Palestine Solidarity Network - Press Release Sunday 15 July 2018

Two more Palestinian children were killed by an Israeli missile yesterday as Israel intensified its bombing of the Gaza Strip. According to the health ministry the victims were 15-year-old and 16-year-old boys with at least 25 others injured in the Israeli air attacks.

Absent from recent news reports has been that Israel shut the only commercial crossing for goods in and out of Gaza, cutting off vital supplies to the territory and prompting warnings from international officials and human rights groups that Gaza’s already dire humanitarian situation could deteriorate dramatically.

Then on Friday, Israeli forces fatally wounded two Palestinians, including a child, and injured dozens more, as snipers continued to use live fire against civilians who posed no conceivable danger.

Israel has killed some 150 Palestinians in Gaza and injured 4,000 more with live fire since the Great March of Return protests began on 30 March, the vast majority of them unarmed civilians.

Israel, with U.S. backing, has laid a brutal siege in the Gaza Strip since 2007. It has blocked off air, land and water access to the Strip — nothing goes in, nothing comes out.

This tiny strip of land is home to some two million people; due to its cage-like setup, Gaza has aptly been described as the ‘world’s largest open air prison. No people would ever tolerate an oppressive occupation and an unjust siege, so why should the Palestinians and why should they be condemned for resisting it?

Palestine Solidarity Network deplores this current assault and the unspeakable crimes Israel commits on a captive population which is at the root of this conflict. Rocket attacks from Gaza are a desperate response to these injustices.

Palestine Solidarity Network calls on the New Zealand Government to condemn the continued slaughter of Palestinian civilians by Israel and end the siege of Gaza. In response Kia Ora Gaza has sent NZ veteran human rights defender and union leader, Mike Treen to join the flotilla to Gaza.

Mike will arrive in Sicily this weekend, as our NZ civil society representative on this international humanitarian mission to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade of the two million Palestinians confined in the Gaza Strip.

We call on the NZ Government to urgently demand the Israeli authorities end the inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip, and allow the 2018 Freedom Flotilla to Gaza safe and unhindered passage to their destination – the port of Gaza.

As Hanan Ashrawi has noted “Palestinians are the only people on earth asked to guarantee the security of the occupier while Israel is the only country that calls for defence from its victims

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