GAZA, Tuesday, August 02, 2022 (WAFA) – the Israeli occupation authorities today ordered the closure of Gaza’s border crossings, according to WAFA correspondent.

He reported the Palestinian Commission for Civil Affairs saying that the occupation authorities sealed off Erez/Beit Hanoun border crossing for pedestrians, including workers, traders, patients and humanitarian cases, going in and out of the besieged coastal enclave.

They also shut down the Karm Abu Salem/ Kerem Shalom border crossing, preventing the entry of goods, supplies, construction materials and fuel to the enclave.

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.