Tag Archives: israel

Israel escalates deadly attacks on Gaza’s fishers Updated for 2026

Located in the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea, and Palestine’s only access to the ocean, the Gaza Strip could be a natural gateway to regional trade for the Palestinian economy.

However, near daily shootings and arrests by Israeli forces since a ceasefire agreement last August are exacerbating a decade-long crisis in the fishing sector, with livelihoods particularly vulnerable following a 51-day war on the coastal territory.

At least 80 fishing boats, dozens of fishing huts, and hundreds of nets were destroyed during the Israeli military offensive last summer, according to Oxfam, adding further restrictions to the industry, which began in the year 2000.

The 2007 Israeli blockade, followed by a large-scale military offensive a year later, imposed a three nautical mile zone for fishermen along Gaza’s 40 km coastline, crippling an industry that could have been thriving in the blue expanse of the Mediterranean.

As a result, the numbers of fishermen registered in Gaza have dropped dramatically over the past ten years as the profitability of the sector continues to decrease.

In 2005, there were over 10,000 fishermen registered in Gaza, according to Oxfam. Today, that number stands at around 3,500, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Oxfam’s partner in Gaza, says only a third of those go out to sea regularly.

Promise to expand fishing zone broken – now ‘shootings occur daily’

Fishermen and Palestinian rights groups say there has been a notable increase in shooting incidents along Gaza’s coast since the ceasefire agreement last summer.

The agreement had promised to expand the fishing area to six nautical miles – still below the agreed 20 nautical miles under the Oslo Accords – but locals say nothing has changed and the Israeli navy is enforcing the zone with excessive force.

On March 7, Israeli naval forces shot and killed a Palestinian fisherman after a group of fishing boats allegedly strayed from the designated fishing zone.

In reality, the area has never been expanded past twelve nautical miles, with Israeli authorities claiming it is a security prevention measure. Rights group Gisha says that Israel has often reduced the fishing zone to three nautical miles during escalations in fighting, such as when rockets have been fired from Gaza.

“This implies that the restriction was imposed as a punitive measure as there was, of course, no causal link between fishing beyond three nautical miles and the firing of rockets”, the executive director of the group said.

Hamdi Shaqqura, deputy director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza (PCHR), says the increase in attacks on fishermen is intentional and designed to stifle the industry, part of a wider set of measures which collectively punish Palestinians in Gaza:

“Attacks on fishing boats, confiscation of equipment, destruction of boats, fishermen wounded, and arrests are all regular and routine. They are almost a daily business for the Israeli navy.”

PCHR reports that nearly all of the attacks since August have taken place within six nautical miles from the coast, further proof that no fishing zone extension took place.

“Putting these restrictions in place prevents any opportunity for economic development and has nothing to do with so-called security, which is the justification for the land and sea closure”, Shaqqura says.

PCHR reports that there were over 236 attacks against fishermen in 2014, including 150 shooting incidents, the destruction of 14 boats, the confiscation of 25 vessels and the arrest of 51 fishermen.

“Everyone was hoping that the blockade would be lifted following the ceasefire. But it has not improved and there are almost daily incidents of shootings against fishermen”, says Arwa Mhanna, Oxfam’s representative in Gaza.

‘Struggling to survive’

Over 90% of fishermen in Gaza depend on aid for survival, and half live below the poverty line, Oxfam says.

During the war on Gaza, fishermen lost around $3 million in revenues due to restrictions on going out to sea, which PCHR estimates at 300-400 tons of fish.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that on average, fishermen miss out of on roughly 1,300 metric tons of fish per year due to Israeli restrictions since 2000, a massive financial loss for the sector, now one of the poorest in Gaza.

Despite the risks, some Palestinian fishermen head out to sea as most do not have any other livelihood option.

“The problem for fishermen is that they have invested everything they have in fishing boats. Often they sell the jewelry of their wives, take loans, or borrow money. But they have never been able to pay it back as they never receive profits”, Mhunna from Oxfam says.

During arrests, Israeli naval forces confiscate the boat and nets of fishermen, and they are often never returned. With fishing boats costing up to $10,000, a livelihood can be ruined instantaneously.

Israeli forces also often fire at the engine of the boat to disable the vessel during incidents, the most expensive part to repair, further adding to the financial woes of fishermen.

In a bid to mitigate the loss of equipment, and rising fuel prices, fishermen pool resources and share boats. But the majority of fish stocks lie beyond nine nautical miles off the coast, meaning the catch is often meager. Even if fishermen do achieve a modest catch, the Israeli blockade ensures they have no access to international markets, or to the West Bank.

“We firmly believe there is great potential for economic development in Gaza but Israel must lift its hands from the sea and land”, Shaqqura says.

“The same way Israeli fishermen have free access, to the Mediterranean and Atlantic seas, Palestinians need the same treatment: to be able to go into international territory.”

Charlie Hoyle is a senior editor for Ma’an News Agency in Bethlehem, Palestine.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

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Palestine: occupied or annexed? Israel must end the ambiguity Updated for 2026

Like most people, I was horrified by the devastation of the recent Gaza war. But I cannot say I was surprised.

I have been closely engaged with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on both sides, for nigh on fifty years and feel a strong affinity towards both peoples.

If I have learned anything, it is that peace is dependent on the imperatives of mutual acceptance and equality. As long as either of these fiercely proud peoples dominates the other, there will be conflict.

In a Jewish Quarterly article in the summer of 1977, following Likud’s first election victory in Israel, I proffered the following thought:

“Once the remaining hope of Palestinian self-rule is finally extinguished, the West Bank is likely to embark on a permanent rebellion – mostly simmering and periodically erupting … When the fire starts to ignite, next month or next year, let no-one register astonishment … “

The vibrant democracy that practices tyranny

It took another ten years for the first intifada in the West Bank and Gaza to erupt (to the astonishment of myopic Israeli policy makers). Further eruptions have periodically marked the landscape ever since and doubtless will continue to do so until both peoples are finally free to exercise their self-determination in neighbouring, interlinked, states.

Occupation brutalizes the occupier as well as the occupied. It breeds enmity and produces other deleterious effects. Hamas, founded in 1987, is a product of the occupation. Like Israel, it stands accused of war crimes, but were it to be eradicated, something else-possibly a lot worse-would take its place.

For over 47 years, vibrantly democratic Israel has ruled most undemocratically – by military fiat – over millions of people. This and the intensive bombardment by a technologically advanced state of an impoverished, entrapped people would never be tolerated by the custodians of Jewish values if they were perpetrated by any other country.

Israel’s misguided policies have been very damaging. Apart from the death and destruction delivered on Gaza, they have generated new waves of hatred against the Jewish state and global calls for its isolation. They have fanned anti-Jewish sentiment in other countries and fostered deep divisions within the Jewish world.

Israel’s suicidal slide towards apartheid must be halted

If the Israeli government is not prepared, of its own volition, to end its blockade of Gaza and suffocation of the West Bank, the international community would be entitled to challenge it to decide definitively by a firm date whether its rule over the Palestinians is or is not an occupation.

Until now, it has argued both sides of the case, enabling it to cherry-pick the Geneva Convention.

If it is an occupation, its – supposedly provisional – custodianship should be brought to a swift end. If it not an occupation, there is no justification for denying equal rights to everyone who is subject to Israeli rule.

After nearly half a century, it is surely past time to end the ambiguity before it really is too late for a genuine two-state deal and to halt Israel’s suicidal slide towards a home-grown version of apartheid.

Tony Klug has written extensively about Arab-Israel issues since the early 1970s: his doctoral thesis was on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank between the wars of 1967 and 1973. Former co-chair of the Council for Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue and vice-chair of the Arab-Jewish Forum, he worked for many years as a senior official at Amnesty International. Currently, he is a special advisor on the Middle East to the Oxford Research Group and an international board member of the Palestine-Israel Journal.

This article was originally published in the Autumn/Winter edition of the Jewish Quarterly, as one of 16 short reflective pieces on the Gaza war, and comes to us via Open Democracy where it is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

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Israel bans heroic Norwegian doctor from Gaza for life Updated for 2026

Israel has banned Norwegian doctor and human rights activist Mads Gilbert from entering Gaza for life.

Gilbert, a professor at the University Hospital of North Norway, where he has worked since 1976, earned international renown for his philanthropic work in late 2008, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead – an attack that, according to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, killed roughly 1,400 Gazans, including almost 800 civilians, 350 of whom were children.

The aid worker, along with fellow Norwegian doctor Erik Fosse, decided to volunteer in Gaza as soon as he heard that bombing had started, on 27 December 2008.

Thanks to diplomatic and economic support (in the sum of $1 million dollar of emergency funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the two physicians managed to arrive in the strip by 30 December.

Press blockade imposed for ‘Operation Cast Lead’

The Israeli government prevented all international press from entering Gaza during Cast Lead (a documentary, The War Around Us, was made about the only two foreign reporters in the strip at the time), in what Gilbert called Israel’s insidious “PR plan”.

The doctor, as one of the only international aid workers in Gaza, thus devoted considerable time to speaking with local Palestinian news outlets, some of whom were reporting on behalf of foreign networks including BBC, CNN, ABC, and Al Jazeera.

BBC aired an interview with Gilbert, conducted in the hospital. The questions asked, and the answers garnered, were eerily similar to those he would give just five years later, during Operation Protective Edge. The interviewer began asking him to respond to Israel’s claims that it was not targeting civilians, that it was only attacking Hamas militants.

Gilbert called the claim “an absolutely stupid statement” and explained that, among the hundreds of patients he had seen at that point, only two had been fighters. The “large majority” were women, children, and men civilians. “These numbers are contradictory to everything Israel says”, he reported.

Gilbert drew attention to the fact that the overflowing hospital did not have enough supplies to treat all of its patients, and censured the international community for doing nothing to assist them. Israel would not let in foreign doctors, and yet Palestinians were “dying waiting for surgery”.

“This is a complete disaster”, he remarked, calling it “the worst man-made disaster” he could think of. “There are injuries you just don’t want to see in this world.”

Operation Protective Edge

In 2008 and 2009, Gilbert treated Palestinians who had been grievously wounded by Israel’s use of experimental and illegal chemical weapons, including white phosphorous, dense inert metal explosives (DIME) munitions, and flechette shells.

In July 2014, in the midst of Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, Gilbert spoke with Electronic Intifada, revealing that he saw indications of renewed use of DIME weapons and flechettes.

While volunteering in Shifa hospital, Gaza’s principal medical facility, Gilbert penned an open letter, lamenting the unspeakable horrors the Israeli military was instigating:

“[Israel’s] ‘ground invasion’ of Gaza resulted in scores and carloads with maimed, torn apart, bleeding, shivering, dying … All sorts of injured Palestinians, all ages, all civilians, all innocent.

“The heroes in the ambulances and in all of Gaza’s hospitals are working 12 to 24‑hour shifts, grey from fatigue and inhuman workloads (without payment in Shifa for the last four months).

“They care, triage, try to understand the incomprehensible chaos of bodies, sizes, limbs, walking, not walking, breathing, not breathing, bleeding, not bleeding humans. Humans! … Ashy grey faces – Oh no! not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding.

“We still have lakes of blood on the floor in the emergency room, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out – oh – the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas – the leftovers from death – all taken away … to be prepared again, to be repeated all over.

“More than 100 cases came to Shifa in the last 24 hours. Enough for a large well-trained hospital with everything, but here – almost nothing: electricity, water, disposables, drugs, operating-room tables, instruments, monitors – all rusted and as if taken from museums of yesterday’s hospitals. But they do not complain, these heroes.

“Now, once more treated like animals by “the most moral army in the world.”

Mr President – do you have a heart?

The doctor directed one heart-wrenching passage to President Obama, writing: “Mr Obama – do you have a heart? I invite you – spend one night – just one night – with us in Shifa. I am convinced, 100 per cent, it would change history.

“Nobody with a heart and power could ever walk away from a night in Shifa without being determined to end the slaughter of the Palestinian people.”

Israel later attacked Shifa hospital. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) “strongly condemned” the incursion, saying it “demonstrate[d] how civilians in Gaza have nowhere safe to go.” MSF director Marie-Noëlle Rodrigue stated, in an official statement:

“When the Israeli army orders civilians to evacuate their houses and their neighborhoods, where is there for them to go? Gazans have no freedom of movement and cannot take refuge outside Gaza. They are effectively trapped.”

Shifa was one of the over 10 medical facilities Israel bombed in its 50-day offensive.

Human rights work

In 2000, Gilbert made headlines for saving the life of a skier who had been trapped in sub-zero water. She had been pronounced clinically dead, with a body temperature of 57 °F, but Gilbert managed to revive her. For his service, Gilbert was awarded the Northern Norwegian of the Year award.

Before Operation Protective Edge commenced in early July 2014, Gilbert toured medical and health facilities and individual homes in Gaza, researching for a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) report on the dire state of the strip’s health sector.

He wrote of “overstretched” health facilities, widespread physical and psychological trauma, “a deep financial crisis”, a lack of needed medical supplies, and a “severe energy crisis”.

He also noted the “devastating results of the blockade imposed by the Government of Israel” with rampant poverty, a 38.5% unemployment rate, food insecurity in at least 57% of households, and inadequate access to clean water.

All of these already extreme ills were only exacerbated by the July-August Israeli assault on Gaza, an onslaught that left roughly 2,200 Palestinians dead, including over 1,500 civilians, more than 500 of whom were children.

Also on Israel’s blacklist: AI, HRW

Gilbert is not the only one Israel has recently prevented from entering Gaza.

In August, just after the end of its military assault, Israel refused to allow Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the world’s leading human rights organizations, from entering the strip, impeding them from conducting war crimes investigations.

The organizations had been requesting access for over a month, before Israel had even begun its ground invasion of Gaza, yet were continuously prevented from doing so, Israeli journalist Amira Hass reported in Haaretz, “using various bureaucratic excuses.”

Israel has banned Human Right Watch investigators from entering Gaza since 2006; Amnesty International has been refused access since 2012. Dr. Mads Gilbert is the latest esteemed persona non grata to be added to this growing list.

The Israeli government says Gilbert is banned for security reasons, according to an email from the Norwegian embassy in Tel Aviv. The embassy took up the case on Gilbert’s behalf after he was refused entry last month.

Norway’s Secretary of State, Bård Glad Pedersen, said: “From the Norwegian perspective, we have raised Gilbert’s exclusion from Gaza and asked Israel to change their decision. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is still difficult and there is a need for all health workers.”

But an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Paul Hirschson, retorted that Dr Gilbert was “not on the side of decency and peace and he’s got a horrible track record. I wouldn’t be surprised if his acquaintances are among the worst people in the world.”

Solidarity, not pity

Other aid workers and medical professionals have faced even worse consequences for volunteering to help Palestinians. In August, Israeli occupation forces killed a social worker.

In the same month, as the Israeli military engaged in a campaign to target and openly murder Palestinian civilians who spoke Hebrew, Israeli forces assassinated volunteers working with the Palestine Red Crescent, a non-profit humanitarian organization, part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

A common myth suggests that Israel ended its occupation of Gaza with its 2005 disengagement.

The state’s ability to ban, and even kill, internationally recognized human rights organizations and doctors-not to mention food, construction equipment, and medical supplies – from entering Palestinian territory, however, demonstrates that Gaza is by no means autonomous. Israel’s siege of the strip is clearly a continuation of its 47-year-long illegal military occupation.

As legal scholar Noura Erakat explains:

“Despite removing 8,000 settlers and the military infrastructure that protected their illegal presence, Israel maintained effective control of the Gaza Strip and thus remains the occupying power as defined by Article 47 of the Hague Regulations.

“To date, Israel maintains control of the territory’s air space, territorial waters, electromagnetic sphere, population registry and the movement of all goods and people  …  Palestinians have yet to experience a day of self-governance.

“Israel immediately imposed a siege upon the Gaza Strip when Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and tightened it severely when Hamas routed Fatah in June 2007. The siege has created a ‘humanitarian catastrophe‘ in the Gaza Strip. Inhabitants will not be able to access clean water, electricity or tend to even the most urgent medical needs.

“The World Health Organization explains that the Gaza Strip will be unlivable by 2020. Not only did Israel not end its occupation, it has created a situation in which Palestinians cannot survive in the long-term.

“In his July interview with Electronic Intifada, Gilbert made it clear that his work as a medical professional cannot be done-the Palestinian people cannot live healthy, yet alone free, lives-while Israel continues its illegal siege and occupation.

“‘As a doctor, my prescription is very clear. Number one, stop the bombing, and that means stop Israel from bombing civilians and indiscriminately hitting families. Number two, lift the siege. And number three, find a political solution’, he stated.”

Speaking out for truth and justice

In a late October discussion with the Daily Targum, Gilbert encouraged Americans to do what they can to speak out against Israel’s illegal occupation and blockade of the Palestinian territories, and to pressure their government to stop its indefatigable support for Israeli crimes.

At present, the US provides Israel with over 3.1$ billion of military aid per year. In the past 52 years, over $100 billion US tax dollars have been given to the country in military aid alone.

“You are the change-makers”, Gilbert told American readers. “The key to the change when it comes to the occupation of Palestine lies in the United States.” The solution, he concluded, is “solidarity, not pity.”

And he now insists that he will return – in defiance of Israel’s ban: “I will not be stopped from returning to Gaza to do medical work. There are different attempts going on to conceal the reality on the ground for the good people of Gaza – this is one of them – and we must persist in resisting attempts to shutdown Gaza from the world.”

Ben Norton is an artist and activist. His website can be found at http://bennorton.com/.

This article was originally published on CounterPunch.

Additional information and photograph from Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP-UK), and news update from the Guardian.

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