Israeli warships bombarded Palestinian boats off the Sudaniyya shore north of Gaza City Monday morning, Nizar Ayyash, head of the Fishermen’s Union reported.
Ayyash said the boat, which belonged to Umar Ibrahim Al-Habeil, was set ablaze by several shells fired from an Israeli naval unit operating in the area.
Al-Habeil was reportedly injured in the attack.
In a statement, Gaza’s Agriculture Ministry said fishermen were unable to put out a fire that burned large sections of the boat. It called on Israel to stop targeting fishermen, as the industry is their only source of income.
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that the boat was damaged by naval fire. She said a number of vessels, including the damaged ship, violated a northern boundary patrolled by Israel’s navy.
She said the navy first fired warning shots into the air when the boat refused to turn back, but targeted the ship when it did not.
The attack on Monday was not thought to be related to the ongoing siege of the coastal strip since the northern boundary, while entirely inside Gazan territorial waters, was determined by a joint agreement.
But Israel’s navy has regularly targeted Palestinian fishermen who venture off the coast ever since the military unilaterally declared waters more than three kilometers from the shore a no-fishing zone in January 2009.
Last Thursday, medical officials said a fisherman was killed and another injured in a similar shelling attack off the Gaza coast. Israel’s military denied that its navy had anything to do with that incident.
Separately’, Israeli forces stormed Beit Ummar, a town north of Hebron, and seized seven young men on Monday.
According to a spokesman for the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP), the force entered Beit Ummar at dawn, ransacking several homes before seizing the seven residents.
Local security sources identified the detainees as 21-year-old Imam Awad, his brother 18-year-old Muntasir, 18-year-old Firas Abu Mariyya, 18-year-old Ahmad Awad, 19-year-old Yousif Ahmad Yousif, 17-year-old Hammad Abu Mariyya, and 17-year-old Hasan Ikhlayyil.
Dozens of soldiers raided the Ramallah-area village of Bil’in early Saturday and detained two Palestinians, according to a local official and an Israeli spokesman.
‘Two houses were raided simultaneously by at least 40 soldiers,’ said Iyad Burnet, head of the Popular Committee Against the Wall, who added that the operation occurred at about 3.30am.
The two young men, Ashraf Mohammad Jamal Tofik Al-Khatib, 29, and Hamru Hisham Burnat, 24, were seized from their homes for participating in weekly anti-wall protests.
In a further incident, the Palestinian Media Coalition denounced the seizure of Palestinian journalist Serri Sammour from his home in Jenin on Monday.
Sammour was detained just two days after Israeli forces took female journalist Ghufran Zamil from Al-’Ein Refugee Camp, as well as Muhammad Muna from Nablus.
The coalition named six other Palestinian journalists who were in Israeli custody: Walid Khalid, Nizar Ramadan, Muhammad Al-Qeiq, Amjad Shawamra, Husam Badran, and Sami ‘Asi, all from the West Bank.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday played down reports of progress toward a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas.
‘We are not facing a breakthrough tomorrow of the day after,’ Netanyahu told his cabinet at the opening of their weekly meeting.
Regarding reported progress, he was quoted by Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper as saying, ‘The talks about it are unfounded. There are too many talks about (captured soldier) Gilad Shalit – and moreover, there is a lot of exaggeration and a lot of inaccurate information.
Germany has given Hamas until the beginning of September to approve a reported deal mediated by Germany’s foreign intelligence service which would require Israel to initially release 450 Palestinian political prisoners.
It emerged last week that Germany, a previous successful broker in prisoner exchanges, has been involved in indirect negotiations for two weeks.
Separately, Israeli negotiator Haggai Hadas has arrived in Cairo in a further attempt to advance a deal to secure Shalit’s release.
According to the report, Hadas is scheduled to meet with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as well as with a German mediator.
Palestinian fighters seized Gilad Shalit during a cross-border operation in 2006, returning with him to Gaza, where he has been held ever since.
Hamas, the dominant party in Gaza, is demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the soldier. There are an estimated 11,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails.
The de facto Interior Ministry pledged security in Gaza on Monday as security services gathered information about explosions Sunday set off by unknown operatives in Gaza City.
Ministry spokesman Eyhab Al-Ghussein said, ‘Investigations are still ongoing about the explosions in the Ansar neighborhood west of Gaza City,’ and reported that two devices were hurled at a security base there causing the loud blast.
‘This statement was released by Palestinian preventative security in Nablus,’ Al-Ghussein said accusing West Bank security services of releasing a false statement containing threats on behalf of the radical group Jund Ansar Allah.
He went on to say that Sunday’s explosions had nothing to do with a recent clash between Hamas and Jund Ansar Allah in Rafah.
‘We will never allow security chaos to return to the Gaza Strip,’ Al-Ghussein insisted. ‘These explosions were attempts to frighten residents, and security services undertook all the needed measures and controlled everything.’
