3 dead, 300 hurt as Gaza marks year since Great March of Return

Israeli army warned citizens to stay back from border fence.

By Saud Abu Ramadan and Tamara Zieve Associated Press

3 dead, 300 hurt as Gaza marks year since Great March of Return — The Journal News, 31 March 2019 — The Journal News · White Plains, New York · 31 March 2019

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Transcribed from the clipping

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP — Three Palestinian demonstrators were killed and more than 300 were injured in clashes with the Israeli army on the Gaza border since Friday night, the Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday.

Violence erupted between demonstrators and Israeli soldiers stationed on the Israel-Gaza border, as tens of thousands demonstrated to mark the anniversary of the Great March of Return protests. The Israeli army, which put the number of protesters at 40,000, accused participants of throwing rocks and setting tires on fire.

In addition, a number of grenades and explosive devices were thrown at the border fence, it said. Witnesses said Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live gunfire at the demonstrators to keep them from approaching the fence. The Israeli army warned Gazans not to approach the fence during the protests.

The army said that troops had fired “in accordance with standard operating procedures.” The Gazan Health Ministry said Saturday that at least 316 Palestinians had been injured. Of those, 64 sustained gunshots wounds. Others were hurt by shrapnel, exposure to tear gas or being hit by tear gas canisters.

The Great March of Return protests, which have been going on weekly since they began a year ago, call for the right of return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to the territory of today’s Israel, and for an end to the 12-year-long blockade imposed by Israel.

A general strike was held in the Gaza Strip and the Health Ministry and Interior Ministry declared a state of emergency. Governmental and private sector institutions were closed, including schools, universities and stores all in the Gaza Strip, except medical institutions, clinics and hospitals.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 269 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured in the protests since they started last year. The anniversary coincides with Land Day, which commemorates the death of six Arab Israelis who were killed by Israeli forces during protests against the expropriation of land by Israel in 1976.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement: “The suffering of our people over 100 years and the enormous sacrifices made by this great people will not go to waste.”

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead and no dated folio line, so the date recorded here could not be checked against anything printed on the page. Nothing on the page contradicts it.

Context added by this archive

On 31 March 2019 three American papers ran the same wire account of the Great March of Return and chose three different pictures. The Santa Barbara News-Press (CP-2019-011) ran a Reuters crowd from that day. The Sun Journal (CP-2019-012) ran an AP stretcher from that day.

The Journal News (CP-2019-013) ran Getty file art: a Palestinian woman with her face covered, captioned “near the border fence with Israel last May” — a library picture from ten months earlier, of a woman whose name is not given, illustrating a day on which nobody was named. This is three records, not a rate.

The tell for file photo use is a caption that states its own date, and only 318 records here carry one, so most substitutions like this cannot be detected at all. The archive’s own duplicate detector groups these three as one cluster at high confidence.

Cite this clipping

"3 dead, 300 hurt as Gaza marks year since Great March of Return," The Journal News, 31 March 2019. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2019-013. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2019-013