Gazan fishermen used as shooting targets by Israeli navy

Photo: Tom Spender on Flickr. The photo wasn't taken at the same time as the video. 

Since the end of August, fishermen from Gaza - frequent targets of the Israeli navy - have been accompanied out to sea by members of the NGO International Solidarity Movement. On 5 October, the pro-Palestinian activists filmed the boats getting fired at with machine guns and water cannons.

Just one round and the bullets ricochet across the water to this huddle of fishermen. Next, a high-powered water cannon scours the deck for several minutes, damaging the vessel. This footage was filmed on 5 October by an NGO that supports Palestine's "demand for freedom". For almost two months, six international volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement have entered the daily lives of Gazan fishermen. They report that the same event regularly repeats itself: Israeli navy ships aim at Palestinian fishing vessels with machine guns and water cannons.

UPDATE (20 November 08 - 3pm): Andrew was arrested by Israeli authorities on Tuesday morning along with 15 fisherman and two other campaigners. The fishermen have since been released but the three foreigners are being held in a detention centre in Tel-Aviv airport awaiting extradition. We are awaiting news from his family who have, as yet, had no contact with Andrew. We'll update you once we can.

The video from 5 October.

The same scenario filmed on 17 September by Andrew

"We changed direction, but the shots continued"

Andrew Muncie is a member of the International Solidarity Movement and the author of the video.

The morning of 5 October, I went out to sea with the Palestinian fisherman. We were about four miles from the coast when an Israeli navy ship started shooting at us. We changed direction, but the shots continued. A bigger navy ship then arrived and aimed at us with a water cannon. That caused damage - a window got smashed and wooden panels were broken - but luckily nobody was hurt. However, on the same day, a bit further south than us, a fisherman was hit by a high calibre bullet and now risks losing his leg. Generally, the gunboats fire their machine guns to intimidate the fishermen, although many fishermen have been either killed or injured by such gunfire in the past. It is the use of the water cannon against such small vessels that severely endangers all those aboard.

These fishermen are living in very hard times because of the blockade on Gaza. They go to sea simply to feed their families... The Israeli navy has decreed that they don't have the right to go further out than six miles from the coast. This boundary was never officialised by the international community and the Israeli navy never issued any official decree or announcement with respect to it. In addition,  there is not any official channel of communication open between the Israeli navy and the Palestinian fishermen. All information regarding it is conveyed to the fishermen on an ad hoc basis through the medium of gunfire or the threat of it. In practice, whilst it is true that the Israeli gunboats have a higher tendency to harass or attack the fishermen when they are six miles or more from shore, the Israeli naval aggression is essentially arbitrary and can take place anywhere within Palestinian territorial waters - and regularly occurs within the so-called "six mile limit". The fisherman who was shot in the leg for instance, was at the time only one nautical mile from the shores of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

The problem is, the closer the fisherman are to the coast, the smaller the fish are. The result: they often come back with not even enough to pay for the fuel they used."