Border Region Quiet as Palestinians Bury Victims of Israeli Shooting
The Israeli army said Monday that Israel's frontiers were quiet, as thousands of bereaved Palestinians in camps across Lebanon laid to rest victims of a cross-border Israeli shooting and shops and schools in the camps closed for a day of mourning.
"Today is a day of general strikes in the camps in mourning for the victims who were killed by the enemy," Fatah commander in Lebanon Munir Maqdah, who is based in the notorious refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh, told Agence France Presse.
In the al-Bass refugee camp, thousands of people gathered for the burial of 17-year-old Mohammed Salem, one of 10 protesters shot dead by Israeli troops on Sunday at the Lebanese border.
More than 100 others were wounded when the crowd of thousands of refugees came under fire from Israeli troops near the Lebanese border town of Maroun al-Ras during a rally to mark the 1948 "nakba," Arabic for catastrophe.
The gunfire erupted when the protesters began throwing stones at the soldiers.
Salem's schoolmates carried a massive Palestinian flag, which measured 40 meters in length, as a crowd of angry mourners made their way from a mosque to a burial ground in the camp, located in the southern coastal city of Tyre.
"There is no God but God, our martyr is God's beloved," shouted the crowd, which included children and women, many in tears.
"Your blood will not die, we will have vengeance," they chanted, as guns were fired into the air.
Other victims were buried in the southern camps of Burj al-Shemali and Ain al-Hilweh -- Lebanon's largest and most notorious refugee camp -- as well as in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Palestinian factions in Lebanon said talks were still underway to determine what action they would take following Israel's attack on protesters, who had been unarmed when they approached the Lebanese side of the border.
Ali Barakeh, the Lebanon representative of Islamist group Hamas, said Lebanon's Palestinians were readying for a massive rally on Thursday outside of the U.N. offices in Beirut.
"This is a massacre inside Lebanese territory," Barakeh, who was present at the Sunday rally, told Agence France Presse. "The only arms at the Lebanese side of the border were rocks.
"We place the blame for what happened on Sunday squarely on the shoulders of the enemy (Israel)."
The Lebanese army said that 10 of those killed were approaching a barbed wire fence at Lebanon's border with the Jewish state, sending tension spiraling in the country's volatile south.
A military source told As Safir daily that the army informed peacekeepers stationed in the south that it was dealing with the incident and that Israeli troops should not open fire on unarmed civilians. But the soldiers "continued in committing the massacre although none of the protestors had crossed the technical fence."
"Even if they had crossed the Blue Line, they shouldn't have been confronted by gunfire," he said.
But Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak defended the use of force against Nakba Day protesters, saying the soldiers' restraint actually saved lives.
"We used protest dispersal methods, but the number of people involved made this difficult. There comes a moment when there's no choice but to fire at their legs and it is very good that forces acted with restraint and judgment and we did not have here a ruinous bloodbath," he told Channel 2 TV station.
Maqdah said talks were underway for a "Martyrs' Friday" to honor the victims.
"This will not end here," he said. "We may hold a 'Martyrs' Friday' but what the program will entail has not been finalized and we are still holding talks with our comrades here and abroad."
Source: Agence France Presse
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