The international outcry that followed last week’s Israeli slaughter of 20 Palestinians along the Gaza border had minimal effect on Israel. On Friday, the start of the second week of the March of Return, in which protesters are demanding that Palestinians be allowed to return to ancestral lands that are now in Israel, Israeli troops killed up to 10 Palestinian protesters and wounded at least 1,000 more. The casualty figures were not as high as that of last week, but are high enough. Last week Israeli troops clearly had orders to shoot as Palestinian civilians poured out to take part in peaceful marches in support of their internationally recognized rights. This week, Israel shot again. Seeing that the protests will resume every Friday until mid-May when Palestinians commemorate the nakba or catastrophe – the 70th anniversary of Israel’s illegal creation – an independent, transparent inquiry into last week’s and this week’s onslaught is urgently needed. The UN secretary-general called for such an investigation. An investigation was also demanded by 14 members of the Security Council but was shot down by the US wielding its veto power. Instead, US officials backed the official Israeli line, and blamed Palestinians for their own loss of life. An investigation is necessary to specifically address Israeli claims that Hamas, which dominates Gaza, is staging the rallies in order to launch attacks; that most of those killed were known terror activists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad; that militants tried to get through the Gaza-Israel fence in an attempt to plant explosives; that Israeli forces fired on marchers it said participated in violence; and that Hamas exploited women and children by using them as human shields. These are serious allegations and Israel should either provide the evidence for these charges or be held fully responsible for using live ammunition against peaceful, unarmed protesters. So far, Israel has refused an inquest. Its Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has praised his troops for last week’s onslaught, claiming they deserve “a medal” because they “did what had to be done”. Medals are usually awarded for valor on the battlefield, not premeditated murder. As for Israel’s UN ambassador, he lodged a complaint with the Security Council for holding the emergency session on the violence on the first night of a major Jewish holiday, thus endangering Israel’s participation while they observed this religious festivity. That’s how irreverent Israel viewed last week’s carnage. It was extremely upset, not by the deaths it willfully caused, but on the holiday it stood to miss. In the end, Israel decided to skip the emergency session because, of course, the holiday was far more important. This is what the Palestinians have been up against for 70 years. No respect for international human rights law or international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians. This is how the occupation has always worked, using weapons to respond to inalienable rights. What the Palestinians are currently doing with their demonstrations is refocusing international attention back on the Palestinian cause after years of the Arab Spring that took the focus away from the occupation. They are delivering the message that Palestinians will never forget their right to their land, will never accept an alternative homeland, and are determined to regain the land they have lost regardless of the price they are forced to pay. These sequences of demonstrations are shaking the occupation authorities to their core because they now realize that the Palestinian people insist on their right to return to their land as defined by the 1948 UN partition agreement, and not just to territory occupied in 1967, something which threatens the very existence of the occupation. A Gaza inquest into the extreme force used by the occupation authorities against peaceful Palestinian demonstrators is urgently needed. There cannot be a shooting gallery set up along the Gaza fence every Friday.