Palestine urges Arab League meeting on Gaza killings

Thousands of Palestinians assemble along the Gaza-Israel border to reaffirm the ‘Right of Return’ on 30 March 2018 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]

Palestine on Sunday called on the Arab League to hold an emergency meeting on “Israeli crimes against Land Marches,” Palestine’s ambassador to Cairo told Anadolu Agency.

Diab al-Louh said his country had submitted a memorandum to the Arab League to hold an emergency meeting at the level of permanent representatives over Israel’s crimes and use of force against peaceful demonstrators during Land Day protests on Friday.

Anadolu Agency has so far been unable to get Arab League comment on the proposal.

On Saturday, al-Louh said in a statement that Israel is carrying out “brutal massacres” of Palestinians, stressing that the “return marches” confirm the rejection of any compromises affecting refugees.

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He further called on the international community to shoulder its responsibility for the Israeli practices of intimidation, displacement, murder, and ethnic cleansing against defenseless Palestinians.

On Saturday, President Mahmoud Abbas declared a national day of mourning for the Land Day martyrs.

On Friday, tens of thousands converged on the Gaza Strip’s roughly 45-kilometer-long eastern border with Israel to reaffirm their right to return to their ancestral homes in historical Palestine.

In anticipation of the mass demonstrations, Israel had deployed thousands of troops along the border. Dubbed the “Great March of Return,” the protests also intended to pressure Israel to lift its more than decade-long blockade of Gaza.

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Israeli forces’ attacks on the demonstrators left 17 Palestinians martyred and nearly 1,500 people injured.

The rallies were endorsed by virtually all Palestinian political factions, which repeatedly stressed the event’s peaceful nature.

Land Day is an annual Palestinian commemoration of the deaths of six Arab Israeli citizens killed by Israeli forces in 1976, during demonstrations against government land confiscations in northern Israel.

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