Gaza/Tel Aviv - Israel was keeping its border crossings with the Gaza Strip shut for a fifth day running Monday, as rocket fire against its southern towns and villages continued. Militants fired at least seven Gaza-made rockets into Israel in the morning, bringing to at least 134 the number of projectiles launched from Gaza since a fragile truce that had largely held for five months began disintegrating two weeks ago.
Israel said it would allow the entry of some 30 trucks with medical supplies and humanitarian aid into Gaza Monday. But a military spokesman in Tel Aviv said final authorization "depends on what happens during the day."
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) issued a statement Monday, protesting Israel's ban on the entry of journalists into Gaza since last week, calling it "a serious violation of press freedom."
"It has now become clear that Israel's official policy is to block the entrance of journalists into the Gaza Strip," said the FPA, which represents foreign journalists working in Israel and the Palestinian areas.
"We regard this as an unconscionable breach of the Israeli government's responsibility to allow journalists to do their jobs in this region," it said.
The Egyptian-brokered truce has been steadily deteriorating since November 4, when a brief Israeli military incursion aimed at destroying an underground tunnel sparked fierce clashes with local gunmen.
Some 14 Palestinians were killed in those clashes, a confrontation later last week and in an Israeli airstrike Sunday. The fatalities were mostly militants of the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza and the another faction, the Popular Resistance Committees, but one civilian was also among them.
