[THREAD] On this day 20 years ago, harrowing footage of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durrah being gunned down in Gaza on the second day of the Palestinian uprising on 30 September 2000, sent global shock waves (📸: AFP)
Protests ignited in the then occupied Gaza territory near the village of Netzarim, where sixty families of Israeli settlers live
A group of IDF soldiers had made a two-storey building their outpost in order to guard the Israeli settlement
Early in the morning of September 30, TV crews, photographers and reporters were stationed around the area to record the ongoing clashes
Mohammed and his father, Jamal, were on their way back from a used-car market when they were caught up in the crossfire
In the moments before Mohammed was killed by a number of bullets, he is seen crouched with his father behind a large concrete cylinder as Jamal shouts for the firing to stop and Mohammed tries to hide behind his father
After a hurried internal investigation, the head of the Israeli army’s Southern Command, General Yom-Tov Samia, concluded that its troops were probably to blame for Mohammed’s death
Ariel Sharon, who was blamed for igniting the Second Intifada, called the death "a real tragedy"
Mohammed’s death had a major effect in the region- one of the main streets in Baghdad was renamed The Martyr Mohammed Al Durrah Street and in Morocco, a park was named after him
Two years later, his stepmother became pregnant with another child which she named Mohammed
In 2013, an official Israeli report commissioned by Netanyahu concluded that the television broadcast of Mohammed’s death was distortion, falsehood, fabrication and incitement to terror
Jamal, and cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, who filmed the incident, dismissed the findings
To find out more about the Second Palestinian Intifada, check out our thread on the uprising below 👇
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🧵: In his latest column, MEE’s editor-in-chief David Hearst writes that the anti-Gaza war protest movement has revived the Palestinian national cause and a new generation of American Jews are challenging the claim that Zionism owns their narrative⤵️ middleeasteye.net/opinion/campus…
The parallels between the 1968 protest movement against the Vietnam War and today’s global protest against the Gaza War are many, writes Hearst
Like the Tet Offensive, the mass prison breakout of Gaza, engineered by al-Qassam Brigades on 7 October, went out of control within hours, says Hearst
🧵: An investigation by MEE reveals that a company owned by an influential Egyptian businessman and ally of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is making around $2m a day from Palestinians fleeing Israel's war on Gaza ⤵️
Hala for Consulting and Tourism Services, the company owned by Sinai tribal leader and business tycoon Ibrahim al-Organi, has been charging Palestinians crossing Rafah to Egypt at least $5,000 per adult and $2,500 per child under 16
Hala has a monopoly on providing transfer services at the Rafah crossing, the only Gaza exit not bordered with Israel and the single route out of the enclave for Palestinians.
In the past three months alone, the company is estimated to have made at least $118m from Palestinians
🧵: Palestinians have accused Israel’s far-right government and army of complicity following devastating weekend assaults by Israeli settlers.
The attacks, which were undeterred by US sanctions, mark a troubling escalation of violence in the West Bank ⤵️ middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-s…
On Friday, Amer Jabr was shot in the thigh during an assault by Israeli settlers on his home in the village al-Mughayyir.
His home is one of the many that were destroyed in the latest surge in settler violence, triggered by the disappearance and death of a teenage settler
Netanyahu denounced the killing of the teenage settler as a heinous crime, promising to find the culprits but omitted any mention of settler attacks on Palestinian families.
Despite the US imposing sanctions on far-right Israeli settlers linked to violence, the sanctions have not deterred attacks
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Speaking to the conservative Real America’s Voice network, Donald Trump said that "any Jewish person that votes for Biden does not love Israel and frankly, should be spoken to."
Human Rights Watch said that the Israeli government has been using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, referring to it as a war crime in its latest report.