GENEVA – Geneva Council for Rights and Justice (GCRJ) condemned Israel’s continued targeting of civilians who exercise their right to peaceful demonstrations in the popular return marches in the Gaza Strip.
In a statement today, the Council called on the international community to intervene immediately to put an end to the use of excessive force against peaceful demonstrators.
The Geneva Convention on the Rights and Justice of the Rights of the Child and the killing of a Palestinian child by the Israeli occupation forces in violation of international law and international humanitarian law, in violation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Against the backdrop of recent events, the Council called upon the Prosecutor of the ICC to open an official investigation into the crimes of Israel against participants in the return marches and to prosecute and hold accountable those involved in the issuance of political and security targeting decisions and those who carried out them.
GCRJ observed on February 8, 2019, the killing of a Palestinian boy and a young man, including dozens of children, including 32 children and 3 women and paramedics, in the use of excessive force against peaceful demonstrators. They have been participating in marches since 30 March 2018 under the fire of Israeli snipers and military jeeps that lie at the Gaza Strip borders.
The Council said that the targeting Palestinian demonstrators were carried out despite the absence of any threat or serious threat to the lives of IDF soldiers and demonstrated at distances ranging from tens and hundreds of meters from the border strip
Although the demonstrators gathered in open places for Israeli army snipers stationed at the top of the sand hills and military towers and inside their jeeps, the army fired live and rubber bullets and gas grenades at them.
Yesterday, 14-year-old Hassan Iyad Abdel-Fattah Shalabi was killed by a live bullet in the chest. Adding to that, Hamza Mohammed Rushdi Shteiwi, 18, from Gaza City, was wounded by a live bullet in the neck east of the city. Gaza
This brings the total number of Palestinian victims to more than 155, including 37 children and 8 persons with disabilities, as well as more than 27,000 people, about half of them with live bullets, including 526 serious cases, 101 amputations, 89 in the lower limbs and 2 upper limbs, , Of those with amputation of 17 children, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
GCRJ stressed the Palestinians’ right to peaceful protest guaranteed by international human rights instruments, calling on Israel to stop the use of excessive force and to respond to the legitimate demands of the demonstrators, especially the lifting of the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip for more than a decade.
