For 48th week, Gazans continue anti-occupation protests

By Mohamed Majed

GAZA CITY, Palestine

For the 48th week in a row, Palestinians on Friday converged along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone to take part in ongoing rallies against Israel’s occupation and siege of the Gaza Strip.

In a statement, Gaza’s National Authority for Breaking the Siege urged the people of Gaza to take part in Friday’s demonstration.

The authority also noted the passage of 25 years since extremist Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron (Al-Khalil).

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, a Palestinian teen was killed Friday -- and 41 other people were injured -- by Israeli troops deployed near the buffer zone.

“Yusuf Said Hussein al-Dayeh, 15, succumbed to his wounds after being shot in the chest by Israeli troops,” the ministry said in a statement.

Since the demonstrations began in March of last year, more than 250 Palestinians -- including a number of women and children -- have been killed by Israeli army gunfire.

Demonstrators demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in historical Palestine from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.

They also demand an end to Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.