Villagers from Ni'lin defied an Israeli military curfew today to converge on the site where the Apartheid Wall is being constructed on village lands.

"The Israeli government is justifying what former US President Jimmy Carter recently described as 'one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth' under the pretext of security," said Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative. "But tell me who is safer now that Mohammad, Hashim, Fayza, Sijoud, and many others are dead?" Are the lives of these children, these chronically ill people, worth less than any other human being? The Israeli government and military's clear and fundamental lack of regard for the basic right of Palestinians to life is racist and criminal," the MP stressed.

Zainab Bashir and Yousef Al-Madhoun have become the 116th and 117th Gazans to be added to the long list of patients who have died after Israel delayed or denied their access to essential treatment outside of the Strip. Bashir, of Deir Elbalah town, and Al-Madhoun of Gaza city, died on Sunday of chronic diseases.

March 21 will mark the International Day on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, but for Palestinians, there is little to celebrate in this respect.

An Israeli airstrike aimed at the ministry of interior building in Gaza City also destroyed the nearby Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) head office in Gaza and killed a 5-month-old baby in a residential building in the same area.