GAZA, Wednesday, June 16, 2021 (WAFA) – Israel Wednesday dawn launched airstrikes on two sites in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to WAFA correspondent.

He said that an Israeli warplane targeted a site with two missiles in Ma‘en area, south of Khan Younes city, in the southern strip.

Another airstrike targeted with a missile a site, located south of Gaza city in the central war-torn strip.

Material damages were confirmed, but no casualties were reported in the strikes that mark the first major escalation since a ceasefire agreement on May 21 ended 11 days of Israeli onslaught that killed 260 Palestinians and wounded some 2,000 others.

Fourteen years following the Israeli “disengagement” from Gaza, Israel has not actually disengaged from Gaza; it still maintains control of its land borders, access to the sea and airspace.

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.

K.F.