Before the blockade, the sea was generous. Gaza’s fishermen worked waters stretching up to twenty nautical miles from the coast, pulling in sardines, sea bass, and grouper in quantities that supplied local markets and supported an export trade reaching Jordan and the Gulf. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) recorded a fishing sector employing roughly 3,500 licensed fishermen in Gaza prior to 2007, with annual catches that contributed meaningfully to household food security along the Strip’s entire coastline — from Beit Lahiya in the north to Rafah in the south.
That world did not disappear slowly. It was cut off on a date: June 2007, when Israel imposed its comprehensive land, air, and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s takeover of the territory. For the men who had fished those waters for generations, the blockade did not arrive as policy language. It arrived as gunboats.
A Shrinking Sea: How the Fishing Zone Became a Trap
Under the Oslo II Accord of 1995, Palestinian fishermen were entitled to access up to twenty nautical miles from Gaza’s coast. After 2007, Israel unilaterally imposed a closure that initially reduced that zone to six nautical miles, then — during periods of heightened military tension — contracted it further to three nautical miles, and at times to virtually nothing. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA oPt) has documented these fluctuations repeatedly in its monthly reports, noting that the restricted zone covers only a fraction of the historically productive fishing grounds.
The practical consequence is stark. The richest sardine and mackerel stocks lie in waters beyond six nautical miles. Staying within the permitted zone means competing with hundreds of other boats for depleted inshore resources. OCHA reported in its 2022 humanitarian update that the Gaza fishing sector operated at severely reduced capacity, with average catches per fisherman remaining far below pre-blockade levels. PCBS data showed that fish catches in Gaza declined from approximately 3,000 tonnes per year in the early 2000s to well under 1,000 tonnes in multiple years following the blockade’s imposition — a collapse that maps almost exactly onto the zone restrictions.
What an Interception Looks Like: Documented Israeli Navy Incidents
The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, based in Gaza City, has maintained systematic documentation of Israeli naval interceptions since the blockade began. Its case files describe a routine that Gaza fishermen know by feel: the approach of Israeli naval vessels, often before dawn, the order over loudspeaker to stop engines, and then — depending on the soldiers’ judgment or the political temperature onshore — either a warning shot, a burst from a water cannon powerful enough to capsize a small wooden fishing boat, or live fire directed at the vessel or the water around it.
In one documented incident from June 2018, Al-Mezan recorded that fishermen Nidal and Fares Abu Ryala were intercepted by Israeli naval forces approximately four nautical miles from the northern Gaza coast — within the then-permitted zone. Their boat was fired upon with live ammunition, and both men were ordered into the water before being detained and transferred to Israeli authorities. Their vessel was confiscated. Charges were not filed. They were released days later, without their boat.
Confiscation of boats is not incidental. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) documented that between 2010 and 2018, Israeli naval forces confiscated dozens of fishing vessels, many of which were never returned to their owners. For families whose entire livelihood — and often whose only significant asset — was a single fiberglass boat and a net, the seizure was economically catastrophic and, in several documented cases, permanent.
Water Cannons, Live Fire, and the Body Count
Al-Mezan’s annual reports consistently record fishermen killed or wounded by Israeli naval fire. The center documented at least seven fishermen killed by Israeli navy gunfire between 2010 and 2020, with scores more wounded. PCHR’s parallel documentation corroborates these figures, noting that many shootings occurred within the declared permitted zone, meaning the fishermen were not in violation of the closure terms at the time they were fired upon.
Water cannons present a different but serious danger. Fishing boats operating off Gaza are typically small, open, wooden or fiberglass craft — vessels designed for calm Mediterranean inshore work, not for resisting high-pressure jets of water. OCHA’s protection cluster reporting noted incidents in which water cannon deployment caused boats to take on water and partially sink, with fishermen forced to swim to shore or wait for rescue from neighboring vessels.
Live fire is, by any standard, the most extreme risk. The ICRC’s guidelines on the use of force and the applicable standards under international humanitarian law require proportionality and distinction. Human Rights Watch, in its 2019 reporting on Gaza, documented cases in which fishermen were shot while posing no credible threat to Israeli naval personnel, raising serious questions about compliance with those standards.
The Economics of Survival Under Blockade
What the numbers describe, individual families live. A fisherman who loses his boat to confiscation faces a replacement cost of several thousand dollars — an amount unreachable without credit or family support in an economy where the World Bank has estimated unemployment in Gaza above 45 percent in recent years. UNRWA has documented that a significant proportion of Gaza’s fishing families qualify for humanitarian assistance, a status that would have been unrecognizable to the same families two decades ago.
UNCTAD’s recurring reports on Gaza’s economy have framed the fishing restrictions as one component of a broader de-development strategy — the systematic dismantling of productive capacity that leaves Gaza structurally dependent on aid. For fishermen, that abstraction translates into predawn departures, the constant calculation of how close is too close, and the knowledge that a good catch and an Israeli gunboat can arrive in the same morning.
The sea that once sustained them remains visible from every part of Gaza’s coast. It is just, for most fishermen, unreachable.
Sources
- Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Annual Reports on Israeli Navy Violations Against Gaza Fishermen, 2018–2020, mezan.org
- Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Weekly Reports and Thematic Documentation on Fishing Sector, 2010–2018, pchrgaza.org
- OCHA oPt, Humanitarian Snapshots and Monthly Reports on Gaza Access, 2007–2022, ochaopt.org
- Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Fishing Sector Data, pcbs.gov.ps
- UNCTAD, Report on UNCTAD Assistance to the Palestinian People: Developments in the Economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, multiple years, unctad.org
- Human Rights Watch, Gaza: Events of 2019, hrw.org
- World Bank, Economic Monitoring Reports: West Bank and Gaza, worldbank.org
- UNRWA, Gaza Emergency Situation Reports, unrwa.org
