GAZA, Wednesday, 13 November 2019 (WAFA) – Two more Palestinians were Wednesday morning killed in the ongoing Israeli airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, raising the death toll so far to 12 in the last 24 hours.
WAFA correspondent said that Israeli warplanes targeted a group of Palestinians, southeast of Gaza, killing one.
The fatality was identified as Alaa Ishteiwi, 32, from the Gaza city neighbourhood of Zaytoun.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes pounded farmlands in al-Meghraqa area, to the south of the Gaza Strip, killing 38-year-old Khalid Farraj.
Israeli missiles also slammed into the vicinity of a al-Rawda Playground in Zaytoun neighbourhood and a plot of farmland to the east of al-Bureij refugee camp.
Warplanes also targeted the area of al-Shaikh Ajlin, southwest of Gaza city, causing large-scale destruction and serious damages to nearby houses.
Israel has launched multiple airstrikes on the besieged coastal enclave following the targeted assassination Islamic Jihad leader Bahaa Abu al-Atta and his wife, Asmaa, on Tuesday morning.
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.
