More than 300 protesters were injured on Friday, according to the Gaza health ministry, including more than 40 from live fire, as some 7,000 Gaza residents took part in the sixth March of Return along the border with Israel.
The Israeli military said they thwarted two attempts to infiltrate Israel and dispersed violent protests at a number of locations. Protesters using slingshots managed to down two Israeli surveillance drones.
In a separate development, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas apologised for a speech this week that was widely condemned as anti-Semitic. He had said it was the "social functions" of Jews, including money-lending, that caused hatred toward them in Europe.
“If people were offended by my statement ... especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologise to them,” news agency Wafa quoted Mr Abbas as saying.
Ahead of Friday’s protests in Gaza, the Israeli army warned Palestinians against sending firebombs attached to kites over the border, after dozens of incidents during the last few weeks in which such devices landed on the Israeli side of the border, setting fields and woodlands on fire.
"The arson phenomenon is not hidden from our eyes, and we are taking it very seriously," the army's Arabic spokesman Avichai Adraee, said in a tweet. "Attack kites are not a kids' game and we don't see it that way."
With up to 15 kites launched each day, the Israeli military appear to have no immediate answer to the primitive but effective new Palestinian weapon.
Air strikes
Benny Hasson, spokesman for Kibbutz Kissufim, near the border, urged the army to come up with a solution. "The arson is disrupting the residents' daily lives, and the wave of fires caused by the incendiary kites is causing a great deal of damage to our fields," he said.
According to Israeli media outlets, the army is considering retaliating for kite launches with air strikes against Hamas-run infrastructure targets. The army was also considering deploying snipers to target demonstrators launching the kites and multi-rotor drones capable of destroying the kites, they said.
More than 40 people have been killed in the March of Return protests which are expected to peak in the middle of the month when Palestinians mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel and the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, commemorated as the Nakba, or catastrophe.
The March of Return revives a demand for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to towns and villages from which their families fled, or were driven out, when the state of Israel was created.
Israel says the protests are orchestrated by Hamas and are a cover to damage the border fence or carry out terror attacks inside Israel.
Local and international rights groups and Palestinian officials have accused Israel of using excessive force against unarmed civilians.
Earlier this week Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called for children participating in the protests to be kept away from the border.
"Keep the children away," Mr Abbas said in a speech at a meeting of the Palestinian National Council. "We will go out, protest and do everything, but it is not necessary to send the children to the fence to be shot and killed. I don't want the upcoming generation to be a handicapped generation."
– Additional reporting AP