Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday hosts for the second time in half a year a summit of the world’s main pan-Islamic group seeking to show solidarity with the Palestinians and condemn Israel after deadly clashes at the Gaza border Monday in which some 60 Palestinians were killed by IDF fire.
Palestinian protests on the Gaza-Israel border have dropped off over the past two days, amid reports that Egyptian officials intervened to restore calm.
Fifty of the Palestinians killed in a protest in the border region between the Gaza Strip and Israel earlier this week were Hamas members, Hamas Politburo member Salah Bardaweil said on Wednesday.
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahhar said the riots on the Israel-Gaza border are ‘not peaceful resistance’ but rather, are supported by its ‘military force.’
Israeli forces were gearing up Tuesday for a second straight day of Palestinian protests and the prospect that they may spread, after hours of bloody clashes on the Gaza border Monday left at least 58 Palestinians dead and thousands more injured.
The Gaza Strip’s Hamas-run health ministry said Tuesday morning that a baby was among those killed during violent border clashes along the territory’s border with Israel the previous day, bringing the overall death toll in the day’s bloody events to 58.
The Israeli army is deploying three additional brigades to Gaza and the West Bank at the start of what Israeli security officials believe could be an extremely violent week of Palestinian protests coinciding with the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem on Monday, the military said Saturday.
The Gaza leader of Hamas said Thursday he hopes to see hundreds of thousands of Palestinians breach the border fence from Gaza into Israel at protests to coincide with next week’s US embassy move to Jerusalem.
A Hamas-affiliated Palestinian engineer from the Gaza Strip was shot dead on Saturday near the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur in an assassination blamed on the Mossad.
In preparation for the expected protests and riots along the border between Israel and Gaza, the IDF dropped leaflets in Gaza on Friday morning warning residents of the Gaza Strip against trying to use violence against Israeli civilians and soldiers, as well as to damage, cross or even come near the border fence.
The European Parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a resolution that denounces Hamas as a terrorist group that uses human shields, calls for Israel’s destruction and ‘seems to aim at escalating tensions’ at the Gaza-Israel border.
European groups recently passed on to Hamas a wide-reaching proposition to solve the humanitarian crises in Gaza, The Jerusalem Post’s sister publication Maariv reported on Monday.
Palestinian protesters in Gaza on Friday hurled an explosive device and firebombs at Israeli troops deployed at the border, during what the Israel Defense Forces described as ‘several attempts’ to damage the fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip and cross over into Israeli territory.
The hashtags #RaisingFlag, referring to the Palestinian flag, and #BurningFlag, referring to the Israeli flag, have been prevalent in recent days among Palestinians on social media as they prepare for protests Friday near the Gaza border fence. Mass burning of Israeli flags is planned for Friday as the “Great March of Return” enters its third weekend.
In recent months, Israel-Iran tensions have evolved from covert and proxy battles to direct confrontations. Early Monday, Israel targeted the Syrian regime’s T-4 military air base in Homs, killing at least seven Iranian personnel. One of the fatalities was a colonel with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), responsible for overseeing Iran’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) unit. The IRGC ordered Iranian state-affiliated media outlets to retract articles describing the incident.
For days, agitated Israeli officials warned of an imminent ‘ecological disaster’ in anticipation of Friday’s massive protest at the border with the Gaza Strip, where Hamas, the ruling Palestinian Islamist militia, readied tens of thousands of tires to be set on fire.
A Hamas spokesman said Friday’s protests along the Gaza-Israel border were a signal to the world that Palestinians have started a revolution to ‘pave the way to freedom.’
Israeli planes carried out airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip early Monday morning, the army said, hours after a group of Palestinians entered Israeli territory from the enclave and planted two improvised explosive devices along the Gaza security fence.
Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have called on militant organization Hamas to end the annual weekly protests it is holding for the ‘Great March of Return,’ according to an Egyptian source.
An armed Palestinian from Gaza approached the Gaza fence late Wednesday night and the attack was thwarted by the IDF, according to the IDF’s spokesperson’s unit.