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How the Gaza fishermen, a group of hard working people, drag their livelihoods from the mouth of suffering inflicted on residents of the blockaded coastal enclave.
At the main fishing port of Gaza City, Al-Mina, there are dozens of fishermen trying to earn a living to provide for their children under harsh economic conditions. Forty-two-year-old Amjad Eshrafi, a fisherman from the Beach Camp in western Gaza City, is a father of six. He owns a boat that he runs with his son, 17-year-old Ismail.
Fishing and fishing-related activities have traditionally supported the livelihoods of thousands of families across the Gaza Strip. However, over the past ten years, the ability of people to gain a living from this work has been severely undermined as a result of fishing access limits imposed by the Israeli occupation along the Gaza coast.
Technically, the fishing zone was set to 20 nautical miles (NM), according to the Oslo Accords signed in the early 1990s. But as part of the tight Israeli blockade of the coastal enclave since 2006, Palestinian fishermen have only been allowed to work within a limited ‘designated fishing zone’ of six NM from Gaza’s shore.
“I have been a fisherman for 22 years. Mmy father was a fisherman and my grandfather before him,” Eshrafi said. “Back then, fishing was safer and more productive. Now we are subject to many different risks.”
Israeli blockade
In 2006, the Israeli occupation announced that access to sea areas beyond six NM from Gaza’s shore was prohibited. Then, in January 2009, the accessible area was further reduced to just three NM. It was then returned to six NM after the 2012 Israeli offensive.
Boats going beyond the limit received ‘warning shots’, forcing them to return, or were requisitioned by the Israeli occupation navy. This has severely affected both fishermen specifically and the overall food security for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Eshrafi’s boat was expropriated in 2012 by the Israeli occupation navy. To continue providing his family with a livelihood, he had to borrow money to buy a new boat and still has his debt to repay.
“Our life is a daily struggle and we never know what tomorrow will bring us; we live in constant fear of losing our boats and hence our sole source of income to provide for our families,” he stated.
Due to these access restrictions, more than 3,000 fishermen have not had access to 85 per cent of the maritime areas agreed upon in the 1993 Oslo Accords; as a result, the fish catch – a principal part of the Gaza diet – has decreased dramatically over the years of the blockade.
Six and nine miles
On April 4, 2016, the Gaza fishing zone was extended from six to nine NM in areas below Wadi Gaza – located in the centre of the Gaza Strip. The fishing zone remained within six NM north of Wadi Gaza. At the end of May, however, the Israeli occupation unilaterally reduced the fishing zone back to six NM in all of Gaza’s waters.
“Our life and livelihood depend very much on the political situation and so does the life of my children. My son dropped out of school because I could not pay for his secondary education.” Eshrafi said, noting: “Fishermen and their families moved from self-reliance to dependence on food aid and job creation programmes.”
Being confined to short distances from the shore also means the quality of the catch is poor in terms of the size of fish and market value. High-value fish such as tuna are not present in-shore, meaning a potential source of income is lost.
“Now I cannot even provide enough to meet the minimum needs of my family. I hope the restrictions will be ended to compensate for all I lost in the last nine years. All I wish is to live my life with my family in dignity and to be able to sail like other fishermen in the world,” Eshrafi dreamt.
‘Long-term damage’
The restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation over the course of the last ten years have led to intensive, near-shore fishing, which has depleted fish stocks by disturbing their natural breeding grounds and threatened the fisheries resource base.
Fishermen have been forced to drop their nets in waters that contain young fish and spawning species. This means that the fish caught are typically small, and this practice leads to long-term damage to marine habitats.
The fishermen in Gaza are also reportedly being fired at by the Israeli occupation navy on an almost daily basis. Their boats are regularly sunk or impounded and the fishermen themselves kidnapped.
Additionally, different materials used by the Gaza fishermen to repair their boats and nets are under full Israeli import restrictions.
Repeated major Israeli offensives and the illegal blockade on land, air and sea, entering its tenth year in June 2016, remain today the principal causes of the socioeconomic and psychosocial crisis in Gaza.
The restrictions on the movement of people and goods continue to collectively punish the civilian population, affecting every aspect of life in Gaza; undermining the local economy; and threatening the enjoyment of most human rights, in clear violation of the Israeli legal obligations under international humanitarian law.
The compounded effects of the blockade, and the closure of tunnels to Egypt, have also had a less visible, but quite profound, psychological impact on the people of Gaza.
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