24 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Video of our international human rights observation boat outrunning the Israeli navy as it attempts to fire a watercannon on Palestinian fishing boats under 3 miles out to sea.
Publicly, Israel ‘allows’ fishermen in Gaza 3 miles in which to make a living. Today, as happens on most days they attacked 5 fishing boats at around 2.5 miles out, pursuing them until we were well under 2 miles away from the Gaza shore. For once, this regular occurrence was caught on camera.
For the first time in our boat’s history, we managed to escape.
This is what happened last time I was in this position.
The Israeli blockade may have taken a heavy toll on Gazans, but this film reveals life and hope among the devastation.
Since 2007, most of the approximately 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have suffered gravely from an intensified land, air and sea blockade imposed by Israel.
The blockade, deemed illegal by the United Nations, was implemented after Hamas, a Palestinian faction labelled a terrorist organisation by Tel Aviv, took control over the territory and ousted Fatah officials from power in the battle of Gaza.
After more than two decades of tight sanctions and even though Israel eased the restrictions on non-military goods in 2010, the blockade continues to take a heavy toll on Gaza’s civilian population, with many essential and basic goods banned from being exported or imported. This has led to rampant poverty and a massive unemployment rate in Gaza.
But Gaza once had thriving economy and was a major exporter of key staple foods, including fruits and vegetables, to countries across the world. Israel’s policies since the occupation, however, have forced the vast majority of Gazans to rely on foreign humanitarian aid for survival.
According to the UN, about one-third of Gaza’s arable land and 85 per cent of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to the Israeli blockade.
Abu Anwar Jahjouh, who has worked as a corn seller for the past 15 years and lives in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza, says it is a daily struggle to scrape out a living: “Back in the 1960s, we used to export oranges. Ships would come from Turkey, Spain, Germany and all of Europe. We used to export oranges, lemons, clementines and grapefruits. But those ships stopped coming to Gaza after 1967. No one comes to Gaza anymore. We can’t export anything. That’s why we started selling corn here on the beach. We sell anything.”
Rebuilding … without materials
The Israeli blockade has also prevented construction materials from entering the Strip, with the exception of some materials intended for internationally-supervised projects.
According to an Oxfam report, in 2008, 95 per cent of Gaza’s industrial operations were suspended due to lack of access to material needed for production and the inability to export produced items.
Kamal Khalaf, a construction contractor, said Israel’s war on Gaza between 2008 and 2009, in which the UN estimates 60,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, made the blockade much more problematic: “After the siege, the import of construction material into Gaza was banned. We had no cement, no steel, nothing. I stayed for two years with no work. There was nothing to build.”
Even construction material needed to build schools has reportedly been blocked from entering the Strip. With half of Gaza’s population under the age of 18, children are attending overcrowded schools – with many running multiple shifts – which has severe repercussions for the quality of education they receive.
In addition to this, thousands of children remain displaced from their homes – having lost all that is familiar to them, including clothes, toys, school books and a secure environment.
Israel even bans fishermen from going more than three miles from Gaza’s shoreline for “security reasons”. Those who breach the rule regularly run the risk of being shot at by Israeli navy patrols. At least seven fishermen have been killed by the Israeli navy in recent years and many more have been injured or arrested.
An underground lifeline
As a result of the blockade, underground tunnels have been Gaza’s main lifeline to Egypt and the rest of the world.
“We wanted to live, so we had to look for solutions …. We started to bring sacks of concrete into Gaza through these tunnels. It was exhausting to lift those heavy sacks inside these tunnels,” Khalaf says.
As well as being used for the smuggling of goods, the tunnels have also helped reunite families unable to enter Gaza through legal means.
May Wardeh met her husband Mohammad in the West Bank, but had to travel for four days via Jordan to Egypt and then through an underground tunnel to reach Gaza. She says she almost died just to get to him in Gaza, but then they had a big wedding party at the beach and she now lives with her husband in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
“I thought I’d see a worsening situation in a city full of refugee camps. But when I reached Gaza, I saw something completely different from what I had imagined,” Wardeh says, recalling her first day in Gaza.
Sharif Sarhan is a photographer from Gaza who works with several news agencies and international organisations. He is amazed by the Gazans’ strength and determination to live their lives and rebuild their city despite the siege and destruction.
“You can always find life and hope in Gaza,” he says. “Amid this devastation, you can see that people still want to live.”
This episode of Al Jazeera World can be seen from Tuesday, November 15, at the following times GMT: Tuesday: 2000; Wednesday: 1200; Thursday: 0100; Friday: 0600; Saturday: 2000; Sunday: 1200; Monday: 0100; Tuesday: 0600.
12 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Mohamed and Abdul Qader Baker – Click here for more images
Seventeen-year-old Abdul Qader Baker still has no idea why the Israeli navy surrounded his small fishing boat at 4 a.m. Thursday morning, ordered him, his 17-year-old cousin Mohamed Baker, and his uncle, Arafat Baker, to strip off their clothes, stand shivering in their underwear for an hour and a half and ultimately forced the group to Ashod. The two high school students were released approximately twelve hours later, but their uncle remains in Israeli detention.
“I was so scared and it was so cold,” Abdul Qader reported. After the Israeli navy ordered the group to take off their clothes, Abdul Qader stated that “for two hours I had to stand, not moving, while [Israeli] snipers pointed their guns at me.”
Abdul Qader and Mohamed are in the twelfth grade, and often help their families fish when there’s a school holiday, as was the case on Thursday. According to Abdul Qader,“[w]e went to retrieve the nets we had dropped and then suddenly I saw the Israeli gun boat in front of us, shining a big light into our boat.”
While the Israeli navy forced Mohamed and Arafat to jump into the sea, and swim towards the warship, Abdul Qader was told he could retrieve his fishing net and go home. “But when I started taking up the net, the Israelis opened fire and told me to leave the net and jump in the water.”
On the gunboat, Mohamed and Abdul Qader reported being blindfolded until they reached the port of Ashdod. “They took me to the harbor and when they removed my blindfold, I saw 40 soldiers. I was afraid and terrified,” added Mohamed. At Ashod, Mohamed was examined by a doctor, while an Israeli soldier photographed him.
Israeli authorities subsequently placed metal cuffs on the hands and feet of the two boys and eventually transferred them to Erez where they interrogated them for several hours.
At Erez, Israeli soldiers placed Mohamed and Abdul Qader in separate rooms and showed them various maps of Gaza, asking them to identify their houses and the names of their uncles and brothers. The Israelis also asked both boys to identify Hamas training locations, where Hamas people lived, were asked about a monument to the 9 Turks killed by the Israeli navy on the Mavi Marmara in 2010, whether the prisoners released in the recent exchange were staying at a particular hotel in Gaza City, and about open spaces used for a playground and a fish farm.
Israeli authorities released the boys at around 5 p.m. Their uncle, 28-year-old Arafat Baker, is still detained. “I have no idea why they arrested me,” said Abdul Qader. “I didn’t cross the 3-mile line,” he added referring to the fishing limit Israel has imposed on Palestinian fishermen in Gaza. “The Israelis are criminals. This is no way to treat human beings. It took me hours to stand on my feet [because of the cold], I couldn’t move my leg.” Abdul Qader added,“I don’t know yet if I will go fishing again. I need time to mentally recover from this.”
Abdul Qader’s right side and chest still hurt due to hours of standing in the cold and being forced into the sea. Israeli authorities did not permit the boys to call their families or an attorney, nor did they ever tell the boys why they had been detained or what laws they were alleged to have violated.
I saw an Israeli naval warship for the first time yesterday, a concrete monster the color of ash, guzzling up the Mediterranean and spurting it out in its wake.
I rose early to go out with the Oliva, a small white boat used by Civil Peace Service (CPS) Gaza to monitor the Israeli navy’s conduct vis-à-vis Palestinian fisherman.
My colleague Joe and I walked across Gaza’s sandy shore, past a dozen wooden boats painted in bright shades of pink, blue, green and yellow and then jumped onto the Oliva. CPS’s white and blue flag billowed as Captain Salah started the boat’s engine and we pulled out of the harbor. Burgundy carpets with geometric designs lay across the boat’s floor. Three orange life jackets sat within an arm’s reach.
“Oliva to base, we are now leaving the port,” Joe radioed.
Fishing in Gaza - Click here for more images
Because of weather conditions, we didn’t get started until about 8:20 a.m. Joe showed me how to work the radio and we were off. Dozens of small wooden boats – hasakas as they call them here – docked in Gaza’s peaceful harbor floated above the water, and if I didn’t know better, I may have felt like I was on a Middle Eastern pleasure cruise.
“So this may sound obvious, but if the Israelis water cannon you, don’t just stand there,” Joe informed me. “Duck,” he said in a matter of fact tone. “Oh, and go to the front of the boat, they generally target the engine.”
We sped towards the infamous 3 nautical mile line – another unilaterally-imposed “no go” zone imposed by Israel in June 2007 – cutting through the waves. Under the Oslo Accords, specifically under the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994, Palestinians are permitted to fish 20 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza. Israel reduced this amount in 2002 to 12 nautical miles, and began enforcing a 6 nautical mile limit after Shalit’s capture in 2006.
“How are you feeling?” Joe asked me. At least one other international human rights observer had gotten sea sick on her first journey, and had asked if I would like to take something in advance of the journey for sea sickness.
“Oh I’m totally fine,” I responded. This was nothing. I mean the Mediterranean — it wasn’t even an ocean, how bad could it be? I declined the pills. And besides, I was tough. I sat back on the seats and chatted with Saleh for a bit in Arabic. He had 25 years of experience on the sea and told me the name of his village in what is now Israel from where his family was pushed out of in 1948.
At about 2 nautical miles I checked our position. We could see the Israeli naval ship moving towards five hasakas, headed our way. We continued forward, and then stopped our engine as one of them pulled up beside us.
“The Israelis shot live fire at us and we came back,” one of the men on the blue, yellow and white boat said. All of the hasakas came towards us, as fast as their small engines would be allow.
We all floated around for a while, until the navy moved away and the fisherman head back out. The Oliva straddled the 3 mile line, engines off, monitoring the situation. The fishermen explained what I had already read, that there were no fish to catch within 3 miles from the shore. The fish were 5, 6, 7 miles out. And so, the fishermen went out every day, sometimes fishing within 3 miles, sometimes going out further, in an attempt to ply their trade.
We watched as the Israeli navy played the game of cat and mouse with the working fisherman of Gaza, shooting at them when they came out, then moving south to shoot at another set of fisherman, then coming back towards us, and back again. Some of these fishermen had been detained by the Israeli navy in the past, taken to Ashod and then released, their boats damaged or confiscated.
“There are two more Israeli ships farther north,” Saleh explained.
I jotted down some notes, and, suddenly felt a wave a nausea. Taking notes was making me sick. I lay down. Joe periodically radioed the base to report our coordinates. At times, we could hear the crackle of the radio as the Israelis talked amongst themselves, sometimes in Hebrew, sometimes in English. I tried to recall the Hebrew I had learned years ago, but that too, made me sick.
“The navy is back,” Saleh reported. “Look they are very close to the fisherman.” I sat up and tried to take a few photos and some video footage, inhaling the engine’s fumes as the Oliva rocked in the sea. I lay back down. I was the world’s worst human rights observer at sea.
Saleh continued to explain the situation in Arabic, but my brain stopped working. I crawled up, leaned over the side of the boat and gagged a few times. And then, well, my breakfast came up. All of it. And dinner from the night before as well.
As my head dangled over the side of the boat, I wondered if the Israeli navy was watching us with their binoculars. Didn’t they have anything better to do then harass these poor fisherman? I mean really, the navy is supposed to be one of the most prestigious units for Israelis, and here they were spending all day, every day chasing after skinny fishermen riding in tiny pastel-colored wooden boats. Gilad Shalit was free, so really, why the 3 mile limit? Were they worried that Palestinians were going to fling sardines at them using 18h century technology?
After about ten minutes I came back up. Captain Saleh had started the boat and he let me drive it for a few minutes, since apparently that cures sea sickness. It did. Around 11 a.m. the fishermen head back and so did we.
Back on shore, we saw the group that had initially reported the gunfire and they showed us their meager catch of silvery fish – selling for about 20 shekels ($4) a kilo. They would be back out again tomorrow, Israeli gunfire and all.
The Civil Peace Service (CPS) Gaza human rights observation boat has returned to the waters off the Gazan coast after being grounded for two months due to Israeli naval attacks.
CPS Gaza aims to monitor human rights violations committed off the coast of Gaza, in which Gazan fishermen are invariably the victims. However in July, the CPS boat, Oliva, was attacked three times, with the final attack forcing the boat to retire to shore after the engine was rammed beyond repair. On September 25th, the boat made her first trip at sea, in which she was not attacked by the Israeli Navy.
Continuation of attacks
On 13 July, the Oliva crew and captain were encircled by one Israeli Navy warship, which fired water cannons continuously for fifteen minutes, aiming for the faces of the crew, as well as their cameras and radio equipments. The engine broke in the attack and the boat struggled to escape as the attack continued.
The following day, the boat was attacked by two Israeli Navy vessels, the force of the water cracking a section of the boat’s floor. The crew was forced to seek refuge on a fishing boat in order to make it back to shore. Once aboard the fishing trawler, one crew member reported that one Israeli naval officer instructed another to sink the boat with the water.
In this attack, the Navy officers also intimidated the fishermen with whom the CPS crew had sought refuge, demanding, ‘Where are your fish? Where are your fish?’ After the crew attempted to deter further attacks on the fishing boat by informing the Israeli Navy that they were international observers, a Navy officer responded by saying, ‘Leave and if we see you here again we will shoot you and the children [on board the fishing vessel] and the Europeans or Americans,’ according to one of the CPS crew members.
We won’t be intimidated
On July 20, Oliva suffered the attack that would ground her for two months, in front of a journalist from the Guardian Jerusalem office. For 20 minutes the boat was attacked with water by two Israeli Navy boats, and then rammed by one of the Israeli warships, which had a maniacal clown poster on its side. The engine was wrecked in the attack and Oliva had, until now, been stranded ashore.
Vera Macht, a German member of the CPS Gaza project explained that the project will continue to run and document human rights violations, “We won’t be intimidated,” she explained, “Olivia will sail out again to document abuses until international law is respected by Israel in the sea of Gaza. Fishermen are harassed, attacked, arrested and even killed by Israeli armed forces, even within the imposed 3 nautical mile limit.”
On September 25, 2011, Oliva set sail again, despite warnings that the human rights observers would be shot if the project continued. The boat cut its trip short because of weather conditions; the crew experienced reduced intimidation by the Israeli Navy and were not directly attacked.
Every Israeli attack on the Oliva has occurred within the Israeli-imposed 3-mile nautical limit, which forbids vessels from travelling further out to sea. This limitation overwhelmingly affects fishermen in catching adequate fish as the three miles have been fished extensively in the four years since the limit was imposed. According to the Oslo Accords agreements, a fishing limit of 20 miles was agreed, but fishermen have been restricted to three miles since Hamas took control of the costal enclave in 2006. This prevents Gaza’s fishing communities from accessing 85% of the Oslo-agreed fishing waters.
Joe Catron, a US citizen, was aboard the CPS Gaza boat during two of the warship attacks, “The bravery of Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza coast is like nothing I’ve ever seen. These courageous men, who continue struggling to provide for themselves, their families, and their country, despite the raw military aggression they face on a daily basis, inspired all of us. I’m honored to have played a small, fleeting role in supporting their fight.”
