ISRAELI forces on Sunday morning opened fire on Palestinian farmers in southern Gaza Strip, local officials said yesterday.
Local residents added that Israeli forces deployed east of Khan Yunis opened fire on farmers, preventing them from reaching their lands.
An Israeli army spokesperson said they could not confirm the incident. The incident comes after Israeli forces targeted the southern region of the small Palestinian territory with airstrikes for four consecutive days beginning Wednesday evening. Several were injured and a Palestinian woman was killed by Israeli shelling.
Israel said airstrikes were launched in response to Palestinian resistance groups targeting its troops with mortar rounds in an attempt to thwart Israeli military excavation activities in search of Hamas-made tunnels. However, Israel’s regular incursions inside Gaza’s border areas were perceived by many as the instigator of the hostilities.
The exchange was seen as an unusual escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip since a 2014 ceasefire was brokered after Israel’s devastating 50-day assault on the besieged coastal enclave that left some 2,200 dead and 11,000 injured.
Hamas, Gaza’s de facto ruler, had widely observed the ceasefire; Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yalon in March said Hamas ‘hasn’t fired a bullet’ since the war, and following Thursday’s hostilities, Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted a senior Israeli army officer as saying that Hamas had even been instrumental in preventing terrorist attacks and rocket fire directed at Israel.
However in the almost two years since the ceasefire was declared, regular violations have been committed on the Israeli side. Israeli bulldozers frequently enter Gaza territory, carrying out land-levelling and excavation operations while accompanied by military vehicles, with four such incursions recorded by the UN between April 26 and May 2.
On a near daily basis, the Israeli army fires ‘warning shots’ on Palestinian fishermen, farmers, and shepherds entering the Israeli-enforced ‘buffer zone,’ implemented after Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip a decade ago. Due to the high frequency of the attacks, live fire often goes unreported.
While Israel typically cites security concerns when targeting Palestinian agricultural areas, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has reported in the past that fishermen are often targeted when they pose no threat. Approximately 35 per cent of Palestinian agricultural land in Gaza is inaccessible without high personal risk, according to the centre.
In 2015, Israeli naval forces opened fire on Palestinian fishermen at least 139 times, killing three, wounding dozens, and damaging at least 16 fishing boats, according to the UN Agency for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Israeli forces also regularly open fire on Palestinian protesters during Friday demonstrations held along Gaza’s border, with injuries sustained by live fire and rubber-coated steel bullets reported nearly every week. At least 25 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli forces in Gaza clashes since the beginning of October, according to UN documentation.
• A senior Hamas official blamed Israel and its ‘accomplices’ – an implicit jab at the Palestinian Authority – for the house fire that killed three siblings and left three others seriously burned on Friday night in al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
On Saturday during the funeral for the three children, Ismail Haniyeh said: ‘The enemy’s warplanes have been burning lands and houses, while Israel’s crippling siege imposed on Gaza and its accomplices are now burning our children.’
The house fire was caused by candles that the family used during a power cut, Gaza’s civil defence services said on Friday. Local medical sources identified the victims as three-year-old Yusra Muhammad Abu Hindi, two-year-old Rahaf Muhammad Abu Hindi, and two-month-old Nasser Muhammad Abu Hindi.
‘Should Gaza – whose people live under a crippling blockade – be blamed?’ he asked, implying that Hamas could not be held responsible for the besieged coastal enclave’s energy crisis. ‘Who has been taking $70 million dollars a month in taxes from Gaza? Who has been collecting fuel taxes? Who refused to enlarge the power supply from Egypt to the Gaza Strip and refused to build a pipeline to provide Gaza’s power station with gas to increase its capacity?” Haniyeh continued, listing a set of policy decisions imposed by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip Ashraf al-Qidra also said last Friday that ‘those responsible for the Gaza siege’ were tacitly responsibly for the fire.
He warned of possible similar atrocities as Gaza residents continue to use candles and other alternatives in light of the continuous power cuts. Later on Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas telephoned the bereaved family to offer condolences.
Governor of Gaza City Abdullah al-Ifranji told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa that Abbas also ordered the relevant officials to provide financial support to help rebuild the family’s house which was completely destroyed by the fire. Residents of the Gaza Strip continue to suffer from limited power availability following a still unresolved issue with the Egyptian power lines reported earlier this month.
Locals said on Saturday that for the last month, all districts have only been provided power at six-hour intervals followed by 12-hour power cuts, with the exception of a few days when electricity grids were eight hours on, eight hours off, as is usual for the small Palestinian territory. The Gaza Strip was left almost entirely without power during a number of days in April due to maintenance work on power lines from both Israel and Egypt, as well as the ongoing tax disputes on fuel for the enclave’s near-defunct power station.
The ongoing dispute falls between Gaza’s electricity company and the West Bank-based PA Ministry of Finance over taxes on fuel used by the station. A decision by the PA revoking a tax exemption on fuel in Gaza sparked protests in the Gaza Strip in April. During the protest, a senior leader of the left-wing Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine urged Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to ‘justly treat the Gaza Strip’ and added: ‘We are surprised by the Palestinian government’s decisions, which adds to the suffering of our people in the Gaza Strip who have gone through disasters caused by three Israeli military offensives.’
Later in April, Palestinian officials announced the Gaza Strip will be exempted from paying fuel tax this summer, marking temporary resolution to the electricity crisis. Even at full capacity, the Egyptian and Israeli electricity grids, together with Gaza’s sole power plant, fail to cover the Gaza Strip’s energy needs. Gaza’s power plant has not run at full capacity in years, with Israel’s crippling blockade severely limiting fuel imports into the coastal enclave.
War has also had taken its toll, as Israeli forces targeted the power plant during a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip in 2014, completely knocking it out of commission. A fresh round of Israeli airstrikes continued for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday, further putting pressure on the enclave’s vulnerable population. The UN has warned that the Gaza Strip could become uninhabitable for residents by 2020, pointing to the devastation of war and nearly a decade of Israel’s blockade.
• Israeli forces opened fire on a group of Palestinian shepherds on Saturday in the eastern outskirts of Gaza City. Witnesses said that gunshots were heard coming from Israeli military watchtowers near the Nahal Oz military base. No casualties were reported.
An Israeli army spokesperson said that they were looking into reports.
The recent incident comes amid four consecutive days of airstrikes on the besieged enclave that has so far killed a Palestinian woman, while injuring several others.
