Palestinian fishermen face death as they try to feed starving Gaza
Palestinian fishermen sort their catch in Deir al-Balah as contrails from an Israeli aircraft line the sky on 30 November 2023
Abubaker Abed reports in Middle East Eye on 5 March 2024:
Every morning, at daybreak, Mahmoud Hamada pushed his boat out to sea knowing he may never return. “You can fish during the early hours, but you know for sure that you’ll be shot at once it approaches noon,” he told Middle East Eye last month on the beach in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.
Gaza’s 4,000 fishermen are a backbone of the Palestinian enclave’s society, providing fresh fish despite severe restrictions on fishing that Israel has placed on Gaza’s waters.
Since Israel’s war on Gaza, those restrictions have only grown tighter, and the danger of providing food for 2.2 million starving Palestinians has grown exponentially.
“You have a limited space that might be safe to fish in. If you go further, an Israeli ship will approach and kill you,” Hamada said. “I have been working for more than 20 years as a fisherman, but I have never gone through such a time. I just wish this war ends very soon because we’ve been bleeding for five months, and we can’t bear it anymore.”
Two weeks later, Hamada was shot dead as he tried to rescue a nine-year-old child under Israeli fire. Hamada’s son Mohammed, 15, watched his father’s killing. “The sniper shot the child twice in his neck, and his head fell off his body,” he told MEE. “My father tried to take his corpse, the least he could do. Unfortunately, a tank shot him in his head, annihilating his skull.”