LATEST: Four killed as Israel cracks down on Gaza's 'March of a Million'
Palestinians are expected to show up en masse on Friday for the "March of a Million for Jerusalem", marking both International Jerusalem Day and the 51st anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war.
Israeli forces have been on high alert since Thursday, with snipers and tanks stationed along the fence, raising fears that the rallies could be violently repressed once again.
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Israeli forces have been on high alert ahead of Friday’s demonstrations, with hundreds of snipers positioned along the fence separating Israel and Gaza since Thursday evening, according to Israeli media reports.
Splashed across its front page, Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth’s main headline read “Alert at the border”, as the newspaper reported that Israeli army snipers, tanks and even rockets were deployed to face the demonstrators.
While the high number of Israeli troops stationed around Gaza today leave many fearful of further bloodshed, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has compiled a concise summary of casualties since the beginning of the Great March of Return in the besieged Gaza Strip since 30 March.
As of Thursday 7 June, the Gaza Health Ministry had reported 131 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces - including 17 killed outside of the context of demonstrations - and 13,900 wounded.
OCHA added that four Israelis were also wounded during the same time period, without giving further information.
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Protests are officially set to begin at 2pm local time (11 GMT) near the high-security fence separating Gaza from Israel, although local Palestinian media reported that Israeli forces had already shot towards demonstrators earlier in the day.
Friday marks International Jerusalem Day - an occasion commemorated on the fourth Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan each year since 1979, the year of the holiday’s creation in Iran. International Jerusalem Day also happens to fall this year during the 51st anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war, also known to Palestinians as the Naksa, or "Setback".
During the war, Israel seized control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. The Sinai Peninsula was later returned to Egypt in 1982, the West Bank and Golan Heights remain under Israeli occupation and the Gaza Strip suffers under a crippling siege.
The international community and some Israelis typically consider the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza to constitute Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, but it’s worth noting that many Palestinians deem all lands that have fallen under Israel’s control since the state’s inception in 1948 to be under Israeli occupation.