Jihad al-Hissi is used to the swell at sea but these days faces a completely different storm: for having ventured beyond the fishing zone of Gaza, an Israeli court threatens to confiscate his boat forever .
6:30 a.m. at the port of Gaza. The fishermen reveal the fruits of their last night catch sold on the docks at the auction: sea bream, prawns or even sardines.
Rough beard, square shoulders, Jihad al-Hissi goes around the operations. Her boat, the "Hajj Rajab", returns from the south of the Gaza Strip, near the Egyptian border, where she found "gambaris", large prawns.
If his bright yellow boat has a name, it has recently been erased. "I don't want the Israelis to spot us and seize my boat," said the 55-year-old, who comes from a large fishing family.
On February 14, 2022, his boat ventured beyond the maritime zone imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip as part of a siege of this Palestinian territory imposed since 2007 after the Islamists took power there. of Hamas.
"A hundred meters beyond the area, we were surprised by three Israeli boats with commandos. They attacked our boat (...), tied us up and arrested us", says Nihad al-Hissi, the brother of Jihad and who was at sea that day.
The cabin of the tub remains holed by the impacts of water cannons and rubber bullets fired by Israeli soldiers.
The limit of the fishing zone currently oscillates between 6 and 15 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza, while the Israeli-Palestinian agreements in Oslo, signed in the 1990s, fixed it at a maximum of 20 nautical miles.
Jihad al-Hissi therefore believes that he is respecting the law in force when he crosses the limits of the Israeli maritime blockade.
Even if, he recognizes it, it sometimes happens to him to go beyond. Not to smuggle, but to try to find shrimp at sea, the quantity of which, with an export price of around 20 euros per kilo, can make the difference between a loss or a profit excursion.
Confiscated by Israel, his boat is now at the heart of a real legal battle scrutinized by thousands of fishermen in Gaza, a narrow impoverished territory of 2.3 million inhabitants where fishing remains one of the few economic engines.
The number of temporary seizures by Israel of fishing boats suspected of smuggling or having exceeded the fishing zone is on the rise: 23 confiscations in 2022, a record since 2018, according to the Palestinian NGO Al Mezan.
It also recorded 474 security incidents involving Gaza fishermen in 2022, the highest since 2017.
Jihad al-Hissi may never see his boat again. The Israeli authorities have thus asked the courts to "permanently confiscate" his boat, according to documents presented in court and consulted by AFP.
He is accused of "having repeatedly violated the security restrictions imposed by the Israeli army in the maritime area adjacent to Gaza".
The Israeli NGO Gisha contested the request and obtained the return of the boat in September.
But the battle is still raging, in front of the Israeli court in Haifa (north) where the Jewish state is trying to take back, by a court decision, the Jihad boat... which has since ventured out of the fishing area.
"The Jihad case is a first," Muna Haddad, a lawyer for the NGO Gisha, who represents the Palestinian fisherman in Haifa court, told AFP.
"This is an unprecedented escalation against fishermen, and it has never been done... in the past," she said, accusing Israel of misusing provisions of international law on armed conflict - framing the seizure of enemy vessels - to impose it on civilians.
In the documents seen by AFP, Israel claims that the fisherman "abused" legal protections and that his crew "threatened" the safety of soldiers during the seizure at sea.
If his boat is permanently confiscated, it is "a serious threat to the thousands of fishermen in Gaza because he aims to put an end to fishing", worries Nizar Ayyash, president of the union representing the 4,000 fishermen in Gaza. .
Israeli military officials interviewed by AFP assure them that they want to support Gaza's economy without compromising Israel's security.
"We fish to survive," said Jihad al-Hissi, whose family once lived in Jaffa, now a neighborhood of Tel Aviv, before fleeing to Gaza during the 1948 war.
“And we will continue to fish even when our profits are at their lowest,” he says. "Anyway, I don't know how to do anything else in life."
03/22/2023 14:28:03 - Gaza (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
