Israel continues killing Palestinian fishermen while blockading Gaza
“The situation is tragic in every sense of the word; the sea is completely closed, and death pursues fishermen with every attempt to go out to seek a livelihood.”
While the Israelis have maintained complete control over the amount of aid allowed into Gaza, with the explicit aim of keeping Palestinians in the besieged enclave famished and weak and eventually forcing them to leave, they have also relentlessly targeted anyone venturing into the Mediterranean Sea in search of fish and crabs to feed their families.
Abdul Rahman Abdul Hadi Al-Qan was killed while fishing in southern Gaza on Sunday, becoming the latest victim of Israeli attacks on the enclave’s fishermen. He and a colleague had narrowly escaped an attack on Saturday, but Al-Qan was killed the following day when the Israeli navy fired on their boat.
The duo’s ordeal was caught on camera, highlighting the danger Palestinians face from unrestrained Israeli terrorism whenever they venture too far off their own coast:
Al-Qan is the second fisherman to have been killed since the so-called “ceasefire” came into effect on October 10 last year. A further 28 fishermen have been abducted by the Israelis during the same period.
The number of fishermen killed since the beginning of the war of extermination on the Gaza Strip on October 7 has reached 232, including 67 who were killed while attempting to fish, amid direct targeting of their boats and gunfire at sea.
“The situation is tragic in every sense of the word; the sea is completely closed, and death pursues fishermen with every attempt to go out to seek a livelihood,” Zakaria Bakr, the coordinator of the Palestinian fishermen’s committee at the Union of Agricultural Work, told Ultra Palestine.
Only about 600 fishermen are trying to work using primitive methods, Bakr explained, after the Israelis destroyed their equipment and tools. They collect remnants of plastic, styrofoam and destroyed boats to improvise makeshift rafts, despite the serious risks to their lives posed by Israeli gunfire and the harsh winter conditions at sea.
Gaza’s waters have always been deadly for the Palestinians, as the Israelis have taken a trigger-happy approach against anyone venturing too far into the sea. Worse, they keep moving the boundary of Palestinian access at will, with no way for the fishermen to know when they have crossed that day’s forbidden red line.
The Oslo Accords gave Palestinian fishermen access to 20 nautical miles off Gaza’s coast, but, just as with every accord they have signed, the Israelis never honoured even this agreement. They have continued to set arbitrary limits. In 2013, the Israelis reduced the access from an already drastically curtailed 6 nautical miles to just 3 nautical miles.
In a statement condemning the move at the time, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said that the Israeli control of the Gaza coast had devastated the fishing sector. “The fishing sector in Gaza is on the brink of collapse due to these restrictions and the prohibition on exports,” the PCHR stated in March 2013. “The number of fishermen has gradually reduced from around 10,000 in 1999 to approximately 3,200 today.”
That number is now in three digits, with fishermen forced to work with very limited tools amidst the constant threat to their lives.
However, with no other way to feed their starving families as the Israelis continue to dictate how much and what Palestinians in Gaza can eat, the fishermen have been forced to risk their lives to feed their families.
“We don’t have any other source of food but this one,” fisherman Ziyad Abu Amira told CNN back in July last year. “If I don’t bring it to my children today I die.”
Ziyad found the sea more welcoming than the death traps set by the Israelis and the American mercenaries in the form of “aid” distribution centres in the summer. “I will not go run after [aid] trucks, this is my way,” he said.
With elder breadwinners martyred in Israeli bombings, children in Gaza have been forced to grow up before their years. The CNN report highlighted the case of Hussam Saadallah, who at just 8-year-old “is an unlikely breadwinner for his nine relatives.”
The report added: “With a net he fashioned with a friend, he casts out into the shallows, catching the occasional tiny fish, a haul barely large enough to fill one of the child’s hands. ‘I’m throwing the net because we want to eat,’ he told CNN.”
In this full-spectrum Israeli genocide, not only have the Israelis maintained a tight leash on what enters the Gaza Strip through land crossings, but they have also prevented Palestinians from accessing nature’s offerings they could fish out with makeshift tools.
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I'm trying to withhold commenting on anything because my mood is so dark over my stupid country's naked imperialism.
But -- an 8-yr-old child fishing to feed a family also exhibits just how twisted the world has become.
the Devil IsRael. The Antichrist.