GAZA, Friday, May 10, 2019 (WAFA) – Israeli forces Friday morning shot and injured a Palestinian farmer while tending to his land near the borderline area of Malaka, east of Gaza.
WAFA correspondent reported that Israeli forces stationed along Gaza’s eastern frontier with Israel opened live fire towards a number of farmers, hitting one with a live round in the leg.
The casualty was rushed to al-Shifa Hospital for medical treatment.
The incident came several hours before the launching of today’s Great March of Return protests along Gaza’s eastern frontier with Israel.
Israeli forces frequently shoot at farmers and other civilians inside the Gaza Strip if they approach large swathes of land near the border, which the Israeli military has deemed off-s to Palestinians.
The "security buffer zone" extends between 500 meters and 1500 meters into the Strip, effectively turning local farms into no-go zones, and accounts for 17 percent of Gaza‘s total land area and 35 percent of its agricultural land.
Israel has maintained a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas won the elections and took over power in the strip in 2007, denying the impoverished enclave’s two million population their basic rights and causing a decline in their standard of living coupled with unprecedented rates of unemployment and poverty.
Under the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, Israel is obligated to permit fishing up to 20 nautical miles, but this has never been implemented.
Israel maintains a heavy naval presence, restricting any traffic in and out of the enclave, and s the distance Gaza’s fishermen can travel to fish, severely affecting the livelihoods of some 4,000 fishermen and at least 1,500 more people involved in the fishing industry.
Israel has over the past decade launched three major onslaughts on Gaza that have heavily damaged much of the enclave’s infrastructure.
Since March 30, 2018, Gazans have been launching the weekly Great March of Return protests along Gaza’s eastern frontier with Israel, calling for lifting the 12-year blockade and demanding their right to return to their lands from which their families were expelled during the founding of Israel in 1948.
K.F.
