In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Mohammed bin Salman said Israel has the same “right” to their land that the Palestinians have, putting the competing land claims on an equal footing for the first time.
In preparation of the nonviolent Great Return March in Gaza the Israeli military deployed more than 100 snipers, with permission to fire, on the Gaza border. “We have deployed more than 100 sharpshooters who were called up from all of the military’s units, primarily from the special forces … If lives are in jeopardy, there is permission to open fire,” Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot told Yedioth Ahronoth.
Israeli soldiers arrested Asad Al-Din Ibrahim Abulhawa, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy with severe burns on his back, from an East Jerusalem hospital, on charges of throwing a Molotov cocktail at Israeli forces. Police then defied the family and moved the boy to an Israeli hospital.
A Jewish Israeli man was sentenced on Tuesday to 400 hours of community service and a $2,200 fine after participating in a group assault on a Palestinian man returning home from work. Daniel Cohen Shor, along with five others, attacked a 45-year-old Palestinian, hitting him in the ribs and left ear, before beating him as he lay on the ground and racially abusing him. The Jerusalem District Court judge justified the light sentence “because of the man’s personal circumstances and because he accepted responsibility for his actions”.
Human Rights Watch researcher Abier Almasri writes: “Friends and family back home keep asking, ‘How’s life outside Gaza?’ I can’t answer. How to tell people who live on four to six hours of electricity daily that high-rise buildings in New York leave their lights on 24 hours a day, simply because it looks nice?”
Video captured on Monday by Ma’an News shows Israeli forces assaulting Palestinian medics as they were attempting to aid a Palestinian who had been shot during clashes in the area. The four paramedics were beaten, pushed and allegedly threatened by soldiers of being shot and pepper-sprayed before Israeli soldiers opened live fire were in the air above their heads. Despite being beaten and pushed around, video of the assault shows the medics repeatedly attempting to rescue injured youth from Israeli troops.
The decade-long siege of Gaza has ground the economy to a halt. “I don’t own anything else now except these debts,” says Sameh al-Madhoun, who used to own a car dealership but is now held in a Hamas jail in Gaza.
Manal Massalha writes from Gaza,”It’s disastrous to be a cancer patient in Gaza. It’s humiliating and undignified. It’s being sentenced to a slow death. Cancer treatment is not available in Gaza and access to treatment outside of Gaza is controlled by the Israelis, the Egyptians and the Palestinian Authority, none of whom seem to care, take our condition seriously or deal with us in urgency. For them we’re just numbers.”
IMEMC reports: On Friday, March 2 dozens of Palestinians, accompanied by Israeli and international peace activists, marched in Bil’in village marking the 13th anniversary of ongoing popular nonviolent resistance against the illegal Israeli Annexation Wall.
Christian leaders in Jerusalem announced Sunday they will close one of Christianity’s most sacred sites, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in protest of an Israeli bill targeting church-owned lands, and the repeal of the church’s tax-exempt status. “This reminds us all of laws of a similar nature which were enacted against the Jews during dark periods in Europe,” Christian leaders said in a statement.