The Civil Peace Service Gaza — an initiative of international volunteers in Gaza (established after the murder of Vittorio Arrigoni two months ago) to accompany Gaza fishermen who are often the targets of Israeli Navy attacks — has been reporting a surprising fact in its first press announcements this week: the Civil Peace Service Gaza claims that, due to the severe restrictions on their activities, Palestinian fishermen are now going out to sea to buy fish from Egyptian boats.
Several communications and press releases received by email this week from the Civil Peace Service Gaza report this surprising news: “Current figures indicate that during 2010 the decline in the fishing catch continues. This has caused an absurd arrangement to become standard practice. The fisherman sail out not to fish, but to buy fish off of Egyptian boats and then sell this fish in Gaza“.
This is hard to believe, given Israeli concern for arms transfers into Gaza via the waters off Gaza’s coastline.
Is the Israeli military permitting this new Egyptian-Palestinian fish market at sea?
Given the stated Israeli security concerns, is the Israeli military monitoring and supervising this trade?
And, Gaza fishermen are now restricted to waters 3 miles [or often less] from Gaza’s shoreline — are Egyptian fishermen allowed to come that close into Gaza waters? If so, it can only be with clear Israeli military approval…
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights [PCHR] has reported that the Civil Peace Service Gaza [CPSGaza] operates a boat from Gaza called Olivia — an 8-meter long white motor boat/yacht, CPSGaza says — which “monitors [and reports on] the human rights situation in Gaza’s seawater”, and carries out “a peaceful civil mission that seeks to ensure freedom of fishing for Palestinian fishermen”, and which has recently reported harassment from by Israeli naval vessels, on the 13th and 14th of July.
The Israeli Navy opened fire on Palestinian fishing boats, PCHR said on the basis of its own investigation [reporting that “at approximately 09:30 on Wednesday, 13 July 2011, the Israeli Navy opened fire at 8 Palestinian fishing boats, as well as at Olivia Boat. The boats were heavily damaged”]. Then, PCHR reported, the Israeli naval boats turned their attention to the Olivia, which was targetted not by gunfire but instead by Israeli water canons, chased, and nearly sunk by the amount of water that inundated the Olivia from the Israeli water canons. The Olivia was then towed closer to shore by Palestinian fishermen, then finally at about 1 kilometer offshore, it was finally left alone by the Israeli navy vessels who turned away.
A compelling personal account of one episode of this Israeli rassmenthaattacks, written by Hama Waqum who was on board and who personally experienced both the stinging water cannon on her skin and the apparently deliberate taunting of some members of the Israeli naval crew, was published on Mondoweiss, here. “As the assault continued, they repeatedly aimed at my face and each time my nose, eyes and mouth filled with seawater. At one point I even saw a naval officer indicate to the marine controlling the cannon to aim for me”, she wrote.
Her account is also posted on the Civil Peace Service Gaza’s own website, which is here.
According to the first press release of the CPSGaza, posted here, “All the international observers in the boat will dress fully in white with official orange life jackets”.
The same CPSGaza information note reports that “In Gaza, the majority of profits from fishing have traditionally come from sardines. However, as schools of sardine pass beyond the 3-nautical-mile mark, catches are down by 72%. Considering that adult fish are mostly found beyond the 3 nm limit, fishing within the current zone is less profitable and, most importantly, depletes new generations of fish, thus threatening the future sustainability of the already overexploited stocks. Further endangering the marine environment and the fishermen’s livelihoods, the power supply interruptions, the acute shortage of fuel and the lack of spare parts caused by the Israeli siege have impeded the proper operation of Gaza’s sewage treatment plants, which daily pump large quantities of raw sewage water off the Gaza shore. According to Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, due to this deterioration, poverty among fishermen was the highest of all population groups in Gaza at the end of 2010, when it was estimated at 90%; up from 50% in 2008”. The same report said that at the end of 2010, some 4,000 families in Gaza depend on fishing activities for their livelihoods.
A report published separately, here, by Al-Mezan states a– just for an illustrative example — that there were 53 Israeli military attacks on Palestinian fishermen from Gaza between May 2009 + November 2010: “As a result, two fishermen were killed and up to seven were injured; 42 fishermen, including two children, were arrested and 17 fishing boats, together with fishing equipment and nets were confiscated and destroyed”.
The Olivia, according to PCHR, “started its work on 20 April 2011 under the umbrella of the Spanish Civil Peace Service. It carried out the first monitoring mission in the Gaza Strip on 8 June 2011. This project is aimed at monitoring and documenting Israeli attacks against Palestinian fishermen while fishing. PCHR, Fishing and Naval Sports Association, Union of Agricultural Work Committees and the Coordination Committee of Popular Resistance participate in the project, which is sponsored by dozens of local and international organizations. The monitoring team includes international solidarity activists from Italy, Sweden, USA and the UK”.
They estimate that Gaza’s fishing catch is, under the current conditions, now reduced to 10 percent of what it used to be.
In an agreed map — signed by the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and also by the American and Russian Foreign Ministers at the time — which is attached to 1994 and 1995 agreements under the Oslo Accords process, the Palestinians were allocated a maritime zone for fishing and economic activities that goes from Gaza’s coastline straight out to sea for 20 nautical miles. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2008, Israel has militarily restricted Palestinian access to this maritime zone.
A touted agreement by Catherine Bertini, then an American Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations who was sent to the region at the height of Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian areas in 2002, to allow Palestinian fishing out to 12 nautical miles, was never — no, never — implemented.
[Significantly, then-Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s 2003 “reservations” to the American/European/Quartet Road Map {which was also backed by Russia}, includes an insistence in the last part of Sharon’s clause 13, that “No reference will be made to the Bertini Report as a binding source document within the framework of the humanitarian issue“.]
Other milestones in the restriction of Gaza’s access to the Mediterranean Sea have been: (1) the Hamas victory in Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006, (2) a Palestinian military foray which captured IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit at an Israeli military position at Kerem Shalom just outside Gaza in late June 2006, (3) the Hamas rout of Fatah/Palestinian Security Services in Gaza in mid-June 2007, and (4) the IDF’s three-week Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza from 27 December 2008 until 19 January 2009 [during which Israel announced, as it began the ground phase of Cast Lead on 3-4 January, a formal naval blockade on Gaza’s maritime space].
Civil Peace Service Gaza also mentioned, from information contained in a Palestinian Center for Human Rights report, that “According to the Fishermen’s Union, a monthly average of 105 tons of fish has been entering Gaza through the tunnels since the beginning of 2010 (PCHR 2009)”.
Many recent articles have also reported that fish has been entering Gaza via the tunnels [which are under the Philadelphi Corridor dividing the Egyptian and Gazan parts of Rafah] — including this recent article published on the Electronic Intifada website, here.
In addition, Gazans have turned to fish farming, due to restrictions on their fishing activities at sea … as the Electronic Intifada [EI] reports on another article, “Siege and sewage make farmed fish a temporary option for Gaza”, posted on its website here.
It quotes one fish farmer as claiming that: “because of the sewage in Gaza’s sea and the Israeli fishing restrictions, farmed fish are cleaner and healthier than sea fish.” He told Eva Bartlett, whose work for IPS was republished by Electronic Intifada, that he does sell to restaurants and to wealthier families, but complained that “Customers buy frozen fish from Egypt instead of ours, because it’s cheaper … And the pellets we feed the fish come from Israel. They are often delayed.”
Palestinians prefer to eat fish from Gaza — and many restaurants now tell customers that the fish they are serving comes from Gaza (others say their fish comes from Jaffa). But, if this is true, it is also very unclear how any fish is coming from Gaza — whether caught in the sea or scooped out of the fish farms — giving the Israeli ban on exports from Gaza.
So, is there also an unofficial but active smuggling arrangement in place, with Israeli acquiescence?