The strikes were a response to a rocket fired from Gaza which hit open ground in Israel late Wednesday night – the military reported no casualties from the attack.
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The two boats – named Amal (hope in Arabic) and Zaytouna (olive in Arabic) – are slated to near Gaza’s shores in early October.
A spokeswoman for the initiative, Zohar Chamberlain Regev, said food and medicine being carried on boats would be distributed among Gazans on arrival.
Smoke billows following an Israeli missile strike in Gaza. The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.
It “doesn’t only make Palestinians suffer, it corrupts the souls of Israelis as one can’t remain human if one treats our Palestinian brothers as if they weren’t our brothers”. The campaign said it is planning to send two other boats to the besieged territory in 2017.
Lotan placed responsibility on the Hamas leadership for preventing a deal to return the bodies of Lt. Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, who both fell in the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, along with the return of two Israeli citizens who crossed into the Gaza Strip.
Back in 2015, when The Women’s Boat to Gaza attempted to deliver humanitarian aid to the coastal enclave, the regime’s naval forces boarded its vessel and forced it to change route.
A similar protest ended in tragedy in 2010 when ships carrying aid to Gaza were raided by Israeli commandos who killed 10 Turkish activists.
The Israel Defense Forces “sees the terrorist organization Hamas as exclusively responsible for what takes place in the Gaza Strip and will continue to act severely in order to maintain quiet in the southern communities”, the IDF said in a statement.
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The workers were also asked to hand over equipment they received from the charity including mobile phones, computers and identity cards.
