Protests And Violence At Gaza Border

Thousands of Gazans protest on border as Israel braces for escalated violence

Thousands of Palestinians protested Friday along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, with some rioters taking part in violent clashes with Israeli troops.

Some 8,500 Palestinians took part in the border protests, one of the highest turnouts in recent months.

A number of the protesters threw explosives, grenades and Molotov cocktails at Israeli troops. The army responded with tear gas and occasional live fire.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 122 Palestinians were wounded in the clashes, 50 of them from Israeli fire.

The IDF photographed Palestinians holding up a banner with a swastika on it.

Photographed today by a soldier stationed on the border fence with Gaza. Her relatives were murdered in the Holocaust by Nazis. Like them, she knows what the swastika means. 

But today, she saw that symbol while wearing the uniform of one of the world’s strongest militaries. pic.twitter.com/fFEUkfooQV

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 23, 2019

Also Friday, the Fire and Rescue services said an incendiary balloon launched from Gaza sparked a small brush fire in the Eshkol Regional Council. Firefighters were working to extinguish the blaze.

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas terror group’s leader in Gaza, visited one of the protest site’s along the border.Going into this week’s border rallies, the Israeli army was on high alert amid concern of a potential escalation after days of rising violence in the region.

There were conflicting reports as to the intentions of Hamas, which rules the territory, ahead of the afternoon demonstrations.

Recent days have seen an uptick in violence on the frontier. Rockets were fired at Israel from the enclave late Wednesday and early Thursday, prompting Israeli reprisal attacks.

The IDF on Thursday blamed the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad for the recent increase in violence from Gaza and called for Hamas to rein in the terror group. “We do not plan to accept terror attacks and rocket fire against our citizens,” the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee tweeted.