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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Israel forces Gaza fishermen to
undress in attack violating ceasefire deal</h1>
<div class="field-author">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/joe-catron"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Joe Catron</a> </div>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-forces-gaza-fishermen-undress-attack-violating-ceasefire-deal/13888">http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-forces-gaza-fishermen-undress-attack-violating-ceasefire-deal/13888</a></small></small></small></b>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-09-23T23:04:00+00:00">23
September 2014</span> </div>
<div class="field-body">
<div id="file-28959" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg
media-element file-full" style="width:618px;"><br>
</div>
<p>Nearly a month after Israel’s military offensive against the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza">Gaza Strip</a>
ended in an indefinite ceasefire on 26 August, Israeli forces
continue to shoot at and detain Palestinian <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-fishermen">fishermen</a>.</p>
<p>The Israeli military has captured ten fishermen and confiscated
four fishing boats, while firing live ammunition in dozens of
attacks on both the sea and shore of the besieged coastal
enclave.</p>
<p>A day before its security cabinet ordered the military
operation on 7 July, and two days before its forces started
intensely bombarding the Gaza Strip, Israel unilaterally <a
href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-braces-israel-declares-operation-protective-edge-and-resumes-house-bombings-1554935452">reduced</a>
the permitted zone it had imposed on Palestinian fishermen to
three nautical miles from the shore.</p>
<p>Its navy had previously allowed them to sail as far as six
nautical miles after a ceasefire ended eight days of Israeli
attacks on Gaza and retaliatory Palestinian rocket fire in
November 2012.</p>
<h2>“War against livelihoods”</h2>
<p>In a statement released to media, the Palestinian agriculture
and fisheries ministry called the reduction “a war against
thousands of the Palestinian fishermen and their livelihoods.”</p>
<p>During this summer’s offensive, Gaza fishermen endured severe
losses. Only during occasional lulls in the violence did a few
dare sail, sometimes keeping their boats in the relative safety
of the Gaza seaport.</p>
<p>By 10 August, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture
Organization <a
href="http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/240924/">estimated</a>
that Gaza’s fishing sector had already lost 234.6 tons of fish,
or 9.3 percent of its annual catch.</p>
<p>On 28 August, two days after the ceasefire agreement, Israel
once again extended its limit to six nautical miles.</p>
<p>Nizar Ayyash, chairperson of Gaza’s <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/general-union-fishermen">General
Union of Fishermen</a>, hoped the change would indicate
further improvements. At the time, he <a
href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2014-08/29/c_133603877.htm">told</a>
reporters the area “will be nine miles by next week and will
increase to twelve miles within the next month according to the
agreement reached in <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/egypt">Egypt</a> on
Tuesday.”</p>
<p>Instead, Israel began to reverse the shift as soon as attention
from international media and foreign governments dissipated, <a
href="http://www.aa.com.tr/en/gaza/385854--45-gaza-children-go-to-germany-austria-for-treatment">reducing</a>
the zone back to five nautical miles on 8 September.</p>
<p>By then, its navy’s attacks had already resumed in earnest.
Regular bursts of machine-gun fire and the occasional thuds of
naval artillery punctuated the silence of early mornings along
the Gaza coast.</p>
<p>The first capture of fishermen came on 3 September. At 6:00am
that morning, Muhammad Ishaq Zayid told The Electronic Intifada
last week, he and his cousin Mousa Talal al-Soltan had paddled
their fishing boat off the coast of Sudaniya in the northern
Gaza Strip.</p>
<h2>Escape attempt</h2>
<p>“We were gathering our nets, which we had thrown into the sea
the day before,” Zayid said at his family’s home in the northern
Gaza town of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/beit-lahia">Beit
Lahia</a>. “This was only one mile away from the shore. Then
two Israeli gunboats came and started shooting. They ordered us
to take off our clothes and jump into the water.”</p>
<p>Despite their craft — a small, motorless boat known as a <em>hasaka</em>
— the cousins’ first reaction was to flee from the Israelis’
sophisticated vessels, Zayid said.</p>
<p>“When they approached, we had already gathered our nets,” he
recounted. “We started escaping, but the gunboats shot into the
water and surrounded us, one from the north, the other from the
south. They told us to stop, but we didn’t. We kept moving. So
they shot into the water again and commanded us to put our hands
up. This happened in seconds.”</p>
<p>After the Israeli gunfire forced them to undress and plunge
into the water, the pair were blindfolded, handcuffed and taken
to a larger warship which transported them to the naval port at
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ashdod">Ashdod</a>
in present-day Israel.</p>
<p>“They kept us in an isolated room,” Zayid said. “They took me
for interrogation for twenty minutes.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, al-Soltan said, “They interrogated me in the same
room where they had been holding us.”</p>
<p>After their interrogations, the cousins were taken by the
Israeli military to its <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/erez-checkpoint">Erez
checkpoint</a> at the northern end of the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>“We were taken from the port at 3:30pm and arrived at the Erez
checkpoint at 4:30,” Zayid said. “We were held there two hours,
then came home. At 7:00, we reached our house.”</p>
<p>Like many fishermen in the Gaza Strip, the cousins share both
their profession and their experiences of detention with other
members of their family. Zayid’s father has been detained, as
has another cousin, who sat in Zayid’s courtyard repairing a net
last week.</p>
<h2>“They have everything”</h2>
<p>Fishing families’ losses to Israeli aggression mount over time,
far exceeding the potential catches of their days spent in
captivity. Al-Soltan noted, “It was our first time.” He then
added, “They have everything: the boat, the nets and the fish.”</p>
<p>Zayid, whose family owned the craft and equipment, estimated
the cost of replacing them at $2,300.</p>
<p>Other detentions have followed those of the cousins, including
the captures of four fishermen in two separate <a
href="http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10638:since-the-truce-into-force-25-shooting-incidents-at-fishing-boats-detention-of-6-fishermen-and-confiscation-of-3-boats-reported&catid=131:new">incidents</a>
on 9 September, and an <a
href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2014-09/23/c_133663721.htm">additional
four</a> earlier this week.</p>
<p>The most recent detentions came days after Israeli naval
gunfire <a
href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=728235">injured</a>
Yousef Zayif, a seventy-year-old fisherman, on 17 September as
he waited for his sons on the beach at Sudaniya.</p>
<p>Nearly all attacks have occurred on or near the shore of the
northern Gaza Strip, an area that, many fishermen say, Israel
aims to render inaccessible to them, regardless of its public
statements.</p>
<p>Gunfire continues along the length of the coast, breaking the
morning stillness wherever fishermen sail.</p>
<p>By 9 September, the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/pchr">Palestinian
Centre for Human Rights</a> had <a
href="http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10638:since-the-truce-into-force-25-shooting-incidents-at-fishing-boats-detention-of-6-fishermen-and-confiscation-of-3-boats-reported&catid=131:new">recorded</a>
25 shootings, nearly two per day since fishing resumed after the
truce.</p>
<p>But a trade marked by at least <a
href="http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_gaza_ara_factsheet_july_2013_english.pdf">five
killings</a>, dozens of injuries and countless detentions
during an eight-year siege remains a potent symbol of history
and resilience for the 3,500 who still ply it.</p>
<p>Asked if he and his cousin would return to the sea, Zayid
replied proudly, “We have already gone.”</p>
<p><em>Joe Catron is a US activist in Gaza, Palestine. He
co-edited </em><a href="http://">The Prisoners’ Diaries:
Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag</a><em>, an
anthology of accounts by detainees freed in the 2011 prisoner
exchange. Follow him on Twitter: <a
href="http://twitter.com/jncatron%E2%80%9D">@jncatron</a>.</em></p>
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