Israel shoots at, injures 4 Palestinian fishermen in Gaza

Four Palestinian fishermen were injured o this morning when Israeli occupation forces attacked them and their boat off the shore of Gaza City.

A reporter for the Palestinian Information Centre said that Israeli soldiers fired rubber bullets from their gunboat at four fishermen while they were a few nautical miles off the shore of Gaza City.

The fishermen reportedly suffered injuries during the attack and received medical assistance at a local hospital.

Israeli naval forces and their gunboats maintain a presence around Gaza fishermen almost every day, harassing them, shooting at them, damaging their boats and making arrests.

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Sometimes fishermen are injured or killed during gunfire attacks.

Under the 1993 Oslo accords, Palestinian fishermen are permitted to fish up to 20 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, but since then Israel has reduced the fishing zone gradually to a limit of between six to three nautical miles as part of its blockade on Gaza.

According to the Palestinian Fishermen’s Association in Gaza, there are some 4,000 fishermen working in Gaza’s fishing sector, who are looking after about 50,000 dependents.

The profession has been deemed dangerous by rights organisations due to Israel’s harassment of fishermen at sea.

In 2020, Israeli occupation forces attacked Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the Gaza Strip on at least 320 occasions, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) reported, 63 more attacks than the previous year. Israel also closed the fishing area altogether for 16 days in August.

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