U.S. Backs Slaughter in Gaza:

Palestinians Mark Nakba After Bloodbath

Date: 15 May 2018 - 21:12

News ID: ۵۲۹۹۷

GAZA (Dispatches) -- Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian near the Gaza fence border Tuesday after thousands of Palestinians turned out for the funerals of dozens of protesters killed by Zionist troops a day earlier, local health officials said.
Sixty Palestinians were killed on Monday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, including an eight-month-old baby that died from tear gas that her family said she inhaled at a protest camp near the fence. More than 2,200 Palestinians were also injured by gunfire or tear gas, local medics said.
Monday's bloodshed took place as the United States opened its new embassy in occupied Jerusalem Al-Quds. For the past six weeks, Palestinians have been holding Gaza fence demonstrations for the return of Palestinian refugees to areas that are now occupied by the Zionist regime.
The occupying regime of Israel rejects any right of return. At least 115 Gazans have now been killed since the start of the protests and nearly 11,000 people wounded, about 3,500 of them hit by live fire.
Palestinian leaders have called Monday's events a massacre, and the Israeli tactic of using live fire against the protesters has drawn worldwide concern and condemnation.
The United Nations Security Council was due to meet to discuss the situation. The United States has backed the occupying regime.
Turkey told the Israeli ambassador to Ankara on Tuesday to leave, a Turkish foreign ministry source said. On Monday, Turkey said it was recalling its ambassadors to Tel Aviv and Washington.
Turkey also urged Islamic countries to review their ties with the Zionist regime and said it would call an extraordinary summit of the world's main pan-Islamic body.
"Islamic countries should without fail review their relations with Israel," Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told his ruling party in parliament.
"The Islamic world should move as one, with one voice, against this massacre," he added.
Yildirim said that Turkey had called an "extraordinary summit" of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Friday. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the body.
A Turkish foreign ministry official, who asked not to be named, said there was to be "a summit in Istanbul on Friday".
Yildirim said that after the summit at 3:00 pm a giant rally would be held at the vast Yenikapi meeting area in Istanbul under the slogan of "Stop the Oppression" to express solidarity with the Palestinians.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney "summoned the Israeli ambassador to Ireland... to express Ireland's shock and dismay at the level of death and injury yesterday on the Gaza Strip," the ministry said in a statement.
"The ambassador has been informed of Irish demands for an independent international investigation into yesterday's deaths led by the UN," it added.
It said there were 211 recorded attacks against health workers in Gaza and 25 ambulances had been damaged.
The Arab League's Permanent Committee on Human Rights urged the International Criminal Court prosecutor to urgently investigate "the crimes of the Israeli occupation" against Palestinians.
"Israel is an oppressive and murderous entity and its politicians and officers must be taken to the International Criminal Court," Amjad Shamout, the committee's chairman, said in a statement.
The Arab League will hold emergency talks Wednesday to discuss what it has called Washington's "illegal" relocation of its embassy to the disputed city.
On Tuesday morning, mourners marched through Gaza, waving Palestinian flags and calling for revenge. "With souls and blood we redeem you martyrs," they shouted.
May 15 is traditionally the day Palestinians mark the "Nakba", or Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes in violence culminating in war between the newly created Zionist entity and its Arab neighbors in 1948.
More than 2 million people are crammed into the narrow Gaza Strip, more than two thirds of them refugees. Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt maintain tight restrictions on the enclave, deepening economic hardship and raising humanitarian concerns.
On the occupied side of the fence, Israeli sharpshooters took up positions to stop any attempted breach of the fence should demonstrations break out again. Tanks were also deployed.
In Geneva, the UN human rights office condemned what it called the "appalling deadly violence" by Zionist forces.
The UN rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, said Israel's use of force may amount to a war crime.
In Gaza City, hundreds marched in the funeral of eight-month-old Leila al-Ghandour, whose body was wrapped in a Palestinian flag.
"Let her stay with me, it is too early for her to go," her mother cried, pressing the baby's body to her chest.
Many shops in East Jerusalem Al-Quds were shut throughout the day following a call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for a general strike across the Palestinian Territories. A 70-second siren was sounded in the occupied West Bank in commemoration of the Nakba.
Most Gaza protesters stay around tent camps but groups have ventured closer to the fence, rolling burning tires and throwing stones. Some have flown kites carrying containers of petrol that spread fires on the Israeli side.
Monday's protests were fueled by the opening ceremony for the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem Al-Quds following its relocation from Tel Aviv.
The United States on Monday blocked a Kuwait-drafted UN Security Council statement that would have expressed "outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians" and called for an independent investigation, UN diplomats said.