News Israeli navy target Palestinian fishermen offshore Gaza

Israeli navy target Palestinian fishermen offshore Gaza

Israeli navy Wednesday morning targeted Palestinian fishermen offshore As-Sudaniya area, northwest of Gaza city, according to local sources.

The fishermen were sailing within six nautical miles offshore the area when Israeli naval boats opened gunfire and water hoses toward them, damaging at least one boat and forcing the fishermen to flee for their safety.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces stationed at Gaza’s eastern frontier targeted farmers while the latter were tending to their farmlands in the town of Khaza’a, east of Khan Younis city, forcing them to leave the area.

No casualties were reported, however.

Two million Palestinians live the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to a punishing and crippling Israeli blockade for 12 years and repeated onslaughts that have heavily damaged much of the enclave’s infrastructure.

Gaza’s 2-million population remains under “remote control” occupation and a strict siege, which has destroyed the local economy, strangled Palestinian livelihoods, plunged them into unprecedented rates of unemployment and poverty, and cut off from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories and the wider world.

Gaza remains occupied territory, having no control over its borders, territorial waters or airspace. Meanwhile, Israel upholds very few of its responsibilities as the occupying power, failing to provide for the basic needs of Palestinian civilians living in the territory.

Every two in three Palestinians in Gaza is a refugee from lands inside what is now Israel. That government forbids them from exercising their right to return as enshrined in international law because they are not Jews.