Gaza fishermen net little under Israeli siege

You can count Gaza's fishing industry as the latest casualty of the Israeli invasion of the Palestinian territory this past January. Despite having a 40-mile coastline along the rich Mediterranean Sea, the fish markets in Gaza are practically bare. Under the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 between Palestine and Israel, the Palestinians were granted access to an economic zone that extended 20 miles out into the Med from the Gaza shoreline.

But after Hamas’ takeover in Gaza in 2007, the Israelis cut this zone down to six miles; when they launched ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in January, they again cut the Zone down to three miles. Now Palestinian fishermen report being intercepted, and even shot at by the Israeli Navy, just one mile off the coast.

To make matters worse, a combination of over-fishing and pollution runoff from Gaza's crippled sewage system have caused fish stocks along the shore to collapse. Fishermen working from the shore catch little. The fishing industry, which once employed more than 40,000 Gazans (when you counted fishermen, people who fixed and supplied their boats and workers at the fish markets), has basically shut down; the only fish for sale in the markets are smuggled in from Egypt through tunnels under the border, a fact that makes them too expensive for most Gazans to buy.

“How do they (Israel) expect us to live and breathe while they impose a siege on us from all three directions, land, air and sea?” one fisherman asked.