17 years of a hermetic Israeli siege left Gaza with little food and medicine. The determination to break the siege, however, remains as strong as ever. Palestine Chronicle reports from the besieged Strip.
Palestinians in Gaza took their cause to the sea, to protest the Israeli siege and to take part in the International Campaign to Break the Siege on Gaza.
The campaign aims to launch several initiatives to raise awareness of the hermetic Israeli blockade on the Strip.
A march of boats was meant as the starting point of the international campaign. Various events are scheduled in Arab and European countries.
Salama Maarouf, head of the government media office, said in a Gaza press conference on Sunday that the Israeli occupation authorities prevent “more than 6,000 patients annually from going out for treatment abroad.”
“The occupation prevented the entry of (critical) medical (equipment) and supplies into the Gaza Strip and destroyed more than 2,500 industrial facilities .. during the past years,” Maarouf added.
“Israel is committing a war crime by continuing its siege on the Gaza Strip for more than 17 years. We demand an immediate end to the siege”.
Gaza came under a hermetic Israeli siege, first in 2005 when Israeli forces redeployed out of Gaza, and again, in 2007 when the Palestinian movement Hamas won the democratic elections held a few months earlier.
Since then, the population of Gaza has grown to 2.3 million people, the vast majority of whom have never left the besieged Strip due to the blockade.
Moreover, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in several major Israeli wars starting in 2008-09, and thousands more were wounded and maimed.
(All Photos: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)
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