Human rights organizations have come out in full condemnation of Israel's violent response to massive unarmed civilian protests in Gaza on March 30, which left 16 Palestinians—one farmer and 15 protesters —dead along the Strip's border. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, released a statement condemning Israel's use of military snipers against the civilian protesters. "The Israeli military's use of 100 snipers against unarmed Palestinian civilian protesters in the Gaza Strip is illegal," the statement said, adding that "live gunfire on unarmed civilians constitutes a brutal violation of the international legal obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants." 

Palestinian activists burned pictures of Donald Trump in Bethlehem in response to his Dec. 6 announcement that his administration will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. He stated with typical bluster: "While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering." But this time the braggadocio was wedded to a nearly hallucinatory chutzpah: "I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians." (Palestine News Network, The Guardian) Of course precisely the opposite is true.

Israeli authorities revoked permits for Palestinians to enter Jerusalem and Israel in response to a deadly attack in East Jerusalem's Old City—then launched a a mass arrest campaign, rounding up hundreds for being in the city without a permit. At least 350 Palestinians were detained in a single day, with those holding West Bank IDs being forced to board buses and sent back to the occupied territory. A police statement added that Israeli forces are continuing security measures in an around the Old City "to prevent further attacks and respond if necessary." One Israeli police officer was killed in the knife attack outside the Old City's Damascus Gate. Israeli soldiers responding to the attack killed three Palestinians.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continued to express outrage over US President Donald Trump naming the Hamas movement—Gaza's de facto ruling party—in a list of terrorist organizations during a speech in Riyadh before 50 leaders of Arab and Muslim-majority countries on May 20. Palestinians in Gaza from across the political spectrum united in denouncing the remarks, which have been interpreted as a blanket condemnation of all forms of Palestinian resistance. "No description of the suffering and depravity can begin to capture its full measure. The true toll of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and so many others, must be counted not only in the number of dead. It must also be counted in generations of vanished dreams," Trump said, in his first speech delivered abroad since taking office.

The Hamas movement announced its new charter on May 1, presenting an acceptance of a Palestinian state along the 1967 "Green Line" border, while rejecting any legitimacy of "the Zionist entity," in reference to the state of Israel. "Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus," the charter read.

Speaking before the World Jewish Congress in New York April 23, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated: "A modern form of anti-Semitism is the denial of the right of the State of Israel to exist. As secretary-general of the United Nations, I can say that the State of Israel needs to be treated as any other state, with exactly the same rules." He said this "does not mean I will always be in agreement with all the decisions made by any government position taken by any government that sits in Israel," but that he supports "the absolutely undeniable right of Israel to exist and to live in peace and security with its neighbors."

More than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody launched an open-ended mass hunger strike on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners' Day, led by imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, under the banner of "Freedom and Dignity" for prisoners. Sources told Ma'an News Agency that prisoners had purged all food products from their cells and shaved their heads in Israel prisons from the north to the south, namely in the Gilboa, Hadarim, Ashkelon, Ktziot, Nafha, and Ramon prisons. In the southern occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, a number of activists in al-Duheisha refugee camp shaved their heads in solidarity with the hunger strikers, while a rally took place marking Prisoners' Day in the nearby Aida refugee camp that honored current and former prisoners from the camp.