The fishermen of Gaza, who were once likened to rich “oil men”, are today the poorest, most underdeveloped community in dire need of aid. There was a time when they would shower their wives, sisters and daughters with gold ornaments, but according to the United Nations’ statistics, 90 per cent of them now depend on handouts.
What changed their fortunes? It’s The Israeli navy, which has imposed strict limits on their fishing rights, threatening their livelihood. If they stray outside the designated fishing zone, they are shot at. The bullets and strikes frequently result in deaths, some are arrested, and their dingy boats — sometimes with engines damaged — confiscated.
It is indeed a hard life, but it must go on, somewhat like Ernest Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea”.
It’s also a far unequal confrontation between the Palestinian fishermen and the sabre-rattling Israeli naval ships over the high seas, the latter intent on denying Palestinian workers their rights through the most severe restrictions that can only be explained in terms of the battle over land, the struggle between the occupier and the occupied.
The great irony is that the Gaza fishermen have always belonged to the sea. They have been part-and-parcel of the industry for hundreds of years, the skills of a fisherman being passed from generation to generation, from father to son. But today they can’t even make ends meet, with unemployment in Gaza already above 40 per cent.
Violent incidents and gunfights between Israeli warships and the fishermen occur every day. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza reported more than 236 attacks on fishermen, including 150 being directly shot at, destruction of 14 boats, 25 boats being confiscated and 51 arrests in 2014. Oxfam reported that Israeli ships fired at Gaza fishermen 177 times in just the first half of 2014.
And then, there’s the constant humiliation. The Israeli military officers, using loudspeakers, order the fishermen to swim to their ship, where they are stripped, arrested and charged. B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, calls this the “swimming procedure” in which the fishermen are forced to undress at gunpoint and ordered to board the ship. B’Tselem says the fishermen are then blindfolded, handcuffed and taken for interrogation, and later dropped at the Erez border post in Gaza.
Deputy director of the PCHR says the attacks on the fishermen are part of Israel’s siege of Gaza since 2007 and an attempt to collectively punish its people.
Dr Moeen Rajab, an economist at Gaza’s Islamic University, said Israel deliberately targets the fishing industry to stem its profits and cut Palestinians off from this age-old profession. “It is an economic war to force fishermen to live on charity, and eventually leave Palestine,” Rajab said.
Israel has long sought to control fishing rights as part of its tightening the grip on the Palestinians of Gaza. Although the Oslo Accords between the Israelis and Palestinians specified that Gaza fishermen can go up to 20 nautical miles into the sea, this was never practically applied.
Israeli gunships serve as marine policemen and continue to restrict the fishermen as per the politics of the situation. The farthest the fishermen were allowed to go was 12 nautical miles.
But fishing was good even within these nautical miles. The deeper you go into the sea, the better the catch. There are plenty of sardines, tuna, mackerel and other seafood delicacies. The cut-off of six nautical miles effectively takes away more than 60 per cent of the catch as fish are found in large quantities deeper into the Mediterranean — beyond nine nautical miles.
Ten years after the Oslo Accords, things still looked good. The Gaza fishing industry was bringing in 3,000 tonnes of fish a year, with 10,000 fisherman feeding 4,000 families. It was a buoyant industry.
But since 2000, the Israeli iron grip became tighter. Increasingly stringent measures were taken against the fishermen, and it worsened as years went by. According to the UN, Gaza lost out on 1,300 metric tonnes of fish annually between 2000 and 2012 because of Israeli restrictions.
After 2006 when Hamas retreated into the Gaza Strip, Israel imposed self-declared economic blockade and fisherman were restricted to six nautical miles — sometimes even three nautical miles whenever Israel launched wars on the Strip, as it had happened in 2008-09 and 2012. This proved disastrous and many fishermen just stayed at home.
Ayman Alamodi is a veteran fisherman. He started fishing when he was 18. He said that was a long time ago, but the increasing restrictions are making it very hard for him to provide for his family.
“There are no fish within three nautical miles. The catch is beyond nine nautical miles. We can find a variety of among the natural rocks,” he said, reminiscing about the “good old days” when he could go beyond 12 nautical miles and catch all kinds of fish that he could sell in the local market.
No fisherman was allowed to go to the sea during the 51-day Israeli war on the Strip in July-August 2014. If they did, the Israeli gunships attacked them. The fishing industry lost $3 million (Dh11.1 million) in revenue during the Israeli military offensive. It is estimated that 300 to 400 tonnes of fish were lost during this period because of Israel’s restrictions on the 40-kilometre Gaza coastline.
Alamodi said the 2014 attack on Gaza was the worst experience. He said the intensity of the strikes has forced him and his other colleagues to stay at home. “Fishing has been nearly impossible under a near-constant barrage of Israeli air strikes and naval shelling off Gaza’s coast,” he added.
Others echo these views. Issam Al Sharafi said he had been working in the industry since he was 12 and had never experienced a situation as worse as it was in the last two years. Part of his boat was burnt when an Israeli ship shelled the dock during the war.
But this is not all. According to Oxfam, 80 fishing boats, dozens of fishing huts and hundreds of fishing nets were destroyed in Israel’s attack. But for the Israeli army and navy, this was a normal wanton destructive act, suggests the PCHR.
Fisherman Khaled Zaydan’s boat engine, which cost $7,000, was in one of the sheds the Israeli aircraft shelled during the war on Gaza. He says he has no money to buy a new one.
Over the years, Gaza fishermen have been left with no option but to join their relatives in catching whatever fish they can and sell them at low prices. Each boat costs around $10,000, and if it is destroyed it could spell doom for a fisherman.
But Palestinian fishermen plough on. There is a sense of camaraderie among them. Owners, relatives, friends and neighbours stick together with the “what’s mine is yours” attitude. The problem is with continued restrictions against them, there is less to go round and the type of fish caught hardly fetches anything in the market.
The Gaza fishing sector stands on shaky ground today. The Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Oxfam’s partner in Gaza, states that only a third of the fishermen go out to sea regularly, the rest lounge on the Gaza beaches. There are only 3,500 fishermen left in this once-flourishing sector, and the number is bound to go down in the next few years if things stay the way they are and no political solution with Israel is found.
Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a PhD in Political Science from Leeds University in the UK.
