Israeli troops kill three Palestinians, wound scores in protests over Jerusalem

GAZA: Israeli troops shot dead three Palestinians and wounded 150 others on Friday, medical officials said, as protests over U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital entered a second week.

Most of the casualties were on the Gaza Strip border, where thousands of Palestinians gathered to hurl rocks at Israeli soldiers beyond the fortified fence. Medics said two protesters, one of them wheelchair-bound, were killed and 145 wounded.

In the occupied West Bank, another territory where Palestinians seek statehood along with adjacent East Jerusalem, medics said one protester was killed and five wounded by Israeli gunfire.

One was a man who Israeli police troopers said was shot after he stabbed and moderately wounded a member of their unit. Reuters witnesses said the Palestinian had a knife and wore what looked like a bomb belt. A Palestinian medic said the belt was fake.

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Palestinians — and the wider Arab and Muslim world — were incensed at Trump’s Dec. 6 announcement, which reversed decades of U.S. policy reticence on Jerusalem, a city where both Israel and the Palestinians want sovereignty.

Washington’s European allies and Russia have also voiced worries about Trump’s decision.

Gaza’s dominant Hamas, which reject coexistence with Israel, called last week for a new Palestinian uprising, but any such mass-mobilisation has yet to be seen in the West Bank or East Jerusalem.

There have been almost nightly Gazan rocket launches into Israel, so far without casualties. Israel has responded with air strikes on Hamas facilities, one of which killed two gunmen.

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The Israeli military said that, on Friday, about 3,500 Palestinians demonstrated near the Gaza border fence.

“During the violent riots IDF (Israel Defence Force) soldiers fired selectively towards main instigators,” the military said in a statement.

It said that about 2,500 Palestinians took part in riots in the West Bank, rolling flaming tyres and throwing firebombs and rocks at soldiers and border police, who responded.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, an area laden with Jewish, Muslim and Christian shrines, from Jordan in the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move not recognised internationally.

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Palestinians hope that part of the city will be the capital of a future independent state and Palestinian leaders say Trump’s move is a serious blow to a moribund peace process.

Israel has welcomed Trump’s announcement as recognising political reality and biblical Jewish roots in Jerusalem. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to visit Israel, as well as Egypt, next week.