The so-called Great March of Return held every Friday for the past four weeks at the Gaza-Israel border is falsely portrayed as a peaceful civilian protest by groups like Amnesty International. That false designation has led to claims that Israel is violating international law by using live fire against “protesters” who approach the border fence.
In fact, as we have documented weekly, the “protests” are actually military operations by Hamas and other terror groups using civilian protests as cover.
The purpose is to cut through, burn down, or pull down the border fence so that terrorists can infiltrate Israel to carry out operations. Even when the fence is not breached, explosives are placed next to the fence for later detonation.
See our prior posts for images and video:
A key piece of the evidence that these are not ordinary civilian protests is who has been killed at the fence. Overwhelmingly they have been military members of Hamas and other terror groups:
Now there is more evidence from the The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) which has tracked the identity of Gazans killed at the border, Analysis of the Identities of Gazans Killed During the “Great Return March” (data as of April 25, 2018):
The Hamas-controlled ministry of health in the Gaza Strip reported that 40 Palestinians have been killed during the “great return march” events since March 30, 2018, when the rioting began along the Gaza Strip-Israel border (updated to April 25, 2018).[2] The information provided by the Gaza ministry of health, which is used by the Israeli and international media, does not include a statistical distribution or distinguish between terrorist operatives (and those affiliated with them) and civilians. As far as the ITIC has been able to determine, no sources in the Gaza Strip make such a distinction. As a result, the impression given to world public opinion is that all the casualties were innocent Palestinian civilians. The analysis conducted by the ITIC shows that most of the Palestinians killed were terrorist operatives or individuals affiliated with the terrorist organizations.The interim findings of the ITIC analysis revealed that 32 of the 40 Palestinians killed (80%) were terrorist operatives or individuals affiliated with them, distributed as follows:
♦ 18 of the 32 (about 56%) were terrorist operatives belonging to or affiliated with Hamas:
♦ Nine were operatives in Hamas’ military wing (the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades) and operatives in Hamas’ security forces.
♦ Nine were affiliated with or linked to Hamas, based on circumstantial evidence (Hamas issued death notices for them, their bodies were wrapped in Hamas flags, or other supporting evidence).
♦ Ten were members of Fatah, two of them operatives in its military wing and eight with organizational affiliation or connections.[3]♦ Two belonged to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), one to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), one to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
This chart lists the terror group affiliations:
The full Report (pdf.) has more details of the analysis, including analysis of each of the people killed and how most of them were identified as terror group members.
Subsequent to the Report, another person killed, “journalist” Ahmed Abu Hussein, was identified by ITIC as a PFLP terror group member.
The identity of the people trying to tear down and breach the border fence, and the violent tactics, makes a difference because Israel has a right to defend against an invasion, even if that means the use of deadly force:
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