How Hamas and the Palestinians celebrate Passover:

At least 25 Gazans said injured in renewed border clashes
Hundreds protest along security fence Saturday, a day after at least 16 were said killed in mass demonstrations
By TOI staff and Agencies
Today, 7:32 pm 3

At least 25 Palestinians were injured in renewed clashes on Saturday along the security fence with Israel, according to Hamas-run Gaza health authorities.

Hundreds of Gazans took part in a second day of protests along different areas near the security fence on Saturday. On Friday, tens of thousands marched to the border with Israel in the largest such demonstration in recent memory, calling for Palestinians to be allowed to return to land that their ancestors fled from in the 1948 War of Independence. It was dubbed the “March of Return.”

By sundown Friday, Hamas officials said 16 had been killed, including five members of its military wing, and 1,400 injured, more than half by live fire.

The Israeli military, which did not confirm the death toll, said Friday’s protesters threw firebombs and rocks at soldiers, rolled burning tires at them, sought to breach or damage the border fence, and in one incident opened fire.

Friday’s clashes were the deadliest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 2014 Gaza War.

IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis said on Saturday that all those killed were engaged in violence, adding that Gaza health officials exaggerated the number of those wounded and that several dozen at most were injured by live fire while the rest were merely shaken up by tear gas and other riot dispersal means.

Manelis said Friday the army faced “a violent, terrorist demonstration at six points” along the fence. He said the IDF used “pinpoint fire” wherever there were attempts to breach or damage the security fence. “All the fatalities were aged 18-30, several of the fatalities were known to us, and at least two of them were members of Hamas commando forces,” he said.

Hamas, an Islamist terror group sworn to Israel’s destruction, seized control of Gaza from Abbas’s Fatah in a violent coup in 2007.

In a statement later Saturday, the IDF said its forces faced “violent riots and terror attacks” and that it operated “in strict accordance with the rules of engagement, firing only when necessary and avoiding civilians strategically placed by Hamas in harm’s way.”

Manelis further warned that if violence dragged on along the Gaza border, Israel would expand its reaction to strike the terrorists behind it. The military has thus far restricted its response to those trying to breach its border, but if attacks continue it will go after terrorists “in other places, too,” he said.

Israel “will not allow a massive breach of the fence into Israeli territory,” he said, adding that Hamas and other Gaza terror groups are using protests as a cover for staging attacks. If violence continues, “we will not be able to continue limiting our activity to the fence area and will act against these terror organizations in other places too,” he said.

Protest organizers have said mass marches would continue until May 15, the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. Palestinians mark that date as their “nakba,” or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands left or were forced to leave during the 1948 War of Independence. The vast majority of Gaza’s two million people are their descendants.

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https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-least-2...border-clashes/