Israeli attack helicopters dawn Tuesday bombed several sites to the east of Rafah city in the southern besieged Gaza Strip.
The correspondent said that Israeli helicopters conducted a raid on a plot of agricultural land, located near the non-operational Gaza Airport, to the east of Rafah, causing material damage.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces opened fire towards a site to the north of Beit Lahia town, while the Israeli navy fired a few missiles into the sea offshore the northern besieged enclave.
The airstrikes and shelling resulted in material damage. No human casualties were reported though.
The latest attacks follow a week of heightened tensions, during which Israel closed the Karem Abu Salem goods crossing with the strip, shut down the coastal fishing zone, and halted the supply of fuel, forcing Gaza’s sole power plant to stop operating.
Israel claims the attacks and other punitive measures came in retaliation for the flying of incendiary balloons from Gaza into bordering Israeli sites.
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.
