Israeli farmers file war crimes complaint against Hamas

“What they are trying to do is to burn us, not just our fields,” says an Israeli farmer in close proximity to the Gaza Strip.

By: World Israel News Staff and AP

A group of Israeli farmers, with the help of Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, is filing a war crimes complaint at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Monday against Hamas over the torching of thousands of acres of farmland in recent months.

The farmers want prosecutors to investigate leaders of Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, for issuing orders to Palestinians to breach the territory’s frontier with Israel and having supporters deliberately set fire to fields in southern Israel.

“What they are trying to do is to burn us, not just our fields. It’s a war crime and a crime against humanity,” farmer Ofer Lieberman told Israeli Army Radio ahead of his arrival at The Hague.

Arson attacks have been a nearly daily occurrence since the beginning of Hamas’s “March of Return” campaign in March.

Israeli farmers in close proximity to the Gaza Strip have been subjected to hundreds of incendiary kites and balloons launched from Gaza that have burned some 10,000 acres of land and destroyed produce worth millions of shekels as well as nature reserves, including natural habitats for wildlife.