Harassed by Israeli gunboats, Palestinian fishermen are chasing
dwindling shoals in the heavily guarded six-mile fishing limit off the
Gaza coast. Alex Renton goes aboard to see what it's like to be a
fisherman in some of the world's most contested waters
Sometimes the sea calms at sunset: and so it is here in the bottom corner of the eastern Mediterranean. The little
fishing boat has been tugging on its anchor rope like an excited puppy. But now, as the waves ease, the deck steadies.
We're
going to catch sardines. It's an all-night trip. So in the afternoon
we'd loaded the boat with £190-worth of diesel, sweaters, lots of
cigarettes, water, pitta bread and some nuts and dates. That's it, I
asked? No VHF radio? No safety equipment? No lifejackets?
The fishermen laughed. "Lifejacket? In
Gaza,
there's no need for a lifejacket!" That's the kind of joke that goes
down well here. Skipper Abu Nayim, big, sun-dried, smiling, sniffed the
wind. "It's from the north. Good for sardines," he said. "Yalla! Let's
go."
Now we are waiting. The generator chatters, powering a string
of arc lights hung around the boat. These will dazzle and seduce the
fish; in six hours we'll drop a net to gather them in from under the
keel. The crew relax on salt-crusted rugs – eating dates, teasing each
other, smoking. Two of the men step up to the foredeck to prostrate
themselves and pray.
It's nearly dark. A couple of Israeli F-16
jets make twin scratches across the glow in the southeast, above the
Egyptian border. "They own all the world," mutters old Abu Nayim. But,
for now, this feels like the most peaceful place you could find on this
crowded coast, where there live some of the most disputatious people in
the planet. There's not much to tell you that this is a very risky way
to catch fish.
 |
|
Under fire: an Israeli gunboat fires on a Palestinian fishing boat/ Photograph: Gianluca Panella for the Observer |
Then, as night closes in, trouble starts. First to the north: the
machine gunfire is hardly audible to me, but the fishermen give each
other a look. "It's routine," one says to reassure me. "The Jews, always
making a noise!" says Abu Nayim, his tone more bored than aggrieved.
But his son, 22-year-old Mukhtar, is more anxious. He was on the boat on
Monday when the Israeli navy put four bullets into the fibre-glass
tender – a felucca – that's bobbing behind us. He warns Gianluca, the
photographer, who has his telephoto lens out – "If they see you poking
that out, they will shoot at you."
Mukhtar points towards the
orange lights of the Israeli city of Ashkelon, 10 miles away. "There,
you can see the Israeli gunboat. It's circling the fishing boat."
There's another crackle of gunfire. I can't see much. We settle back on
to the deck. The fishermen try their mobile phones, to find out what's
happened. But, though we're just five miles from the shore, there's no
signal. They think the gunboats may have some way of blocking it.
Now
it is fully dark, but the sea around us is a cartoon royal blue, turned
to daylight by the arclights. Little flashes of silver appear on the
surface. Baby sardines – the outliers of the big shoal already turning
in the water below. I count 14 more boats, all spread in a chain along
the sea, carefully short of the six-mile limit that the Israelis have
imposed.
They bob at anchor, their lights festive against the dark
ocean. We're close to the limit, as close as Abu Nayim dares, because
the further out to sea the more sardines there are. "To go over six
miles is death," says Abu Nayim. Ideally he would be out at around 11
miles, in early November, with the last flush of the sardine season on.
But
Israel
has not permitted any Gazan boat beyond six miles since 2006. Once,
when he may have drifted over, an Israeli gunboat tossed a live grenade
on to the nets. In the past month the fishing boats of Gaza have come
under fire 10 times.
Half an hour later, we hear the
blat-blat-blat of heavy machine-gun fire. It sounds very close. I jump
up from the deck and then drop down again, in case it is us being fired
at. Not that the flaky fibreglass of the hull would do anything to stop a
bullet. But we see that the object of the Israeli fire is the boat next
door to us in the line, Captain Nihad's. It's about 300 yards away,
maybe a little further out. There's a roaring of engines. The fishing
boat's tiara of brilliant lights is lurching crazily.
 |
| Under the stars: Abu Nayim rests while the bright arc lights around
his boat dazzle the sardine shoals below. Photograph: Gianluca Panella
for the Observer |
I look at Mukhtar's handheld GPS and check it against the map app on
my phone. Both agree: we're 5.7 nautical miles northwest of Gaza City.
Nowhere near the border zone, and within the six mile limit.
There's
another one-second blast of machine-gun fire. I can see the Israeli
boat, so close to the fishing boat that its huge bow-wave gleams white
in the lights. It's circling the fishermen at high speed, the wake
throwing the fishing boat around. There's shouting, through a megaphone.
"The Israelis are insulting them," says my interpreter. He doesn't want
to say the words. "They curse the prophet. They call the fishermen 'son
of a dog'. Tell them to go back to Palestine." Another burst of
gunfire. We wonder if we'll be next. Everyone in the crew, even the two
boys, takes time to tell me not to be frightened. I've already informed
them I am a bad swimmer and I don't want to take my clothes off – if the
Israelis decide to arrest us, we'll be ordered to strip naked and swim
to their boat.
We watch our neighbours move 200m away from the
limit line. Closer to us. This seems to satisfy the gunboat, which moves
off. Is that it? Probably, until the next patrol boat's shift starts.
"But now Nihad is too close to us, their light will attract our fish,"
says Abu Nayim.
How does he feel about the patrol boat? "I don't
let it get to me, I'm used to it. But Nihad will have lost the fish
under his lights."
At midnight, the moon is high above us. The
crew awake and someone brews up coffee. Then Abu Nayim takes the felucca
off with a couple of lights to keep the fish at the surface while we
lay 100m of weighted
seine net
around it. As soon as it's deployed we will start to pull it in. Our
lights are switched off, and I can see Orion spread against the sky.
Here it's not the Hunter, but the Seeker.
Now Abu Nayim stands on
the foredeck of the tender, shouting encouragement. "Pull! Pull! Keep it
flat!" All the crew are leaning over the side and the gunwale is nearly
under. They chant a prayer to the Prophet to fill the net.
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| Caught out: fisherman Abu Nayim with his son Khaled, and baby
grandson Mohammed. Photograph: Gianluca Panella for the Observer |
After 30 minutes of heaving, the catch comes in. It is a
disappointment. The sardines and baby squid picked from the bottom of it
would hardly fill two garden buckets. Abu Nayim's sunny face has turned
old and tired. The lights go on again for another try. Mohammed, Abu
Nayim's adopted son, brews us all coffee. "This is the worst since we
went to Egypt," he grumbles. "We caught no fish at all, then. We were
chased away by the Egyptian navy boats, they fired small rockets at us.
It cost us 4,000 shekels (£700). " Mohammed is 20. He has a baby son and
his wife is pregnant. He's lucky, he says, that he has a Saturday job
as a waiter to fall back on. There will be no profit from this trip.
Dawn
breaks at 5am; we surf home over an oily grey swell. It is a race to
get into Gaza City's port: the earlier boats will catch a better spot in
the fish market. But the boys can see no one has caught much. For 14
hours' work, we have two boxes of squid and a bucket of sardines.
"Perhaps
50 shekels [£9]," says Abu Nayim, as we take the boxes of squid up to
the seafront market. "Often we used to land 200 boxes of sardines, in
the top of the season. 15kg each box." He makes a face – he has seven
crewmen's work and the £190 fuel bill to cover. On the pavement the
boats lay out their catch for the merchants to bid on. The boxes of
silvery sardines, of little tuna and squid lie along the pavement for 20
yards. "Once they were piled five high, and they were on both sides of
the road," says Abu Nayim.
"A fisherman does not feel sad when he doesn't catch," he says, as we turn towards his house. "Because one day he will." "
Fil mishmish,"
mutters young Mohammed, overhearing. It means, literally, "When the
apricots arrive"; "In your dreams." A favourite Gaza expression.
The
bucket of sardines goes home with Abu Nayim. There are six sons, all
married, all living with Abu Nayim and his wife Naima. With the
grandchildren, there are 30 people to feed.
Not so long AGO, Gaza
had a thriving fishing industry. In 1994 the Oslo peace accords with
Israel granted the Palestinian enclave, which was formed largely by
refugees from the
1948 war
that followed the founding of Israel, rights to fish up to 20 nautical
miles offshore. That supported a fishing industry, according to a study
done by the United Nations
Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO),
of some 4,000 boat-owning families. In 2004 they landed nearly 3,000
tonnes of fish. It was crucial to the nutrition of the 1.7 million
people of the Gaza Strip, more than half of whom were dependent on food
aid, even then.
In 2005 Israel,
which had conquered the Strip in 1967,
withdrew from the Strip unilaterally. But, under international law and
in the eyes of the UN and Britain, Israel's occupation continues and so
does its legal responsibility for the land and its people. In 2006 the
radical group Hamas, which is a declared enemy of Israel, took control
of Gaza: cross-border attacks on Israel escalated. In retaliation Israel
stopped the flow of Gazan workers over the border and started what is
in effect a blockade of the Gaza Strip that continues to today.
Israel
unilaterally reduced the fishing zone to six miles offshore, with a
further no-go zone along in border areas. This cut off 60% of the
fishing grounds – the best waters, where most of the sardines, the
mackerel and the valuable bottom fish lie, according to the FAO. In
2008, after Israel invaded the Gaza Strip in retaliation for rocket
attacks, the fishing limit was reduced to just three miles; it was
returned to six miles a year ago, but Israel periodically changes it
back to three miles, usually in reaction to a violation of the ceasefire
deal. Human rights groups and NGOs such as Oxfam point out that there
is no connection between the fishermen and the militants who fire the
rockets – and that "collective punishment" of a people is an
infringement of the Geneva Conventions.
Three miles or six, the
industry's collapse was inevitable. Fishing inshore is poor, and there's
an added danger because of Gaza's failed sewage system. That was built
to serve 400,000 people, and it has collapsed because of war damage and
lack of materials to maintain it. Eighty-nine million litres of raw or
partially treated waste water go straight into the sea every day. Last
year the fishermen's catch was less than half what it had been 10 years
before. They are now the poorest section of society, according to the
UN, with 95% of fishing families dependent on food handouts. Oxfam runs
the sort of food-voucher and job-creation programmes normally seen in
famine zones. It says Israel has a duty to allow fishing to the 20-mile
limit – and to stop using "excessive force" to patrol the zone.
Fishing
is a harsh trade at any time, but here it is made rather more risky by
the Israeli navy. As I witnessed, it makes its own arbitrary rules about
the fishing zone, and exacts savage punishments for those who break
them. The warning fire we heard and saw is usual, even for boats well
within the limit. Sometimes the fishing boats will be water-cannoned
with sewage, and the gunfire directed at generators, outboard engines
and tenders. Four days after our trip last month, Gazan fishermen had
their gear confiscated when fishing, by their account, just 1.5 miles
off the beach. Three days before we went to sea a 23-year-old was
injured by shrapnel at three miles, after a gunboat had fired at his
engine.
Last year Abu Nayim's son Hassan, 35, was ordered by the
Israelis to stop fishing immediately and leave his nets and tenders:
when he came back later the boats and outboard engines had been shot to
pieces and the net was gone. The damage cost $2,000 to put right. Hassan
says he was just three miles out, in a spot where the patrol had
previously let him fish without complaint. "I said: 'I have children to
feed!' The Israeli said: 'Go to Gaza, let Hamas feed them.' Why do they
do it? Are you a threat? I asked Hassan. "They don't like us and what
they do is part of the siege of Gaza."
Arrests are common. Often
fishermen will be taken to Israeli ports, blindfolded and handcuffed and
questioned under "aggressive interrogation" (the UN's phrase) and then,
after what may be several days' detention, charged a fee to be
transported back to the border. Fishing boats and gear have been
impounded for months and sometimes taken to pieces. Another fee –
usually 1,000 shekels (£175) – is charged for their return. No fisherman
has ever been charged with an offence – and no legal challenge for
compensation for loss of earnings has ever had any success.
There are injuries, of course. A count is kept by
Al Mezan,
a Gaza-based human rights NGO that logs infringements of law and damage
to property (it is trusted by the UN and other humanitarian agencies,
who cross-check the data). In the year to November 2013, Al Mezan
reported 136 Israeli attacks against fishermen in Gaza's waters. These
injured eight fishermen, including a child. In 2013 Israeli forces
arrested 18 fishermen, confiscated seven boats, and damaged or destroyed
fishing equipment on 23 separate occasions. At least five Palestinian
fishermen, all judged "non-combatants" by the UN, have died at sea in
confrontations with the Israeli gunboats since 2010.
Israel is
under constant threat from terrorist attack. But it is hard to see what
good the harassment of the Gaza fisherfolk can serve. They are generally
unpolitical, and, like most Gazans, far from fervent supporters of
Hamas (only 20% of Palestinians are, according to polls). While the sea
holds obvious opportunities for arms smugglers or terrorist attacks,
there is no recent record of any Gaza boat having been found carrying
guns or terrorists.
I put some of these issues to the Israeli
Defence Force, who fixed up a briefing with "a senior naval officer".
He was adamant that the policy was to enable fishermen to do their work,
so long as they didn't cross the lines. If they did cross, then using
live fire was justified, given proven security issues. But why were
boats inside the six-mile zone harassed and fired at, even when at
anchor? He told me the patrol boats would not approach any
"unsuspicious" boats on the right side of the line. And the policy
worked: it had foiled terrorist attacks. I asked for a recent example.
"If you couldn't find one, then we are on the right track!" On the
events of my night with Abu Nayim, and the arrests of other fishermen
that week, the officer said he could not go into operational specifics.
When
you ask Gazans what the Israeli motive is for this or that puzzling
aspect of the six-year-old blockade of the Strip – the near-total ban on
cement, for example – people usually just shrug and laugh. "Who can
ever understand?" But speculation on the fishing is that the rich waters
beyond the six-mile limit may now be being used by Israeli boats,
though none have been seen, and I could get no view on this possibility
from the UN.
Whatever the rationale, the policy crushes a people
who have made their living from the rich Mediterranean coast for
centuries. Abu Nayim knows his great-grandfather was a fisherman and has
no reason to doubt that
his great-grandfather was, too. They
lived just north of the wall that now separates the Strip from Israel,
at a place called Errabiya.
Now 60, Abu Nayim was born in Gaza, in
the Beach Camp set up for the 1948 refugees. He still lives there. But
when he was young Israel allowed Gazans to leave the Strip to work. From
the age of 12 he and his father used to go back to their village,
paying a fee to the Israelis who had taken their house and land to be
allowed to fish. They long-lined from a row-boat they built. The
families became friends. They attended each others' weddings.
"For
me, it was hard, going there," Abu Nayim says. "But it was good to feel
that the benefit of my family's land was going into my pocket." But in
2006, with the arrival of Hamas and
the kidnap of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit,
the border was closed. For the people of Gaza, then numbering 1.5
million, normal life ended. Not since they were children had any of the
young men I went fishing with left the "prison" – that's David Cameron's
term.
Breakfast at Abu Nayim's house was truly great. Hunger
helped. As we men sat on sofas drinking coffee, the women baked fresh
pitta. Then they fried last night's sardines with chilli and garlic.
(Note for foodies – Naima told me she first rolled them in dried dill,
powdered coriander and cumin, then in flour; before frying them fast in
very hot vegetable oil.) We ate the fish with our fingers, tearing the
flesh from the backbones with our teeth. The bread we dipped into a
typical Gazan salad, a mix of chopped tomato, tahini, lemon and parsley.
After
the food, we talked – about fishing, children, jobs and, of course,
Israel's blockade of Gaza. I said I was shocked to see how little had
changed since I last visited the Beach Camp in 2008, just before the
Israel Cast Lead invasion, mounted to stop the rocket attacks. That
terrible time brought around 1,200 Palestinian deaths and 13 Israeli
ones. It devastated Gaza's infrastructure.
Things are much worse,
everyone agreed. Fewer jobs. More "unhappy people". Gaza is now
undergoing power cuts of 12 hours on most days. Supplies of fuel and
much else had been smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt, but those had
mainly been closed since the Muslim Brotherhood regime fell in July and
the Egyptian army took over. The price of diesel had doubled. Abu Nayim
said he and his sons were worried that they would not be able to pay
back the money they had borrowed to put the new lighting rig on the
boat.
"You're from Britain," says the eldest son, Nayim. "It's
your fault. You invited the Jews to come from Europe to here, to take
our land." I demurred: it was more complicated than that. "What about
the
Balfour declaration?"
he asked – referring to the note signed in 1917 by Britain's foreign
secretary AJ Balfour, declaring that Britain favoured the establishment
of a Jewish state in Palestine. I thought about telling him that Balfour
was my grandmother's uncle, and that my own great-uncle fought Israeli
terrorists in Jerusalem in 1947, as a British policeman. But what I said
was: "It's true, we are part of the history. We are responsible, too."
Abu
Nayim's eyes are red from all the salt and cigarette smoke, and I can
feel his longing for his bed. We thank him and Naima for their
hospitality and the breakfast. "You like the sardines?" asks Mohammed,
as we say our goodbyes. "Here we say they are very good for the sex."
Everyone laughs. The women are not in the room. "In my country, we say
oily fish are good for the brain," I say. "In Gaza," says young
Mohammed, "the brain is not important." Everyone roars. It's a very
Gazan joke.
