No injuries were reported in the incident along the border separating the northern Gaza Strip, run by Islamist movement Hamas, and Israel. The journalist’s arrest came one day after two new reports cast light on the worsening situation for press freedoms in both Gaza and the West Bank.
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The report reveals numerous channels through which occupation deprives the Palestinian people of their human right to development and hollows out the Palestinian economy.
The Palestinian economy could be double its size were it not for Israeli policies, the United Nations’ development agency said in a report released on Tuesday. Israel also widely blocks Palestinians from digging water wells, while confiscating 82 percent of Palestinian groundwater, the agency said.
Israel continues to carry out attacks on the Palestinian enclave from time to time.
In addition, Palestine has to pay “unjustifiably high” handling fees to Israel, UNCTAD said, for collecting these taxes on its behalf, resulting in $50m worth of overpayments to Israel in 2014, according to the World Bank.
Two houses were also damaged in the area, according to the official.
The report argues that the occupation has cultivated permanent crises of unemployment, poverty and food insecurity. In Gaza, unemployment reached 38 per cent in 2015; 73 per cent of the population are in need of humanitarian assistance.
Israel’s banning of certain goods from being imported into Gaza – specifically “dual-use” items that are generally used for civilian purposes but that Israel says could also be used for military purposes – was also cited as economically damaging. As well, Gaza’s socioeconomic conditions worsened and the infant mortality rate increased for the first time in 50 years. This trend is unprecedented and rarely observed outside communities affected by HIV epidemics.
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In late June 2016, 19 Palestinians, including 12 children, lost their homes when Israeli forces demolished 5 structures in Susiya, south of Hebron, in the occupied Palestinian territory. He called the closure “collective punishment” for which there must be accountability.
