Riyad Mansour said: “We will not leave a stone unturned. We have the right to demonstrate peacefully, to express our views and the large crowd of this week in Gaza -- larger than last week -- is a demonstration that the Palestinian people in a civilized, peaceful way, are expressing their opinion in the Gaza Strip, and they do not deserve to receive bullets for doing so,”.
Mansour added: "Shame on those cowards who are hiding behind the hills and armed to the teeth, protected to the teeth with high velocity rifles to use them as snipers against civilians... They are the cowards who are facing defenseless civilians and killing them as one would go hunting in the open fields."
Mansour made the comments at a press conference in New York on Friday, a few hours after Israeli troopers attacked Palestinian demonstrators in the besieged Gaza Strip, killing three and wounding more than 880 others during an anti-occupation protest on the fifth Friday of a six-week protest, known as the “Great March of Return.”
On April 20, four more Palestinian protesters, including a 15-year-old teenage boy, sustained fatal injuries in clashes with Israeli soldiers during anti-occupation protests along the border between Gaza and the occupied territories.
The recent deadly attack on Palestinian protesters came just hours after the UN human rights chief criticized Tel Aviv for using “excessive force” against demonstrators.
Protests along the Gaza border since March 30 have led to clashes with Israeli troops, leaving at least 38 Palestinians dead and thousands of others wounded.
The Palestinian demonstrations will last until May 15, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day (Day of Catastrophe) when Israel was created.
Every year on May 15, Palestinians all over the world hold protests to commemorate Nakba Day, which also marks the anniversary of the forcible eviction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland by the Israeli regime in 1948.
