Israeli troops kill Palestinian boy
Fifteen-year-old boy shot dead near Gaza’s border with Israel, witnesses say.
An Israeli army spokesperson said: “Following an examination of the Gaza division, we are not familiar with any incident of a Palestinian being hit by IDF (Israeli military) fire.”
Many Palestinian teens approach the border areas between Israel and the Gaza Strip either to cross and look for a job inside Israel, or search for junk to sell in Gaza.
Commemorating ‘Land confiscation’
Meanwhile, dozens of Palestinians demonstrated near the border east of the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, protesting against the buffer zone that Israel is building along its border with the Gaza Strip.
Witnesses said that at least six Palestinians were injured by gunfire from Israeli troops stationed at the area.
The demonstration was part of protests organised across the Gaza Strip to mark Land Day, a commemoration of Israel’s killing of six Arab Palestinians in 1976 during protests against land confiscation.
Mohammed Barakeh, an Arab MP serving in Israel’s parliament told AFP: “Land Day has become for us a day to assert our existence and our belonging. It is a day to embrace our memory of Palestine and our belonging to it, our homes and schools and playgrounds which have faced a campaign of concealment. It’s a day to embrace our future.”
Israel’s 1.2 million Arab citizens are the descendants of the 160,000 Palestinians who remained in Israel after the Middle East war that broke out after the Jewish state’s creation in 1948.
They can vote, and their standard of living is far higher than that of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but they say they are still treated as second-class citizens.
In February 2006, the Supreme Court acknowledged Israeli Arabs faced discrimination.