Palestinian killed, 12 hurt in Gaza demos

A Palestinian teenager was killed and 12 people were wounded, including children, as Israeli troops opened fire at "Land Day" demonstrators near the Gaza border on Tuesday, Palestinian medics said.

Hundreds of demonstrators marched to the border, east of the town of Khan Yunis, to mark Land Day, an annual commemoration of Israel's killing of six people during a 1976 protest by Israeli Arabs against land confiscations.

Near the site of fierce clashes which left two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinians dead over the weekend, protesters hurled stones at troops along the border, who responded with live fire, witnesses said.

Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services, said 11 people, including children, were wounded. One of them, nine-year-old Raid Abu Namus, was in serious condition, medics at a nearby hospital said.

Israeli troops earlier shot dead 15-year-old Mohammed al-Faramawi in an incident near the southern Gaza town of Rafah, Hassanein said. Witnesses said he had arrived near the border just ahead of a similar march.

Another Palestinian, 14, was shot and wounded during a Land Day demonstration in the Maghazi refugee camp of central Gaza, Hassanein said.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the reports.

Mostly quiet

The borders of the Islamist Hamas-ruled Gaza have been mostly quiet since a December 2008-January 2009 Israeli assault on the territory that killed 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

The offensive largely succeeded in halting years of near-daily rocket attacks on southern Israel, but recent weeks have seen a rise in such attacks, and a Thai laborer in Israel was killed earlier this month.

Israel's Arab minority leads Land Day demonstrations every year to protest against housing demolitions and land confiscations. Similar events are held in the occupied West Bank as well as in Gaza.

Israel's 1.2 million Arab citizens, who have the right to vote, are the descendants of the 160,000 Palestinians who remained in Israel after the 1948 Middle East war and creation of the Jewish state.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad got behind a horse-drawn plough in the West Bank on Tuesday and drilled a furrow in protest against Israeli control of Palestinian land.

Wearing a T-shirt and a hat, the former World Bank economist put his foot to the rusty plough as Jewish settlers watched from a hilltop outpost nearby.

Fayyad was marking Land Day, the annual commemoration of protests in 1976 against Israel's appropriation of Arab-owned land in the Galilee. It is marked in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and in Arab towns inside Israel.

The field he ploughed lies in a zone which falls under full Israeli control, classified as "Area C" according to the Palestinian-Israeli interim peace agreement.

As part of his plan to build the institutions of a Palestinian state by 2011, Fayyad has said that such territory, which makes up 60 percent of the West Bank, would be the "theatre of our operations."

"This is a symbol of our complete rejection of settlers' plans and of our people's determination to hold onto and care for their land," he said. "Our people are deeply rooted here."

Fayyad is a frequent visitor to "Area C", where Jewish settlements are planted among the towns and villages of the West Bank's 2.5 million Palestinians.

This is a symbol of our complete rejection of settlers' plans and of our people's determination to hold onto and care for their land," he said. "Our people are deeply rooted here

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad