Agencies-Gaza post
Sources: Israeli navy chases, targets Gaza fishermen
Israel’s navy chased and attacked fishing boats off the coast of the besiged Gaza Strip on Thursday evening, local sources reported.
Sources asserted that fishermen were sailing off the coasts of As-Sudaniya and al-Waha when Israeli naval ships opened fire with heavy machine guns, teargas canisters, and water hoses, causing the fishermen to run for their lives.
Israel has not fully departed from Gaza fourteen years after declaring “disengagement”; it still controls its land borders, access to the sea, and airspace.
The Gaza Strip, home to two million Palestinians, has been subjected to a punitive and crippling Israeli embargo for the past 12 years, as well as numerous onslaughts that have severely harmed most of the enclave’s infrastructure.
Gaza’s 2-million residents are still subject to “remote control” occupation and a strict siege that has destroyed the local economy, suffocated Palestinian livelihoods, pushed them into unprecedented levels of unemployment and poverty, and cut them off from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories and the rest of the world.
Gaza is still under occupation, with no authority over its borders, territorial waters, or airspace. Meanwhile, Israel fulfills just a small portion of its responsibilities as an occupying authority, failing to meet the fundamental necessities of Palestinian civilians in the land.
Two out of every three Palestinians in Gaza are refugees from what is now Israel. Because they are not Jews, that government bans them from exercising their right to return, which is guaranteed in international law.
