GAZA, Israel’s navy Wednesday afternoon arrested six Gaza fishermen and seized at least a boat offshore Rafah city in the southern besieged Gaza Strip, according to a local official.
Zakaria Bakr, head of the Fishermen Union Committees in Gaza, said that a group of fishermen were sailing offshore the city when Israeli naval boats opened fire at them, arrested them and confiscated at least one of their boats.
He added that the fishermen were subjected for interrogation for several hours and ultimately two of them, a father along with his son, were released.
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.
Source: Palestine News & Info Agency