GAZA, (PIC)
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has said that Israel’s destruction of hundreds of dunums of vegetable farmland in the northern Gaza Strip reflects its insistence on the mass extermination of Palestinians.
In a statement on Thursday, Euro-Med accused the Israeli army of seeking to deprive the Palestinians in Gaza of agricultural production and food supplies and destroy the resources vital for their survival in order to create living conditions that lead to their starvation and death.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army has been imposing an illegal siege on Gaza and severely restricting the entry of aid to its areas for about a year, Euro-Med added.
Israel’s destruction of farmland in northern Gaza is part of the systematic plan it has been pursuing against the Gaza population since October 2023, Euro-Med said.
“The occupation forces have taken about 80 percent of the agricultural land out of service in the Gaza Strip, either through isolating it as a prelude to illegally annexing it by force to the buffer zone in violation of the international law or destroying and bulldozing it,” Euro-Med explained.
Euro-Med said that its field team documented “the incursion of Israeli forces accompanied by bulldozers on Tuesday morning, September 25, into ash-Shima area in Beit Lahia, north of Gaza, and the bulldozing of over 500 dunums of land that had been recently replanted by Palestinians with vegetables to meet the needs of the citizens living in northern Gaza, who are facing systematic starvation and an arbitrary blockade.”
“The Israeli army’s destruction of these swaths of agricultural land, mostly planted with eggplants, reflects Israel’s insistence on depriving the population of relying on the local agricultural food basket, while blocking the access of adequate quantities of vegetables and food supplies to the northern Gaza Strip, which has led to the outbreak of severe famine to the point that a large part of the population was forced to eat tree leaves and grind animal feed before turning it into bread in order to stay alive,” Euro-Med said.
