Gaza border protests

Tens of thousands of Gazans gathered at the Israeli border on March 30 to mark a year since protests and clashes erupted there, testing a fragile truce only 10 days ahead of an Israeli general election.

Renewed violence in Gaza threatened to thwart efforts to end months of unrest as Israeli air strikes killed four Palestinians and destroyed a Hamas TV building while a barrage of rocket fire from the enclave left one dead on Tuesday, reports AFP. 

The flare-up came after a deadly Israeli special forces operation in the Gaza Strip on Sunday that led Hamas to vow revenge.

Israel reimposed a blockade of fuel supplies to Gaza on Thursday in response to a resurgence of the flow of fire kites across the border, Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said.

Israel further tightened its blockade of the Gaza Strip on July 17, preventing fuel deliveries through its only goods crossing with the Palestinian enclave after scores of kites carried firebombs across the border to burn Israeli farmland.

An Israeli aircraft hit two Hamas posts in the Gaza Strip on Monday in response to balloons carrying firebombs over the border fence to burn Israeli farmland, the army said.

A Turkish medical delegation on July 9 began carrying out surgical operations for Palestinian patients in Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital.

At least 181 Palestinian journalists have been injured since March 30, when Gazans began staging almost-daily rallies along the Gaza-Israel security fence, the Journalists Support Committee (JSC) said on July 4.

More than 100 Palestinians were injured in yet another confrontation with Israeli soldiers on the border of the Gaza sector, local health authorities spokesman Ashraf al-Khyra said.

Protests with the common name "The Great March of Return" last for 9 weeks, although their scale is now more modest than before.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry told the Israeli Consulate General in Istanbul to return to Israel “for some time” on May 16, after Israeli forces killed more than 60 Palestinians during protests on the Gaza border.

Gaza is braced for fresh protests against Israel as the first funerals are expected to be held for 58 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces on Monday, the deadliest day since the end of the 2014 Gaza conflict.

Tuesday is the 70th anniversary of what Palestinians call the Nakba, or Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands were expelled or fled amid the creation of Israel in 1948.