Since Land Day of this year, 30 March 2018, Palestinians in Gaza Strip have been regularly holding mass protests by Gaza perimeter fence, with numbers of protesters ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands.
During the demonstrations, which are usually held on Fridays under the name of the Great March of Return, some protesters approach the fence and the Israeli occupation forces fire tear gas and live ammunition at the protesters.
This pushes the protesters to torch tires to block the vision of the Israeli snipers and throw stones at them, but hardly their stones can harm the Israeli soldiers who are always more than 200 metres far from them.
In just over six months since this wave of mass protest began, Israeli forces have killed at least 205 people, including 31 minors, and injured more than 5,800, out of 22,000, with live fire. Most of the casualties were not endangering the Israeli troops.
Such a high number of casualties is a direct outcome of the open-fire policy that Israel employs along the Gaza perimeter fence, including during demonstrations held near the fence.
Although the lethal outcomes of this criminal policy are well-known, Israeli occupation authorities refuse to change it, remaining indifferent to the lives and deaths of Palestinians.
In fact, the prime minister and his government prefer to continue this hardline approach (with cabinet members arguing over the numbers – the minister of defense boasts of the many dead wounded while the minister of education demands even higher numbers).
The military executes this political directive, even safeguarding it with whitewashing mechanisms that ensure that, with the exception of very rare cases, no one will be held accountable for killing Palestinians.
Here are a sampling of testimonies that the Israeli rights group B’Tselem collected in its investigation of the deaths of four out of the 31 minors killed until 8 October 2018.
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