15 May 2011

Palestinians killed in Israeli border ‘Nakba’ protests

Up to 13 people have died in clashes between protesters and security forces on Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon. There was also violence in Gaza and the West Bank.

Today’s unrest across Israel’s borders marks what Palestinians call the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), a reference to the foundation of the state of Israel on 15 May 1948.

Israeli forces are reported to have killed four Syrians who had been taking part in an anti-Israel protest on the Syrian side of the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 war. 60 people on both sides were wounded in the incident.

Syria’s government, which is currently facing fierce internal unrest, has in previous years stopped protesters from reaching the Golan Heights frontier fence.

“This appears to be a cynical and transparent act by the Syrian leadership to deliberately create a crisis on the border so as to distract attention from the very real problems that regime is facing at home,” a senior Israeli government official said.

Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokesperson, said: “The Syrian regime is attempting to divert the world’s attention away from the brutal crackdown on their own civilians, to the incitement on Israel’s northern border.”

Ten people were reportedly killed and another 100 were injured during violence on Israel’s border with Lebanon. An Israeli Army spokesman said Israeli troops had fired when protesters began to vandlise a border fence.

On Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, medical workers said dozens of Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire at the Erez crossing point as demonstrators approached the fence separating Israel and the Hamas-led enclave.

Elsewhere, Palestinian youths threw rocks in a clash at an Israeli military checkpoint outside the city of Ramallah, on the occupied West Bank. Israeli soldiers responded with teargas and rubber bullets. Dozens of Palestinians were injured.

In Tel Aviv, an Israeli man was killed after a truck drove into a group of pedestrians. Police are investigating the motives of the Arab-Israeli driver.

On Friday a Palestinian teenager was shot dead during protests in East Jerusalem.

An estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled in the war that followed Israel’s 1948 declaration of statehood. Some 4.7 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants now live in lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza and the occupied West Bank.