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Women cry during the funeral procession of three Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank town of Qabatiya. (Reuters) |
CAIRO — With the Israeli offensive going unabated in the impoverished strip, Gaza is dying and its residents are on the edge of starvation, reported The Independent on Friday, September 8.
"A whole society is being destroyed," said the British daily.
Israeli occupation forces have launched a wide-scale offensive in Gaza last June on claims of seeking the release of a soldier taken prisoner by Palestinian groups.
As part of the process, Israel denied access in and out the Gaza Strip and stopped all trade activities in the densely-packed area.
"It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees fleeing Zionist gangs first poured into Gaza]," says Maged Abu-Ramadan, mayor of Gaza City.
"Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves."
The US has championed a West campaign to freeze aid to the Palestinians since the Hamas-led Palestinian government came to power in March, leaving around 160,000 civil servants and security officers unpaid for months.
Israel has also suspended the monthly payment of customs duties, worth more than 50 million dollars, it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority on goods that transit through its territory.
"The Israeli siege and the European boycott are a collective punishment of everybody in Gaza," The Independent said.
The international siege has affected the livelihoods of around one million people or a quarter of the population of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Two thirds of Gazans are now unemployed and per capital annual income is $700 per annum compared with $20,000 in Israel.
A UN report said last month that more than 70 percent of the Gazans were now reliant on emergency assistance to meet daily food needs, while prices of essential goods had risen by between 15 and 33 percent.
Reoccupied
The Israeli occupation forces have now taken control of the strip no less than a year after the Israeli pullout from the area.
Israeli troops and tanks are coming and going into the strip at will, killing any Palestinians moving in the area.
Last week, Israeli forces flooded into the northern district of Shajhayeh and took over several houses in the area.
As the forces withdrew five days later, 22 Palestinians had been killed, three houses destroyed and groves of olive, citrus and almond trees bulldozed.
"They even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep," said Fuad al-Tuba, a 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm in the area.
He pointed sadly to a field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of bulldozers, where the stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting leaves lay in heaps.
Nearby a yellow car was standing on its nose in the middle of a heap of concrete blocks that had once been a small house.
The Israeli forces have destroyed 70% of the orange groves in Gaza to create security zones in the area, said Abu-Ramadan.
Carnations and strawberries, two of Gaza's main exports, were thrown away or left to rot.
Tuba's son, Baher, described how he was confined by Israeli soldiers to a room with his relatives for five days as they survived by drinking water from a fish pond.
"Snipers took up positions in the windows and shot at anybody who came near," he said.
"They killed one of my neighbors called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and just went out to get water."
Up to 262 Palestinians have been killed and 1,200 wounded since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza.
Of the Palestinian casualties, there were 60 children and 26 women.
Resolved
Despite the relentless Israeli onslaughts and the international siege, the Palestinians are still resolved to pursue their resistance to liberate their homeland from the Israeli occupation.
Ala Hejairi said he will join his fellow resistance fighters once he is discharged from hospital.
He has wounds to his neck, legs, chest and stomach.
"I was laying an anti-tank mine last week in Shajhayeh when I was hit by fire from an Israeli drone," he said.
"I will return to the resistance when I am better. Why should I worry? If I die I will die a martyr and go to paradise."
His father, Adel, is proud of what his son had done, saying that three of his nephews were already killed in the fighting with the Israeli forces.
"Arab and Western countries want to destroy this government because it is the government of the resistance," he said.
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