[News] Gaza fishermen: "We are ready to work"

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Gaza fishermen: "We are ready to work"
Report, PCHR, 7 February 2008
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9287.shtml

[]

Fish are displayed in a Gaza market, October 2007. (Hatem 
Omar/<http://www.maanimages.com/>MaanImages)

"I've been a fisherman for thirty six years, ever since I was 15 
years old. My original village, al-Jura, was famous for its 
fishermen. When my father migrated to Gaza in 1948, he came here by boat."

Jamal Mohammed Bassalla is the spokesman of the Rafah Fisherman's 
Syndicate in the southern Gaza Strip. The syndicate represents around 
450 local fishermen and its headquarters are on the beach just 
outside Rafah. This morning, however, Jamal and his crew are sitting 
under tarpaulin on the beach, drinking tea around a small driftwood 
fire. Conditions at sea are treacherous, and they're waiting for the 
weather to improve.

"It takes two or three hours to prepare the boats, but we are on 
stand-by every day," says Jamal. "We check the nets, the diesel for 
the boat, batteries, our food supplies, the GPS [Global Positioning 
System], everything we need in order to work. When the weather 
improves we're ready almost immediately." In summer Jamal has a crew 
of 18 men and they stay out at sea for up to 24 hours at a time. But 
in winter the crew is just six or seven in total. The crews work 
together for years, and understand each other intimately.

There are around 3,500 professional fishermen working along the 
40-kilometer coastline of the Gaza Strip. Between them, they 
economically support almost 40,000 people, including mechanics, 
fishmongers and thousands of local fishing families. But the Gaza 
fishing industry has been decimated, especially over the last five 
years, because of increasingly punitive Israeli restrictions on how 
far out to sea the fishermen can sail without being shot or harassed. 
The Interim Arrangements on the Gaza Strip and West Bank signed 
between Israel and the PLO in 1994-5 did not conform to international 
human rights standards, as they restricted the movement of 
Palestinian civilians, including the right of Gazan fishermen to fish 
off their own coastline. However, the Interim Arrangements did 
stipulate that Palestinian fishermen are permitted to fish up to 
twenty nautical miles from the Gaza coastline.

But Jamal and his colleagues claim that now they cannot fish more 
than 2.5 kilometers offshore without risking being shot. "If we sail 
any further out to sea, the Israelis can open fire, destroy our nets 
and boats, or force us back to shore," he says. "We've suffered these 
restrictions since 2003, and recently they have started using rockets 
and helicopters against us as well." The Rafah Syndicate fishermen 
say the Israeli gunboats are at sea 24 hours a day, seven days a 
week, so they have no chance of venturing any further offshore.

Israel claims the fishing restrictions are part of an overall 
security strategy to combat Palestinian gun smuggling and suicide 
bombing. But Khalil Shahin, Director of the Economic and Social 
Rights Unit at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights points out 
that Israel has never honored the Interim Arrangements. "Israel has 
never permitted Gazan fishermen to fish 20 nautical miles from the 
shore" he says. "The furthest they have allowed them to fish is 12 
nautical miles offshore. That was back in the mid 1990s, when Gazan 
fishermen were hauling approximately 3,000 tons of fish a year. But 
productivity has plummeted since 2002, because of the increasing 
restrictions. Now the fishermen are hauling less than 500 tons of 
fish a year. This is an inevitable consequence of Israel continually 
violating the Interim Arrangements."

As well as having their boats, nets and other fishing equipment 
damaged or destroyed, more than 70 Gazan fishermen were arrested by 
Israel last year. Jamal Bassalla and his colleagues are angry and 
frustrated that they can no longer earn a sustainable living from 
fishing without risking their lives. Another syndicate member, 
Abdullah, says he does take risks. "I take my boat four or five 
kilometers from the shore -- what choice do I have! Sometimes we 
manage, but other times we are actually hauling our catch when they 
start firing and force us back. Then we have to abandon the whole haul."

The Rafah fishermen say these restrictions have also affected the 
type of fish they catch, making them increasingly reliant on 
shallow-water fish like sardines. Many have resorted to using smaller 
nets, catching smaller and younger fish in order to increase their 
haul. Jamal claims they have no choice because of the Israeli 
blockade, but the fishermen have been criticised for severely 
over-fishing remaining local stocks. Ironically, the number of 
fishermen in Gaza has increased since the mid-'90s, because some of 
the thousands of men who used to work in Israel have turned to 
professional fishing in order to survive.

The sea is Gaza's greatest natural resource, and for the men at the 
Rafah Syndicate, the solution to their crisis is radically simple: 
they will settle for their rights as stated in the Interim 
Arrangements. "We need open seas," says Jamal. "I am an educated 
fisherman: I have a geography degree ... but I returned to fishing 
because I love the sea." He has two brothers and six sons. All of 
them are fishermen. "We have nets and our boats," he says. "We are 
ready to work."

This report is part of the <http://pchrgaza.ps/>Palestinian Centre 
for Human Rights' Narratives Under Siege series.




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