GAZA, Monday, July 26, 2021 (WAFA) – Israel Sunday late night launched a series of airstrikes on several sites in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to WAFA correspondent.
He said that Israeli fighter jets targeted with two missiles a plot of farmland, northwest of Gaza city, causing material damage to the site as well as to the nearby civilian property.
Another airstrike targeted a plot of land, east of Khan Younes, in the southern strip, setting it on fire and causing material damage to the nearby civilian property.
No casualties were reported in any of the airstrikes.
The strikes came after Israel has reduced the fishing zone off Gaza from 12 nautical miles to six nautical miles purportedly in response to the launching of “incendiary” balloons from the enclave into farmland southern Israel.
The latest strikes came two months after an 11-day Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which killed at least 260 Palestinians, including 66 children, and caused widespread damage to infrastructure and residential areas.
The Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA) report published earlier this month revealed that the damage caused by the 11-day bombardment was between $290m and $380m, while the recovery needs are projected at between $345m and $485m.
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.
