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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-has-injured-24000-gaza-protesters">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-has-injured-24000-gaza-protesters</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israel has injured 24,000 Gaza
protesters</h1>
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy">Maureen
Clare Murphy</a></span> <span class="field field-blog">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2018-11-25T00:25:36+00:00">25 November 2018</span></span>
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<figure id="file-71861"><source media="(min-width:
72rem)"><figcaption><small><span></span></small></figcaption></figure>
<p>Palestinians have paid a great price for their call
for life with dignity during mass protests held along
Gaza’s boundary with Israel over the past eight
months.</p>
<p>Some 180 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli
occupation forces and nearly 6,000 others injured by
live fire during the Great March of Return.</p>
<p>“The vast majority of casualties were unarmed, and
were fatally shot from a distance while in the Gaza
Strip itself,” <a
href="https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20181122_over_5800_palestinians_wounded_in_7_months_of_protests">according
to</a> a new report by the Israeli group B’Tselem,
confirming <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/no-evidence-single-gaza-protester-killed-israel-was-armed">previous
findings</a> by other rights organizations.</p>
<p>“As a general rule, the protectively clad troops
sniping at them from other side of the fence were not
in any real danger,” B’Tselem added.</p>
<p>In addition to injuries by live fire, 2,000 cases of
injury by tear gas inhalation have been recorded,
along with hundreds of injuries by rubber-coated metal
bullets.</p>
<p>Injuries to 90 protesters – 17 of them children –
have resulted in amputation, nearly all of the lower
limbs.</p>
<p>Altogether, <a
href="https://whoinopt.exposure.co/gaza-waiting-for-treatment">a
staggering 24,000 Palestinians</a> have been injured
during the Great March of Return protests – more than
one percent of the territory’s population.</p>
<p>Around half of those injured were treated at field
clinics at protest sites. The rest were transferred to
hospital for treatment.</p>
<p>“The mass influx of casualties has disrupted an
already fragile health system,” according to the World
Health Organization. “In the hospitals, trauma
patients are prematurely discharged to make room for
new patients.”</p>
<p>Hundreds of Palestinians require long-term limb
reconstruction involving multiple surgeries and
extensive rehabilitation, according to the
organization.</p>
<h2>Shot in lower limbs</h2>
<p>B’Tselem surveyed more than 400 protesters who were
wounded by live fire, including 63 children.</p>
<p>The vast majority – 85 percent – were shot in their
lower limbs.</p>
<p>Some 40 percent were hit while they were in the
immediate vicinity of the Gaza-Israel boundary fence.
Around a third were up to 150 meters away from the
fence. Just over 20 percent were more than 150 meters
away when they were shot.</p>
<p>Forty-one of the children surveyed said they were
“injured while they were watching the protest, waving
a flag, photographing or filming the protest, moving
away from the protest, or treating the wounded,”
B’Tselem stated.</p>
<p>Nearly all of the protesters wounded by live fire
surveyed by B’Tselem require prolonged, medical
treatment. More than half require rehabilitation and
physical therapy. Ten percent are permanently injured.</p>
<p>Being shot by occupation forces is only “the first
chapter in a prolonged ordeal,” according to B’Tselem.</p>
<p>“Even a superbly functioning healthcare system would
be sorely tried when faced with such a large number of
casualties,” the group states.</p>
<p>“Yet in Gaza, even before the protests began, the
healthcare system was already on the brink of
collapse.”</p>
<p>The dire state of Gaza’s healthcare system is a
result of the 11-year Israeli blockade at the center
of the protests that have met with brutal violence.</p>
<h2>Medicines depleted</h2>
<p>At the beginning of the month, Gaza’s central
pharmacy “was completely out of 226 essential drugs,
and had only a one-month supply left of another 241,”
B’Tselem states.</p>
<p>Stocks of more than 250 types of medical disposables
had been depleted.</p>
<p>“The blockade places restrictions on replacing
worn-out, broken medical equipment, on importing
advanced medical equipment and drugs, and on travel by
physicians for professional training outside Gaza,”
according to B’Tselem.</p>
<p>“In addition, Gaza’s intermittent power supply, again
largely Israel’s doing, also disrupts hospital
functions.”</p>
<p>Israel meanwhile denies or delays permission to
medical patients to travel outside Gaza via Erez
checkpoint for treatment unavailable in the besieged
territory.</p>
<p>Others have been referred to hospitals in Egypt but
cannot afford the treatment.</p>
<p>Gaza’s sole prosthetic limbs workshop “can provide
only the most basic prosthetic legs with limited range
of motion,” <a
href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/31/660576415/inside-gaza-s-prosthetics-clinic-treating-wounded-palestinian-protesters">according
to</a> a recent media report.</p>
<p>The cost of going abroad for prosthetic limbs is
prohibitive in impoverished Gaza where the blockade
has pushed unemployment rates to over 50 percent.</p>
<p>In addition to physical harm, Israel’s crackdown on
the protests has <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/nightmares-rise-among-gazas-children">increased
symptoms of post-traumatic stress</a> in children
who find themselves reliving trauma from previous
military assaults on Gaza.</p>
<h2>“Deliberate policy”</h2>
<p>“The high number of casualties at the protests is not
an unavoidable fact of life,” B’Tselem states.</p>
<p>“It is the result of a deliberate policy by the
Israeli security establishment.”</p>
<p>“Manifestly unlawful” open fire orders “permit the
use of live fire against unarmed protestors who pose
no danger to anyone and are on the other side of the
fence, inside the Gaza Strip.”</p>
<p>Israeli forces have shot bystanders standing hundreds
of meters away while “doing nothing to jeopardize the
troops,” as stated by B’Tselem.</p>
<p>These open fire orders – kept secret by the state –
have been <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israels-high-court-blesses-killing-and-maiming-gaza-protesters">rubber-stamped
by Israel’s high court</a>.</p>
<p>A lower court recently <a
href="http://mezan.org/en/post/23316">ruled</a> that
Palestinians in Gaza are not entitled to seek
compensation for damages from Israel because the state
has declared the territory an “enemy entity.”</p>
<h2>“Banned from redress”</h2>
<p>That was the argument made by the court as it
rejected a case filed on behalf of a boy in Gaza who
was left quadriplegic after Israeli forces opened fire
on him in November 2014.</p>
<p>With the court upholding a 2012 law barring residents
of an “enemy entity” from receiving compensation, all
Palestinians in Gaza “are now banned from redress and
remedy in Israel, regardless of the circumstances and
the severity of the injury or damages claimed,”
according to the rights groups Al Mezan and Adalah.</p>
<p>The new law “introduced criteria that are nearly
impossible to meet for victims from Gaza,” leaving
Palestinians in Gaza who suffered injury or damage
during military operations ineligible to seek
compensation. A narrow window of time in which Gaza
residents initiate claims in Israel – at significant
financial cost – and other restraints effectively bar
anyone there from seeking justice.</p>
<p>But even in the case of the child represented by
Adalah and Al Mezan, “who was shot in the absence of
military activity and his family complied with all of
the … stringent criteria,” the state argued that the
boy was ineligible for compensation with “the simple
justification that he is a resident of Gaza.”</p>
<p>According to the rights groups, “With this message,
Israel declared that it absolves itself from the
responsibilities, as a state, to investigate, deter,
and take responsibility for violations by its armed
and security forces.”</p>
<p>The ruling “grants comprehensive immunity to the
Israeli military and the state for illegal,
reprehensible, and even criminal actions” in the
occupied West Bank and Gaza.</p>
<p>With no way to fulfill their right to effective legal
remedy from Israel, the occupying power, “the only
legal options currently available to Palestinians in
Gaza are limited to international judicial
mechanisms,” Adalah and Al Mezan state.</p>
<p>The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor
has <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/icc-warns-israeli-leaders-over-gaza-killings">warned</a>
Israeli leaders that the shooting of unarmed
Palestinians along the Gaza boundary could be
considered a crime under international law within the
court’s jurisdiction.</p>
<p>Palestinian and international nongovernmental
organizations <a
href="http://mezan.org/en/post/23220">have called on</a>
the International Criminal Court to “urgently” open an
investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes.</p>
<p>The situation in Palestine has been under preliminary
examination by the prosecutor’s office since 2015.</p>
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