On 11 November 2018 an undercover operation was carried out by Israeli forces who infiltrated into Palestinian Territory in the southern Gaza strip in a civilian car and opened fire on its security personnel. Seven Palestinian lives were lost. Additionally, six Palestinians and one Israeli were wounded. This set off retaliatory fire from the Gaza strip and rapid escalation of air raids and rocket fire between the two sides.
On 11 November 2018 an undercover operation was carried out by Israeli forces who infiltrated into Palestinian Territory in the southern Gaza strip in a civilian car and opened fire on its security personnel. Seven Palestinian lives were lost. Additionally, six Palestinians and one Israeli were wounded. This set off retaliatory fire from the Gaza strip and rapid escalation of air raids and rocket fire between the two sides.
More Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on 12th November in the worst violence between the two sides since the 2014 war. Israeli military has claimed that Israeli warplanes, tanks and naval vessels were targeting only military compounds, observation posts and weapons facilities belonging to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. However, the Hamas has clarified that that Israel forces targeted people of Gaza with terror, bombing and killing.
Israel has been using various tactics to make the Palestinian population of Gaza leave their homes. It has amassed its troops along the border with Gaza for a land offensive, and threatening the population of northern Gaza to leave, but the people have nowhere to go.
Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade on Gaza since Hamas took power. The blockade is an attack on the basic human rights of the Palestinian people and severely constrains their acces s to essential services.
Israel has never accepted that Gaza and the West Bank are territories belonging to the independent Palestinian state, and have tightly controlled all aspects of life in Gaza, including the right of the Palestinian people there to move freely in and out of Gaza. The present exchange of fire between the two sides was clearly provoked by Israel which is an occupational force. It must be condemned as yet another attempt to browbeat the Palestinian people into submission and not allow them to live peacefully in their own independent state. However, the Palestinian people have not given up their fight for the right to their homeland against every new offensive by US-backed Israel.