal open-fire regulations from the first day of the protests: regulations that are patently unlawful and immoral.
As part of this policy, the military permitted the use of live fire against demonstrators on the other side of the fence and posed no danger to anyone, certainly not the armed and well-protected security forces stationed at a considerable distance from them.
B’Tselem urged soldiers to refuse to obey these regulations and to refrain from shooting at unarmed protestors.
The regulation were legally challenged at the High Court of Justice. In its response to the petition, the State defended the regulations, declaring that “there can be no doubt regarding their legality.”
The State emphasized that the regulations were approved by the Military Advocate General and the Attorney General, and that they permit live fire “solely in order to address violent disturbances that present a clear and present danger to IDF forces or to Israeli civilians.”
The State added that “the rules permit precise fire at the legs of a main rioter or main instigator in order to eliminate the danger from the violence disturbance of the peace.”
The State further added that “there is an orderly process in place for operational debriefing and implementation of lessons learned; ” that “forces have been provided with clarifications and highlights designed to further limit, insofar as possible, the scope of injuries;” and that incidents involving fatalities have been referred for “review by the General Staff Mechanism for Fact-Finding Assessments which investigates exceptional incidents.”
The Court accepted this position verbatim and made no attempt to challenge it. Supreme Court Vice President, Justice Hanan Melcer, held that the regulations permit live fire solely when “there is an immediate, clear and present danger to IDF forces or Israeli civilians,” and allow only “precise fire at the legs of a main rioter or main instigator in order to eliminate the danger from the violence disturbance of the peace, with the goal of eliminating the anticipated imminent danger.”
Supreme Court President Esther Hayut concurred with Justice Melcer, similarly accepting each and every one of the State’s claims regarding the great caution the military exercises in the use of life fire, “in order to minimize as far as possible the potential harm to uninvolved civilians who participate in [the demonstrations].”
In the months since the beginning of the demonstrations, a gap between the State’s claims and the horrifying outcomes of the actual implementation of the unlawful open-fire regulations approved by the High Court grew wider. To date, the military has killed at least 206 Palestinian demonstrators using live fire, 37 of whom were minors under the age of 18.
According to figures published by OCHA, more than 7,800 Palestinians have been injured by live fire. According to the World Health Organization, physicians have had to perform amputations in 139 cases – 30 of which involved minors and 121 involved the lower limbs. Moreover, 24 people have been left paralyzed as the result of spinal injuries.
Human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, as well as various media outlets, reported these outcomes in real time.
Despite this, officials refused to change the open-fire regulations, persistently repeating that the regulations are legal and proportionate, and that they permit live fire only as a last resort, in the absence of any other alternative.
27 july 2019
Ahmad Mohammad al-Qarra, 22
The Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip has confirmed that a young man died, on Friday at night, from serious wounds he suffered in the evening after Israeli soldiers shot him during the Great Return March processions.
The Health Ministry said the young man, identified as Ahmad Mohammad al-Qarra, 22, was shot with a live round in his abdomen, suffering serious wounds, and died at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza Strip.
It added that the Palestinian was shot east of Khan Younis and was treated by the medics who rushed him to the hospital but succumbed to his serious wounds.
It is worth mentioning that the soldiers injured during Friday’s processions 71 Palestinians, including 30 children, one medic and three women, after the army attacked the Great Return March processions in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said.
The PCHR referred to a report published last Tuesday by the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonot, in which is said that the army has, in recent months, been training the soldiers on a new type of a sniper rifle, which indicates that the military is using the Palestinians as target practice for its weapons, in direct violation of all international laws and regulations, including human rights treaties and International Humanitarian Law.
According to extensive and ongoing PCHR documentation, the Israeli army has killed 207 Palestinians, including 44 children, two women, 9 persons with special needs, four medics and two journalists, in addition to wounding 13323 Palestinians, including 2742 children, 409 women, 221 medics and 207 journalists, since the Great Return March processions started on March 30 2018.
196 of the wounded Palestinians. Including 28 children and 5 women, suffered permanent disabilities. 149 of them suffered amputations as a result of Israeli gunfire, 21 suffered paralysis, 26 lost their hearing or vision, and 9 suffered permanent damage to reproductive organs.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip has confirmed that a young man died, on Friday at night, from serious wounds he suffered in the evening after Israeli soldiers shot him during the Great Return March processions.
The Health Ministry said the young man, identified as Ahmad Mohammad al-Qarra, 22, was shot with a live round in his abdomen, suffering serious wounds, and died at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza Strip.
It added that the Palestinian was shot east of Khan Younis and was treated by the medics who rushed him to the hospital but succumbed to his serious wounds.
It is worth mentioning that the soldiers injured during Friday’s processions 71 Palestinians, including 30 children, one medic and three women, after the army attacked the Great Return March processions in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said.
The PCHR referred to a report published last Tuesday by the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonot, in which is said that the army has, in recent months, been training the soldiers on a new type of a sniper rifle, which indicates that the military is using the Palestinians as target practice for its weapons, in direct violation of all international laws and regulations, including human rights treaties and International Humanitarian Law.
According to extensive and ongoing PCHR documentation, the Israeli army has killed 207 Palestinians, including 44 children, two women, 9 persons with special needs, four medics and two journalists, in addition to wounding 13323 Palestinians, including 2742 children, 409 women, 221 medics and 207 journalists, since the Great Return March processions started on March 30 2018.
196 of the wounded Palestinians. Including 28 children and 5 women, suffered permanent disabilities. 149 of them suffered amputations as a result of Israeli gunfire, 21 suffered paralysis, 26 lost their hearing or vision, and 9 suffered permanent damage to reproductive organs.
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) has reported that Israeli soldiers injured, Friday, 71 Palestinians, including 30 children, one medic and three women, after the army attacked the Great Return March processions in the Gaza Strip.
The PCHR said the soldiers resorted to the excessive use of force against the protesters, especially by using live fire against unarmed civilians, protesting along the perimeter fence in the eastern parts of the Gaza Strip.
It stated that 39 of the wounded Palestinians were shot with live fire, including one who suffered life-threatening injuries, and four who sustained moderate-to-serious injuries.
This Friday’s processions came in solidarity with the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and lasted three hours, from 4:30 in the afternoon until 7:30 in the evening.
The PCHR added that the protesters mostly gathered in and around the five protest encampments and were hundreds, and in some cases, dozens of meters away from the perimeter fence, yet, were faced with the excessive use of force by the soldiers who were not in any form of danger.
It also said that, despite Israeli media reports about the open fire regulations when dealing with the Great Return March procession, such as using sniper fire to wound protesters in the lower extremities, the PCHR documented many cases where the Israeli sharpshooters wounded protesters in the chest and upper extremities, causing several injuries, including four that were described as moderate-to-severe.
The PCHR also said that these cases prove that the army has not changed its policies of the excessive use of force against the unarmed protesters.
In addition, the PCHR referred to a report published last Tuesday by the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonot, in which is said that the army has, in recent months, been training the soldiers on a new type of a sniper rifle, which indicates that the military is using the Palestinians as target practice for its weapons, in direct violation of all international laws and regulations, including human rights treaties and International Humanitarian Law.
According to extensive and ongoing PCHR documentation, the Israeli army has killed 207 Palestinians, including 44 children, two women, 9 persons with special needs, four medics and two journalists, in addition to wounding 13323 Palestinians, including 2742 children, 409 women, 221 medics and 207 journalists, since the Great Return March processions started on March 30 2018.
196 of the wounded Palestinians. Including 28 children and 5 women, suffered permanent disabilities. 149 of them suffered amputations as a result of Israeli gunfire, 21 suffered paralysis, 26 lost their hearing or vision, and 9 suffered permanent damage to reproductive organs.
The PCHR said the soldiers resorted to the excessive use of force against the protesters, especially by using live fire against unarmed civilians, protesting along the perimeter fence in the eastern parts of the Gaza Strip.
It stated that 39 of the wounded Palestinians were shot with live fire, including one who suffered life-threatening injuries, and four who sustained moderate-to-serious injuries.
This Friday’s processions came in solidarity with the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and lasted three hours, from 4:30 in the afternoon until 7:30 in the evening.
The PCHR added that the protesters mostly gathered in and around the five protest encampments and were hundreds, and in some cases, dozens of meters away from the perimeter fence, yet, were faced with the excessive use of force by the soldiers who were not in any form of danger.
It also said that, despite Israeli media reports about the open fire regulations when dealing with the Great Return March procession, such as using sniper fire to wound protesters in the lower extremities, the PCHR documented many cases where the Israeli sharpshooters wounded protesters in the chest and upper extremities, causing several injuries, including four that were described as moderate-to-severe.
The PCHR also said that these cases prove that the army has not changed its policies of the excessive use of force against the unarmed protesters.
In addition, the PCHR referred to a report published last Tuesday by the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonot, in which is said that the army has, in recent months, been training the soldiers on a new type of a sniper rifle, which indicates that the military is using the Palestinians as target practice for its weapons, in direct violation of all international laws and regulations, including human rights treaties and International Humanitarian Law.
According to extensive and ongoing PCHR documentation, the Israeli army has killed 207 Palestinians, including 44 children, two women, 9 persons with special needs, four medics and two journalists, in addition to wounding 13323 Palestinians, including 2742 children, 409 women, 221 medics and 207 journalists, since the Great Return March processions started on March 30 2018.
196 of the wounded Palestinians. Including 28 children and 5 women, suffered permanent disabilities. 149 of them suffered amputations as a result of Israeli gunfire, 21 suffered paralysis, 26 lost their hearing or vision, and 9 suffered permanent damage to reproductive organs.
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