Honoring the First Responders of Gaza

During the June 1st demonstration of the “Great March of Return” (the ongoing 2018 Gaza border protests of Palestinians demonstrating for their human rights),¹ Palestinian nurse/medic Razan al-Najjar, 21, joined other medics braving Israeli sniper fire to rescue and treat unarmed protesters when she was deliberately targeted and fatally shot in the chest by an Israeli soldier. She was wearing a white coat and had her arms raised to show she was unarmed.² Since 30 May, Israeli forces have shot or otherwise injured almost 120 medics at the Gaza border, killing three.³

Ongoing Siege and Blockade of Gaza

Since 2007, Gaza’s 1.85 million citizens – residing in an area one-tenth the size of Rhode Island – have been forced to live under a blockade and siege by Israel (helped by Egypt). The blockade is in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention, which prohibits collective punishment.⁴ The consequences of the blockade have been severe:

• The overall unemployment rate is 53.7%, while the youth unemployment rate is more than 71%, the highest in the world.⁵
• 80% of Gazans are forced to rely on humanitarian aid to survive, while 47% suffer from food insecurity. The number of Palestinian refugees in Gaza who rely on food distribution from the UN has increased from approximately 80,000 in 2000 to almost one million today.⁶
• Israel has prohibited the entry of many basic foodstuffs into the strip,⁷ and as a result, 19.6% of Gaza’s preschool children suffer from stunted growth⁸ and 59.7% of preschool children living in Gaza suffer from anemia.⁹
• 97% Gaza’s water supply is contaminated and undrinkable due largely to the effects of Israel’s blockade and repeated bombings of Gaza’s infrastructure.¹⁰
• In 2015, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development issued a dire warning that Gaza could become “uninhabitable” by 2020 as a result of Israel’s blockade and destruction of civilian infrastructure.¹¹
• Currently, Gazans only receive 5 hours of electricity a day.¹²

On 30 March 2018, the “Great March of Return” began, intending to be a six-week campaign of daily protests at the Gaza-Israel border, but continuing today with weekly demonstrations. The campaign demands that Palestinian refugees and their descendants be allowed to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel, and that the blockade of the Gaza Strip and the moving of the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem cease to be implemented.¹³

Organization of the protests was initiated by independent activists, and has been endorsed and supported by major factions in the Gaza Strip.¹⁴

On 30 March, thirty thousand Palestinians participated in the campaign’s first protest, located near the fenced border to Israel. Most demonstrators stayed in tent camps and protested peacefully hundreds of meters from the border, but some groups approached the border itself. The Israeli military responded and continues to respond with bullets, tear gas, and air strikes,¹⁵ resulting in the deaths of over 190 Palestinians (as of 1 October) and over 21,000 injuries.¹⁶ Israel’s use of deadly force was condemned on 13 June, 2018 in a United Nations General Assembly resolution.¹⁷

Human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch,¹⁸ B’Tselem,¹⁹ Amnesty International,²⁰ and United Nations officials have condemned the shooting of unarmed protesters.²¹ The United States government has enabled Israel’s blockade and military assaults by providing over $3.8 billion in military aid in 2018, 22 including the rifles used by Israeli snipers to shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza.

Since the protests began on 30 March, 2018, live rounds fired by the Israel Defense Force have hit at least²² journalists, two of whom–Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein–later died from their injuries.²²
Israeli forces are shooting at demonstrators with a new type of round – never seen before – known as the “butterfly bullet“, which explodes upon impact, pulverizing tissue, arteries and bone, and causing severe internal injuries.²³

Israeli forces are shooting at demonstrators with a new type of round – never seen before – known as the “butterfly bullet“, which explodes upon impact, pulverizing tissue, arteries and bone, and causing severe internal injuries.²⁴

The graphics below are from: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-snapshot-casualties-context-demonstrations-and-hostilities-gaza-30-march-12

** Additional 6,803 were treated in field medical trauma stabilization points.