Palestinian protesters carry tires to burn them during clashes with Israeli troops at Israel-Gaza border, in the southern Gaza Strip April 5, 2018. . (photo credit: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA / REUTERS)
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Over a year after Palestinians began protesting along the Gaza border fence, the Israeli military has changed the way they train snipers deployed to the fence after it realized it led to the deaths of numerous protesters.
A senior officer in the IDF’s LOTAR counter-terror school told reporters that the military has begun to instruct snipers to shoot the ankles of protesters after it was understood that “firing at the lower half of the body above the knee led to the deaths of many people, even though this was not our objective.”
Dozens of snipers are deployed along the fence during the weekly riots and according to the senior officer “a sniper who does not shoot precisely enough, or who has professional, behavioral or mental problems, will be removed.”
All IDF snipers spend ten weeks at LOTAR, learning how to precisely hit targets from long distances.
Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem said in a statement on Wednesday that the IDF’s decision to change the regulations “in no way suggests that the military attaches great value to human life. On the contrary, it shows that the military consciously chose not to regard those standing on the other side of the fence as humans. In its naivety, the High Court of Justice approved this practice. Both the military and the Court bear the responsibility for this criminal policy.”
Thousands of Gazans protest along the security fence on a weekly basis taking part in Great Return March demonstrations which began on March 30th, calling for an end of the 12 year long Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
During the violent weekly protests, Gazans have been burning tires and hurling stones as well as grenades and other explosive devices towards IDF troops. Gazans have also launched countless aerial incendiary devices into southern Israel, devastating thousands of acres of land.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza close to 300 Palestinians have been killed and over 22,000 others injured since the beginning of the Great March of Return began.
According to The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as of March 2019there have been a total of 29,187 Palestinians injured since the protests began, with 7,246 injured by live ammunition and 773 injured by rubber bullets.
Another 12,442 Palestinians were injured by gas inhalation and another 8,449 by other means. OCHA documentation also found that the large majority of those injured were men (21,433) followed by 5,333 male youths as well as 1,699 women and 445 girls.
A January report by Medicine Sans Frontier stated that nearly 90 percent of those injured by Israeli fire suffered injuries to their lower limbs.
“MSF has provided care for about half of the wounded people after their initial treatment in local hospitals, and the wounds MSF has observed have been unusually severe,” read the report by the non-governmental organization.
The first Israeli soldier killed along the Gaza front since Operation Protective Edge in 2014 also occurred during one the weekly protest, after an IDF force responded to a violent protest by 20 Palestinian youth some 400 meters from the border fence. Staff Sgt. Aviv Levi was killed after he shot in the chest by sniper fire.
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