Israeli troops today targeted farmers and herders east of Khan Younes city in the southern besieged Gaza Strip, according to WAFA correspondent.
He said that the heavily-armed soldiers in observation towers, located to the east of the city, opened heavy machine gunfire on Palestinian farmers tending their land and herders grazing their cattle, east of Khuza‘a town, forcing them to flee for their safety.
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.
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)