LATEST: Gaza sees more protests and violence on Nakba Day, after 62 killed

Good afternoon from the US team.

South Africa recalled its ambassador to Israel on Monday after at least 55 Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli forces during protests over the US embassy opening in Jerusalem.

"Given the indiscriminate and grave manner of the latest Israeli attack, the South African government has taken a decision to recall Ambassador Sisa Ngombane with immediate effect until further notice," the South African foreign ministry said in a statement.

Good evening, 

Areeb here, with the final update from MEE's London office. A lot of developments have taken place over the last few hours. Here's a list of everything you need to know:

• The death toll has reached 55 people, with 2,400 injured, according to Gaza's health ministry. 
• MEE contributor Kamal Hawwash describes the US embassy move is a "day of mourning and a warning."
• MEE correspondents Hind Khoudary, Lubna Masarwa, and Chloe Benoist, explore the contrasting perspectives on the US embassy move to Jerusalem. 
• Protests have begun in Istanbul against the spike in violence on the Gaza border. 
• Palestine's UN ambassador calls for an emergency meeting at the Security Council. 

The US team will be taking over from here. Till tomorrow, keep up to date on our Facebook, and, Twitter. 

While the inauguration of the American embassy in Jerusalem is a big focus of today’s demonstrations, it also comes just a day before Nakba Day, which marks the 70th anniversary of the forced displacement of at least 700,000 Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel. These refugees and their descendants now number more than five million in the occupied Palestinian territory and neighbouring countries.

The “Great March of Return” that began in Gaza on 30 March and now stands in its last days has been highlighting the plight of Palestinians for the past seven decades, and notably calling for the refugees’ right of return to their homeland.

MEE correspondents Hind Khoudary, Lubna Masarwa, and Chloe Benoist take the pulse on the contrasting reactions between Israelis and Palestinian to the US embassy move. 

Read more here...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to criticism over its army's conduct in Gaza and said it acted in self-defence by firing at protestors. 

"The Hamas terrorist organisation declares it intends to destroy Israel and send thousands to breach the border fence in order to achieve this goal," Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.

"We will continue to act with determination to protect our sovereignty and citizens." 

Hundreds of Turks have assembled in Istanbul to protest against America's decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem. 

Footage posted on social media showed hundreds protesting through the streets of Istanbul, chanting pro-Palestine chants, and holding placards that called for an end to the Israeli occupation.

America has deployed dozens of more marines to guard its embassies in Israel, Jordan, and Turkey, as tensions mount over its decision to open an embassy in Jerusalem, according to reports. 

Officials in the US State Department and the Pentagon told NBC News it was considering more US military security at embassies in half a dozen other countries in the Middle East.  

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of "massacres" against Palestinian protesters in Gaza as he called for three days of mourning. 

He also said the opening of a US embassy in Jerusalem meant it was "no longer a meditator in the Middle East."

As of 7pm local time, Gaza's health ministry has said that 52 Palestinians have been killed and 2410 injured by Israeli forces today.  

Good evening, 

Areeb here from the MEE office in London. Here's the latest update on the current situation in Gaza and the West Bank:

• Gaza's health ministry said that, at the time of writing, 52 Palestinians had been killed and 2,410 injured in Gaza by Israeli fire. 
• Riyad Mansour, Palestine's UN ambassador, called for an emergency Security Council meeting and condemned the Israeli violence.
• UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein described Israel's actions as "outrageous" and demanded it "be held to account."
• Jared Kushner used his address at the US embassy in Jerusalem to condemn the "flawed Iran deal".

The US embassy is moving from Tel Aviv to the Arnona neighbourhood in West Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Arnona is located within the 1949 Armistice Agreement Line signed between Israel and neighbouring Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

The relatively upscale neighbourhood is known as an area where driving schools train their pupils and take them for driving tests. 

Shaped like a balloon, Arnona was a no man's land between 1948 and 1967, with Jordanian officers on the eastern side and Israelis on the western side. 

West Jerusalem is also known to Palestinians as Arab Jerusalem, which consisted of five major neighbourhoods before the 1948 war: al-Talbiyah, al-Baqaa, al-Qatamun, Mamilla, and the German colony.

Historians who studied West Jerusalem showed that during the late Ottoman Empire and at the beginning of the British Mandate in the 1920s, Palestinian families living in the Old City of Jerusalem started to build houses on the western hills of Jerusalem.

This was due to an increase in transportation, banking, mail and franchising, meaning that Palestinian families could afford to live outside the city walls.

Some of the pre-1948 houses in West Jerusalem are still intact, and visitors can still read the names of their Arab owners above the doors, or read verses of the Quran used as a blessing for the house. 

The US embassy would move to a temporary location in Arnona just for the ceremony and to cut the ribbon. A new building, it opened in 2010. The plan is to find a permanent location. 

Russia, China, France and the UK are the main countries that will not be attending the cutting of the ribbon at the US embassy in Jerusalem. These four countries are permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Israel has published a list of 32 countries that said they would attend the inauguration. Of those included on the list, Austria, Vietnam, DR Congo and Ivory Coast denied they would attend.

Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic are the only EU members that have accepted Israel's invitation.

Siha Mekomit, a Hebrew news site, described the countries that would attend the US embassy inauguration as "Israel's club of arms customers."

On the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 war, 2,238 Palestinians have been injured throughout the territory. 

More than half of the injuries were inflicted by live fire, according to Gaza's health ministry, while more were treated for tear gas inhalation. 

Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech that Palestine's Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948 is "a shame that will keep haunting the whole world."

Nasrallah said that Trump would announce his "deal of the century" at the end of May.

He added that Trump's plan is to force the deal on the Arab and Muslim countries and that if they did not accept it, "they'll be punished by the US."

"The pressure on Iran is at its highest, not just because of the nuclear, which Iran hasn't, but because Iran supports all of the resistance movements, and supports all the Palestinian factions, not just Hamas, as the Israelis say."

Nasrallah also said that Syrian troops fired 55 missiles, not 20 missiles, last week on Israeli targets in the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

"The Israeli enemy knows that the upcoming strike would be in the middle of the occupied Palestine, not in the Golan Heights," Nasrallah said.