Terrorist Israeli soldiers destroy Gaza agriculture sector and kill Palestinian farmers!

GAZA, West Bank - May 21, 2008 - The agriculture ministry in the PA legitimate government in Gaza Strip asserted on Wednesday that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) troops had bulldozed vast agricultural areas in the eastern sector of the Gaza Strip which is considered the food basket of the 1.5 million Palestinians living there.

According to a report issued by the ministry, the Israeli occupation army uprooted fruitful trees and destroyed greenhouses and artisan wells in Shokeh and Sofa villages, east of Khan Younis city over the past week in addition to ruining poultry farms estimated at 1.5 million dollars.

The report, furthermore, added that Palestinian farmers in Qarara and Al-Buraij areas, east of Deir Al-Balah city, weren’t able to reach and cultivate their farms for fear that the IOF troops stationed opposite to their farms could shoot and kill them "in cold blood" any time.

Palestinian farmer Ali Al-Dahdouh, 32, was killed with IOF bullets while cultivating his farm in Juhr Al-Deik area, east of the tiny Strip, a couple of days ago.

Raising the alarm, the ministry warned that the brutal IOF practices against the Palestinian people and land were badly affecting the food basket of the Gaza Strip in addition to jeopardizing all aspects of life there.

For its part, the Authority of Environment Quality (AEQ) in the Gaza Strip seconded the warning of the PA agriculture ministry, warning further that cutting of trees and using them for cocking due to the severe shortage in the cocking gas as a result of the Israeli embargo would badly affect the Gaza Strip's ecology, and would contribute to increasing the temperature there.

The Israeli occupation government had been imposing a wing-clipping comprehensive economic blockade on the populated Strip that had, so far, reaped the lives of more than 160 Palestinian patients suffering of chronic diseases but were banned by the IOA from receiving medical treatment outside the beleaguered Gaza hospitals.

In this concern, the AEQ urged the international community and all concerned organizations to immediately intervene and pressure the occupation to stop its aggression against the Gaza Strip and its people.

This is collective punishment by the Israeli Government.  A war crime.