Palestinian Gov't Calls for Int'l Pressure on Zionist Regime to Lift Gaza Siege

Date: 12 August 2018 - 21:44

News ID: ۵۶۲۰۶

RAMALLAH (Dispatches) – The Palestinian government on Sunday called for international pressure on the Zionist regime to lift the siege it has imposed on the Gaza Strip for almost a decade.
Yousef Al-Mahmoud, spokesman of the government, said in a press statement that the authorities also demanded to regain the national unity by fulfilling the steps of the Egypt-brokered deal.
The only way out of "the current internal crisis is ending the division," Mahmoud said, hinting at Hamas' responsibility for "rejecting the achievement of the reconciliation."
The statement came a day after a Palestinian businessmen association declared that over 95 percent of Gaza's factories have stopped production because of the Zionist regime’s restriction imposed more than a month ago on the entry of raw materials into the coastal enclave.
Palestinian officials say the Zionist regime’s naval forces have opened fire on several Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of the besieged Gaza Strip, and arrested five members of the same family.
Nizar Ayyash, the secretary of the Gaza fishermen’s syndicate, said in a statement that Zionist troops targeted the Palestinian boats off al-Sudaniah region in the northern part of the enclave on Sunday morning.
Ayyash added that marines then boarded a boat and arrested captain Hassan Fadel Baker and his brother, Nasser, along with his three sons Yasser, Ahmad, and Fadel Nasser Baker.
Israeli naval forces confiscated the fishing boat and sailed it towards the Port of Ashdod, located about 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) south of Tel Aviv, following the attack.
According to Gaza's fishermen union, roughly 50,000 Gazans earn their living from fishing.
The Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) announced in its report that Israeli attacks against Palestinian fishermen in the besieged Gaza Strip "deny fishermen from practicing their fishing work and accessing their livelihood resources.”
The Zionist regime imposed a limit of three nautical miles on fishing in the waters off the Gaza shore until August 2014, when Palestinian fishermen were allowed to go out six miles.
Last month, however, the regime reduced the fishing area to only three nautical miles as part of punitive measures against Gazans over the launch of incendiary balloons from the Palestinian coastal sliver into occupied territories as part of ongoing protests against the decades-long Israeli occupation.

A man inspects a boat in which a Palestinian was killed at the seaport of Gaza City on February 26, 2018.