GAZA CITY: The Israeli military said it launched an air strike on Gaza on Friday, following violence at a border rally in which health officials said multiple Palestinians were wounded.

The strike was the first since early July, when Israel responded to rocket fire from Gaza launched after its deadliest Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank in years.

The army said it hit “a military post belonging to the Hamas organisation in the northern Gaza Strip”. A military spokesman said the air strike hit an area where Palestinians had gathered earlier in the day, near the permanently closed Karni crossing.

A security source in the Palestinian territory said Israel “bombed a resistance observation post east of Gaza City,” requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly to the media.

Palestinian-Americans accuse Tel Aviv of bias at borders

There were no immediate reports of injuries resulting from the air strike.

‘Discrimination’

A visa-free travel deal between the United States and Israel has raised hopes of easier journeys for Palestinian-Ameri­cans, but many still complain of ‘discrimination’ by Israeli authorities.

The aim of the reciprocal agreement reached in July was for all Americans “to be recognised by Israel as US citizens and receive equal treatment” regardless of their origins, the US State Department said.

It paved the way for some Palestinian-Americans to finally land at Israel’s Ben Gurion international airport rather than travel overland from Jordan. However, despite progress on paper, Palestinian-Americans have complained of unequal treatment in a series of interviews conducted in the United States and the Palestinian territories.

Hanna Hanania, a board member of the US Palestinian Council advocacy group, said he faced “total profiling” by Israeli officials who searched his car and insisted on seeing his Palestinian passport.

He said he was directed to a queue for additional security checks where he charged that “discrimination (was) very clear”.

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2023