Israeli and Palestinian rights groups went to Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday in a bid to stop the army’s use of lethal force against Palestinians during protests and clashes on the Gaza border.

Forty-eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire on the frontier since the start of protests that organisers have dubbed the Great March of Return on March 30, with more than 1,500 wounded.

No Israelis have been hurt.

The army has accused Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza and has fought three wars with Israel since 2008, of seeking to use the protests as cover to carry out attacks.

Five Israeli NGOs and the Gaza-based Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights argued that international law bars the use of lethal fire against unarmed demonstrators.

The Israeli government’s written response to the petitions says the Gaza protests are not peaceful civilian demonstrations but “part of the armed conflict between the state of Israel and the Hamas terrorist organisation.”

It adds that live fire is only used as a last resort after non-lethal means have failed to stop actions it considers “a real danger” to Israeli troops and civilians living near the border with Gaza.

Speaking in the packed Jerusalem courtroom Monday, attorney Suhad Bishara, representing Israeli rights group Adalah, said the facts indicated otherwise.

“The great majority of those shot were at a distance from the (border) fence,” she said.

“There is systematic use of lethal fire with no justification.”

The army’s rules governing use of live fire are officially classified but widely known in a country where most Israelis perform compulsory military service.

“What we know is that the Israeli army has tailored a new type of rules of fire regulation which do not meet international standards,” lawyer Michael Sfard, for the other Israeli NGOs, told reporters after the hearing.

“Israeli case law is very clear that rules of engagement are secret and privileged,” he said.

“But we know enough about them to argue that these sections which allow lethal force against unarmed civilians who do not pose danger are illegal. This is the crux of the case.”

The government response says the open-fire regulations “conform to international law as well as Israeli law, including the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence”.

The judges gave each side until May 6 to submit written precedents in support of their arguments, after which it will deliver its ruling.

The European Union and UN chief Antonio Guterres have called for an independent investigation into the deaths, but the Jewish state has rejected the idea.

The United States, Israel’s strongest backer, has blocked moves for a probe at the United Nations.</s>Israeli and Palestinian rights groups went to Israel's Supreme Court on Monday in a bid to stop the army's use of lethal force against Palestinians during protests and clashes on the Gaza border.

Forty-eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire on the frontier since the start of protests that organisers have dubbed the Great March of Return on March 30, with more than 1,500 wounded.

No Israelis have been hurt.

The army has accused Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza and has fought three wars with Israel since 2008, of seeking to use the protests as cover to carry out attacks.

Five Israeli NGOs and the Gaza-based Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights argued that international law bars the use of lethal fire against unarmed demonstrators.

The Israeli government's written response to the petitions says the Gaza protests are not peaceful civilian demonstrations but "part of the armed conflict between the state of Israel and the Hamas terrorist organisation."

It adds that live fire is only used as a last resort after non-lethal means have failed to stop actions it considers "a real danger" to Israeli troops and civilians living near the border with Gaza.

Speaking in the packed Jerusalem courtroom Monday, attorney Suhad Bishara, representing Israeli rights group Adalah, said the facts indicated otherwise.

"The great majority of those shot were at a distance from the (border) fence," she said.

"There is systematic use of lethal fire with no justification."

The army's rules governing use of live fire are officially classified but widely known in a country where most Israelis perform compulsory military service.

"What we know is that the Israeli army has tailored a new type of rules of fire regulation which do not meet international standards," lawyer Michael Sfard, for the other Israeli NGOs, told reporters after the hearing.

"Israeli case law is very clear that rules of engagement are secret and privileged," he said.

"But we know enough about them to argue that these sections which allow lethal force against unarmed civilians who do not pose danger are illegal. This is the crux of the case."

The government response says the open-fire regulations "conform to international law as well as Israeli law, including the Supreme Court's jurisprudence".

The judges gave each side until May 6 to submit written precedents in support of their arguments, after which it will deliver its ruling.

The European Union and UN chief Antonio Guterres have called for an independent investigation into the deaths, but the Jewish state has rejected the idea.

The United States, Israel's strongest backer, has blocked moves for a probe at the United Nations.</s>Israeli and Palestinian rights groups went to Israel's Supreme Court on Monday in a bid to stop the army's use of lethal force against Palestinians during protests and clashes on the Gaza border.

Forty-eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire on the frontier since the start of protests that organizers have dubbed the Great March of Return on March 30, with more than 1,500 wounded.

No Israelis have been hurt.

The army has accused Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza and has fought three wars with Israel since 2008, of seeking to use the protests as cover to carry out attacks.

Five Israeli NGOs and the Gaza-based Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights argued that international law bars the use of lethal fire against unarmed demonstrators.

The Israeli government's written response to the petitions says the Gaza protests are not peaceful civilian demonstrations but "part of the armed conflict between the state of Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization."

It adds that live fire is only used as a last resort after non-lethal means have failed to stop actions it considers "a real danger" to Israeli troops and civilians living near the border with Gaza.

Speaking in the packed Jerusalem courtroom Monday, attorney Suhad Bishara, representing Israeli rights group Adalah, said the facts indicated otherwise.

"The great majority of those shot were at a distance from the (border) fence," she said.

"There is systematic use of lethal fire with no justification."

The army's rules governing use of live fire are officially classified but widely known in a country where most Israelis perform compulsory military service.

"What we know is that the Israeli army has tailored a new type of rules of fire regulation which do not meet international standards," lawyer Michael Sfard, for the other Israeli NGOs, told reporters after the hearing.

"Israeli case law is very clear that rules of engagement are secret and privileged," he said.

"But we know enough about them to argue that these sections which allow lethal force against unarmed civilians who do not pose danger are illegal. This is the crux of the case."

The government response says the open-fire regulations "conform to international law as well as Israeli law, including the Supreme Court's jurisprudence."

The judges gave each side until May 6 to submit written precedents in support of their arguments, after which it will deliver its ruling.

The European Union and U.N. chief Antonio Guterres have called for an independent investigation into the deaths, but Israel has rejected the idea.

The United States, Israel's strongest backer, has blocked moves for a probe at the United Nations.</s>The IDF's rules of engagement on the Gaza border are in line with Israeli and international law, the state said Sunday in its response to a High Court petition by Yesh Din against the live fire used to stop Palestinians from crossing the border into Israel during weekly rioting.

The state noted it will submit the rules of engagement and confidential intelligence on the matter to the High Court.

These events, the state said, "constitute part of the armed conflict between Hamas and Israel."</s>After five weekends of bloody clashes on the Gaza border, Israel’s high court on Monday considered a number of petitions filed by human rights groups aimed at forcing the army to reconsider its use of live fire to quell the protests.

A total of 44 protesters have been killed and thousands wounded, many by live fire, in the March of Return protests, which are expected to peak in mid-May, when the Palestinians mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, which they regard as the Nakba, or catastrophe, and the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem.

One of the judges said no other court in the world would address the question of rules of engagement during a conflict but no decision was taken on Monday and the court will reconvene before the judges make their decision.

The petitions, filed by six human rights groups, demanded that the court revoke the army’s rules of engagement that authorise soldiers to use live fire on demonstrators along the Gaza border who are not endangering human lives.

The groups taking the case included the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Yesh Din, Gisha and Hamoked: Centre for the Defence of the Individual.

The petitioners claimed demonstrations in Gaza were not prohibited and that if incidents turned violent or there were attempts to breach the border, these were civil disturbances and therefore it was legally permissible to open fire only when there was an immediate danger to human life.

The petitioners further claimed that even if the area was considered a combat zone due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the demonstrations themselves were not part of the fighting and the rules of war did not apply to them.

The state claimed that the security forces’ rules of engagement along the border corresponded with Israeli and international law, arguing that the legal basis for the petitions was “faulty and deficient”.

“The petitioners have drawn incorrect legal conclusions, first and foremost regarding the classification of the events as ostensibly ‘quintessentially civil incidents’. A proper reality check shows that these are events that compose part of the armed conflict between the Hamas terror organisation and Israel, with all that this entails,” it said.

Amnesty International has called for an arms embargo against Israel, which it accused of carrying out a “murderous assault” on Palestinians participating in the protests.

“For four weeks the world has watched in horror as Israeli snipers and other soldiers, armed with full protective gear and behind the border fence, attack Palestinian demonstrators with live ammunition and tear gas,” Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director Magdalena Mughrabi said. “Despite international condemnation, the Israeli army has not retracted its illegal orders to shoot unarmed demonstrators.”

A senior Israeli officer told the Ha’aretz newspaper that most of the army’s killings of Palestinians during the Gaza-border protests resulted from snipers aiming at demonstrators’ legs, with the killings an unintentional outcome after a protester bent down, a sniper missed or a bullet ricocheted.</s>Israel's live fire use in Gaza protests in first legal test

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military's use of live fire against Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border is facing its first legal test before the Supreme Court.

Six human rights groups asked the court on Monday to restrict or ban the use of live ammunition, after 39 Palestinian were killed and more than 1,600 wounded in weekly border protests over the past month.

The rights groups say rules of engagement of law enforcement apply, under which officers can only resort to lethal force if their lives are in imminent danger. They say the military's use of lethal force against unarmed protesters is unlawful.

Israel's military argues that the border protests are part of a long-running conflict with Gaza's ruling Hamas, which it considers a terror group. Israel says rules of armed conflict apply.
In response to a Yesh Din petition to the Israeli High Court calling for a ban on the use of live rounds to prevent protestors breaching the border fence, the Israeli government says its rules of engagement meet local and international law, that intelligence used to justify decisions will be submitted to the court, and that the protests are considered part of the ongoing conflict with Hamas.