Wednesday 18 May 2011

Did the Israeli army have the right to shoot?

Did the Israeli army have the right to shoot? - Features - Al Jazeera English
On Sunday, Israel's disputed northern frontier saw the first deadly clashes between civilians and the Israeli army since 1974.
 
Hundreds
of protesters from Syria and Lebanon marched south toward the two
countries' disputed borders with Israel to mark the "Nakba" - or
"catastrophe" - on the date Palestinians mourn their uprooting as a
result of Israel's founding in 1948.
 
What began as a mass march
by unarmed Palestinian refugees and activists soon turned bloody, with,
reportedly, 14 killed and hundreds wounded.
 
There has been much
controversy over the justifiability of the Israeli military's use of
force in the event of border transgressions.
 
But experts say
there is a fundamental difference between Israel's use of force in
disputed border regions on the one hand, and military action in the
occupied Palestinian territories on the other.
 
The distinction
lies in whether a boundary constitutes an agreed or internationally
recognised border between two countries - or whether it is a de facto
border through disputed territory occupied by one of the two states
separated by that border.
 
In light of the first violence in 36
years on territories under dispute by three countries, which involved
two state armies and large mobs of civilians, legal experts ask if the
IDF had the right to shoot civilian protesters from Lebanon and Syria.
 

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