Israeli warplanes launched a large-scale attack across the Gaza Strip on Friday, partly over the flyng of kites, in one of the fiercest in years, unleashing the heaviest bombing assault on Gaza since the 2014 war, that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians.
The airstrikes began to slam Gaza just hours after Israeli soldiers gunned down at least three Palestinians during anti-occupation demonstrations. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says one of its soldiers was killed by retaliatory gunfire from the Palestinians.Successive explosions rocked Gaza City at nightfall and the streets emptied as warplanes struck dozens of sites. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened to “carry out an operation that is of a much wider scope and much more painful than Operation Protective Edge” and this bombing is following through on those threats.
Israel’s Education Minister was reported insisting warplanes should drop bombs over the heads of Palestinian children flying the kites, even when the head of the army pushed back! This current military assault coming after months of successful organizing and actions by Gaza protesters and international support for the Great Return March. Palestinians have now been protesting at the border for 17 weeks,threatening to “return” to the lands their forefathers lost when Israel was created in 1948. Gaza health officials say more than 130 Palestinians have been killed and 15,000 injured by Israeli forces, during that time. Palestinians in Gaza see the flying off kites and balloons over the illegal border as legitimate resistance against Israel’s more than decade-long blockade.
At least four Palestinians were killed subsequently in Gaza on Friday, following the deaths of two teenagers, Amir and Luay, who were killed by Israeli arplanes earlier in the week while they were playing on a roof.
In response activists began circulating the #Stop theWar hashtag in an effort to pressure the international community to step in and stop Israel's efforts to launch yet another catastrophic assault on the occupied, blockaded, unlivable and exhausted open air prison that is the Gaza Strip which has seen ts people choking under 11 years of seige. Measuring 365 square kilometres and home to 2m people, (half of whom are children), one of the most crowded and miserable places on Earth. It is short of medicine, power and other essentials. The tap water is undrinkable; untreated sewage is pumped into the sea. Gaza already has one of the world’s highest jobless rates, at 44%, it's people being denied the necessities for means to live
In short, Palestinians, will justifiably continue to resist, feel much anger, and the international community has a duty to call Israel to account as it continues to unleash collective punihment on its people, as it carries out aggression with impunity, we must continue the call for the end of the illegal Gaza blockade as Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories carries on relentlessly because of the military, economic and political support it receives from governments around the world.
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