GAZA, Monday, January 17, 2022 (WAFA) – Israeli navy today targeted Palestinian fishermen offshore al-Sudaniya area, northwest of Gaza city, according to WAFA correspondent.

He said said the Israeli navy fired live gunshots and water cannons towards fishermen who were sailing some three nautical miles offshore Gaza, forcing them to abandon their fishing mission and return to the shore.

Neither injuries nor damage were reported.

Meanwhile, Israeli bulldozers this morning advanced several dozens of meters into the besieged coastal enclave, north of Beit Lahia town, where they razed a large tract of farmland and erected earth mounds while firing smoke bombs as a camouflage.

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.T./ K.F.