Gaza fisherfolk can only ‘dream of fishing freely’ under Israel’s blockade
Fisherman Nafez al-Sheikh
Abdelhakim Abu Riash reports in Aljazeera:
The small area Palestinian fishers can access under Israel’s at-times violent blockade of the besieged enclave is usually overcrowded with people trying to make a living, resulting in overfishing that has depleted fish stocks.
In an attempt to make room for each other, smaller fishing boats often sail out at dawn while the bigger ones follow in the afternoon, he said. “If we have one good day, it’s usually followed by 10 bad days at sea,” he said.
Protests and pleas for protection
More than 200 fishers stood together on the docks of Gaza’s seaport on Tuesday [22 August] to voice their anger at the continuing Israeli violations against them and to demand immediate international intervention.
The demonstration in the besieged enclave came as a round of escalation in the last 10 days saw the arrest of at least six fisherfolk and the seizure of multiple boats, according to Zakaria Bakr, the head of Gaza’s fishermen union.
Fishers who operate off the coast of Gaza are constantly chased, harassed, intimidated and even killed by Israeli forces, he said. Seizures of fishing essentials like boats, engines and nets are also a regular occurrence. That morning, a fisherman was targeted and injured by Israeli forces, Bakr told Al Jazeera. His engine was partially destroyed. A frustrated Bakr said he believes Israel is using the Palestinian fishers as “lab rats” to try out new weapons.
Saad Eddin Ziadeh, director of the Lobbying and Advocacy Department at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees – the party that called for the solidarity event – said the sit-in’s objective was to keep attention on the struggles facing fishers in Gaza.
“The event comes to tell the international community to stop the shameful silence,” he said.
His frustration mirrors that of 4,000 fishermen in Gaza, who are constrained by the Israeli restrictions on how far they can go out to sea.
They can only access a small portion of the sea, with a fishing zone limit of six nautical miles (11km) in the north and 15 nautical miles in the east. But many of the fisherfolk in the east lack adequate equipment or fuel to even make it all the way out to 15 nautical miles.
But even within those limits, Bakr said, Israeli forces have targeted fishermen from “half a mile” out.