Two Palestinian human rights organizations on Saturday called on the Israeli occupation authorities to allow medical crews to safely evacuate two Palestinians who are still lying injured or dead near Gaza’s eastern border fence.
Adalah and al-Mezan Centers for Human Rights in a statement asked senior Israeli officials to immediately allow search and rescue teams to enter the buffer zone in Gaza near the border fence to evacuate wounded or dead Palestinian men whose conditions remained unknown.
Local sources reported that two Palestinians were shot east of Juhor ad-Dik area in Gaza on Friday and left to bleed to death some 150 meters from the border fence before the Israeli occupation forces detained their bodies. Gaza’s Ministry of Health has not confirmed the news of their death yet.
The statement said that the Israeli army uses live fire to prevent Palestinians from entering the “buffer zone” which extends 300 meters into Gaza.
The two human rights organizations stressed that the Israeli army by preventing rescue teams from reaching those injured or dead is violating both international humanitarian law and Israeli laws governing warfare anchored in the Geneva Conventions.
The statement underlined that providing protection to the injured as well as ambulances hospitals and medical teams allowing medical treatment and enabling rescue teams to evacuate casualties are among the basic principles of the Geneva Conventions.
Likewise these laws guarantee the free movement of medical search and rescue teams which facilitates their mission to locate missing individuals thus increasing their chances of survival it added.
