Fathi Said and Mustafa Jarboua, Gazan fishermen who have seen their livelihoods destroyed by Israel’s blockade. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
GAZA CITY, Feb 27 2015 (IPS)

The beautiful Mediterranean Sea laps gently onto the white sandy beach near Gaza City’s port. Fishing boats dot the beach as fishermen tend to their boats and fix their nets.

However, this scenic and peaceful setting belies a depressing reality. Gaza’s once thriving fishing industry has been decimated by Israel’s blockade of the coastal territory since 2007.

Approximately 3,600 Gazan fishermen, and their dependents, estimated at over 30,000 people, used to rely on fishing for a living.

Fish also provided a basic source of food for Gaza’s poverty-stricken population of over 1.5 million people.“Access restrictions imposed by Israel at land and sea continue to undermine the security of Palestinians and the agricultural sector in Gaza, which is the primary source of income for thousands of farmers and fishermen and their families” – U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

Following the blockade of the Gaza Strip, more than 90 percent of Gaza’s fishermen have had to depend on aid to survive.

Mustafa Jarboua, 55, the father of 10 children from Shati refugee camp, sits on the beach near his boat mending his nets. He has been a fisherman for 17 years and has witnessed the fishing industry’s decline since Israel first started placing restrictions on the fishermen in the early 2000s, culminating in the 2007 blockade.

“Before the blockade I used to earn about NIS 2000-3000 per month (500-750 dollars),” he told IPS.

“Now I’m lucky if I can earn NIS 500-600 (126 -152 dollars) a month because we can only fish a few days each week depending on when there are sufficient fish.

“The shoals closer to shore have been depleted with most of the better quality fish at least nine miles out to sea. I have to rely on money from the Ministry of Social Affairs to survive.

“I can’t afford meat and have to buy second-hand clothes for my children. Buying treats on holidays is no longer possible,” said Jarboua.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “in the late 1990s, annual catches from the Gaza Strip’s four fishing wharves located in Rafah, Khan Younis, Deir Al Balah and Gaza City averaged more than 3,500 tonnes and generated an annual income of over 10 million dollars.”

The already dire situation was exacerbated during last year’s July-August war with Israel, reducing the area in which the fishermen can fish to six nautical miles. After the Oslo agreement in 1993, the distance had been 20 nautical miles.

However, fishermen are still being shot at and killed and injured even within that 6-mile nautical zone.

Jarboua pointed to his boat and showed IPS the bullet holes where the Israeli navy had fired on him while out to sea.

Others fishermen have had their boats destroyed and been arrested, Jarboua’s friend Fathi Said, also from Shati camp, told IPS that his brother had been arrested by the Israelis several weeks ago while only five nautical miles out to sea.

Sami Al Quka, 35, from Shati had his hand blown off when the Israeli navy shot at him while he was within the approved fishing zone.

Brother Ibrahim Al Quka, 55, said he used to earn about 50-100 dollars a day before Israel’s blockade.

“Now on a good day I only earn about 30 dollars and then I can buy food for my family for a few days. After that I have to rely on the United Nations to survive,” Al Quka told IPS.

Oxfam GB confirms the fishermen’s claims: “Even when fishing within the six mile restriction, fishermen face being shot or arrested by the Israeli navy. In the first half of 2014, there were at least 177 incidents of naval fire against fishermen – nearly as many as in all of 2013.”

OCHA reported in its weekly Humanitarian Report in mid-February that “incidents involving Israeli forces opening fire into the Access Restricted Areas (ARAs) on land and at sea continued on a daily basis, with at least 17 such incidents reported during the week.”

“In at least two incidents,” said the report, “Israeli naval forces opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats reportedly sailing within the Israeli-declared six nautical mile fishing limit, forcing them ashore.

“Access restrictions imposed by Israel at land and sea continue to undermine the security of Palestinians and the agricultural sector in Gaza, which is the primary source of income for thousands of farmers and fishermen and their families.”

Gaza’s farmers are also unable to access their land near the borders with Israel which is imposing “security zones” of up to 1.5 km in some of Gaza’s most fertile land. Dozens of farmers have been shot and killed or injured after trying to reach their farms.

The Gaza Strip’s dense population is crammed into an area 6-12 km wide by 41 km in length.

Gaza’s struggling economy has been further battered by Israel’s almost complete ban on exports, including manufactured goods and agricultural products which formed a major part of its economy, and imports.

“Severe trade restrictions on both imports and exports have stifled the private sector, forcing several thousands of businesses to close in the past few years,” according to the ‘GAZA Detailed Needs Assessment (DNA) and Recovery Framework: Social Protection Sub-Sector‘ report produced by the Palestinian Government, European Union, World Bank and the United Nations.

“Since the economic blockade (which Egypt has now joined) was put in place in 2007, exports from Gaza have dropped by 97 per cent,” added the report. “Even companies that are still operating can only produce at high risk and with limited profit, due to elevated production costs, widespread power cuts and the almost complete ban on exports.”

“The basic needs of Gazans are not being met,” Arwa Mhanna from Oxfam told IPS. “Poverty is deepening, vital services have been affected and livelihoods crippled. The situation is moving towards more violence and further humanitarian tragedy.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

Syrian-Iraqi border post in Til Kocer. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
TIL KOCER, Syria, May 18 2014 (IPS)

“We all know that Ankara and Erbil have a joint plan to evacuate the entire region,” Abdurrahman Hemo, head of the Kurdish Humanitarian Aid Committee tells IPS. “They want to choke the people here until they flee en masse.”

From his office in Derik, 700 km northeast of Damascus, Hemo denounces a blockade allegedly enforced by the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq and Turkey over the Kurdish areas of Syria.

“The latest proof of this is the ditch that Erbil (the administrative capital of Iraqi Kurdistan) is building along their common border,” notes the Kurdish official.

The “ditch” is a 17 km-long trench, three metres wide and two deep, which comes on top of the recent dismantling of the bridge across the Habur river, at the only official border crossing between the Kurds of Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda affiliate groups, many of which are reportedly reaching the area through the Turkish border, have been maintaining a siege on the region since autumn 2012.

“People are terrified and many have left,” Isham Ahmed, Derik resident, points out from his small grocery store in the bazaar. The shopkeeper, who refuses to fold his business despite the hardship, adds that food prices have increased fivefold because much is now smuggled, or simply because crops are unattended because of the war.

Shortages of virtually everything are seemingly one of the prices to pay for the Syrian Kurds since they took over their areas in July 2012. Despite distancing itself from both government and opposition, Ankara still frowns on the Democratic Union Party, the dominant party among the Syrian Kurds, with an ideology akin to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

On the other hand, the Erbil authorities accuse the new Syrian Kurdish administration of politically marginalising a significant part of the population. The excellent trade relations between Ankara and Erbil, which include significant gas and oil contracts, may also be a factor behind Erbil’s refusal to recognise the new status quo among their kin in Syria’s north.

Meanwhile fuel in Derik has gone from the pre-war 50 Syrian pounds per litre (25 euro cents) up to 300. Petrol is brought from the myriad of makeshift refineries dotting the flat landscape; basically drums where the raw crude is distilled, and where individuals, often children, work under constant danger of explosion.

Not surprisingly, vehicle engines collapse due to the poor quality of the fuel and many have to be towed to Qamishli, the main urban settlement in Syria’s Jazeera region, 600 km northeast of Damascus.

Qamishli is very much an outsider in the war-torn country. Most of this city of 200,000 is under Kurdish rule but the government is still present in the city centre and the airport. That means two parallel administrations giving their back to each other. Rauda Hassan, co-mayor of the city with her counterpart Moaz Abdulkarim – the local Kurds scrupulously follow gender parity– briefs IPS on the city’s new challenges:

“The main electricity line used to come from Raqqa (500 km northeast of Damascus) but not any longer because the city is under Al Qaeda control. In Qamishli, both the regime buildings and the airport enjoy 24 hours of power but it is just four for the rest of us so we rely on power generators,“ explains the 30-year-old official from the former Hadaya hotel, today hosting the Kurdish city council.

A few hundred metres away, and without leaving the city centre, doctor Redovan Hamid also strives to meet the growing demands of his patients.

“The lack of electricity affects the preservation of food but that’s far from being the main problem. We are facing cases of tuberculosis and there are areas in the city where garbage is not collected so we have to be prepared for the worst: a plague of rats, a cholera outbreak,” he points out. He also puts the blame on a “blockade enforced by Ankara and Erbil.”

“Medicines are scarce, or obsolete after being held in the Turkish or Kurdish Iraqi borders for too long. It’s outrageous,” adds the doctor.

From the headquarters of the Kurdish Red Crescent – an organisation set up in the heat of the revolution but with no structural relationship with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent – regional delegate Agid Brahim subscribes to Hamid’s version.

“We rely exclusively on the international community because our neighbours have given us nothing but their backs,” he told IPS.

“Syria thanks your visit”

Yet there might be a small hint of hope. On October 26 last year, forces of the YPG (People’s Protection Units) seized control of the Syrian-Iraqi border post in Til Kocer (Yarubiya in Arabic), 700 km northeast of Damascus and 400 km northwest of Baghdad.

The strategic spot, a main hub for trading between both countries for decades, had remained under control of Al Qaeda affiliate groups since March 2013.

The next step was to resume operations between both sides, something which happened in late December, after a Kurdish delegation met officials in Baghdad. But cross-border traffic is still far from being fluid.

“Goods need to be shifted from one truck to another because they are still not allowed to cross the border,” Redur Marzan, one of the new customs officials at this massive, yet empty, border complex tells IPS.

Marzan talks of “just a few trucks a day” going through the painful process of shifting their load across the border. Safety, adds Marzan, is another key factor.

“Most of the shooting we hear during the day comes from a YPG training camp close by but the Islamists are still in the area so we cannot drop our guard, especially at night,” admits this Kurd in his late twenties while he strolls among tons of dates rotting on the ground.

A few metres behind him, a man in camouflage gear sweeps the main exit gate. On the other side of the fence, a solitary Iraqi soldier looks in boredom.

“Syria thanks your visit,” reads a sign over a border post that has yet to prove to be a real way out for a landlocked patch of land.

(END)