Zionist Tanks, Aircraft Attack Besieged Gaza Strip
Zionist entity has targeted the northern part of the Gaza Strip with tanks and unmanned aircraft in yet another act of aggression against the besieged Palestinian sliver.
The Israeli military announced in a statement on Thursday that the tanks fire had struck targets belonging to the Palestinian movement, Hamas, after Palestinians allegedly set off explosions along the border area.
A security source from Hamas said that one round hit an observation post near the border, causing damage but no casualties.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Wafa news agency said that the tank shelling by Israeli forces targeted farmland. It added that one person was injured after Israeli surveillance plane launched rocket attacks at a location in Beit Hanoun to the east of Gaza.
The attack left the site totally destroyed and damage caused to people’s property, according to WAFA.
In recent months, the Israeli military has stepped up its attacks against Gaza, using alleged rockets attacks from the area as a pretext.
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in living standards as well as unprecedented unemployment and poverty.
Tel Aviv has waged three wars on the coastal enclave since 2008, including the 2014 offensive, which left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead.
Israel claims Hamas uses Gaza underground tunnels to stockpile weapons and infiltrate into the occupied lands.
The resistance group, however, says the tunnels are needed to defend Gaza against Israeli attacks and transfer essential supplies, including food and fuel, into the blockaded Palestinian territory.
Israel has destroyed 5,000 Palestinian homes in al-Quds since 1967
On the other hand, a new report shows that Israeli forces have destroyed some 5,000 Palestinian houses in occupied al-Quds since the Tel Aviv regime’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967.
The Palestinian Land Research Center (LRC) reported on Monday that the Israeli regime demolished some 1,706 homes between 2000 and 2017, displacing 9,422 Palestinians, including 5,443 children.
According to the report, around 380,000 Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied city need 2,000 new housing units annually, while the al-Quds municipality has put in place a series of procedures that would make Palestinian construction there impossible.
It also said that some 70,000 Palestinian residents of al-Quds were displaced in 1967 – the year of the Six-Day Israeli-Arab War – and were prevented from returning to the city.
The report also said that Israeli forces razed 39 villages around Jerusalem al-Quds in 1948, displacing 198,000 Palestinian residents.
Israel occupied East al-Quds during the Six-Day War in 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community.
The report comes amid anger among Palestinians at US President Donald Trump’s hostile measures in favor of Israel, especially his decision last December to recognize al-Quds as the “capital” of the regime and begin work to transfer Washington’s embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied city.
Washington’s dramatic U-turn on al-Quds drew global condemnations, prompting the UN General Assembly to overwhelmingly approve a resolution against Trump’s declaration in December 2016.
Israel lays claim to the entire city of al-Quds as its capital. The regime is expanding settlements on the parts of the city which the Palestinians want to make the capital of their future independent state.
More than half a million Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
On Wednesday, Israel’s parliament (Knesset) passed the so-called “breach of loyalty” law allowing the interior minister to revoke the permanent residency status of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem al-Quds who are deemed to be a threat to the Tel Aviv regime.
Under the measure, Israel can deport anyone whose residency status is withdrawn and the Israeli Supreme Court cannot challenge the rulings by the interior minister.
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