In the early hours of August 30, five young fishermen left the southern Gaza Strip in a small boat, joining other boats seeking sardines. Two of them were teenagers. Another was a law student working to pay his tuition.
The excursion was cut short. In the area where Gaza’s waters meet Egypt’s, an Egyptian naval patrol opened fire. Two fishermen in another boat sustained mild injuries but made it back to shore, while Egyptian forces arrested the other five.
Mahmoud Basala, 16, Maher Basala, 17, brothers Ismail, 22, and Khaled Basala, 19, and Khaled Shalouf, 20, were taken to Arish, then a detention facility in Ismailia. On September 18, a military court sentenced them each to a year in prison and a fine of LE500 for entering Egyptian waters without a permit.
The incident was another sign of the shift in Egypt’s posture toward Gaza since the military removed Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohamed Morsi from power on July 3 following vast protests. The stricter enforcement of the maritime border coincides with military operations to shut down most of the smuggling tunnels connecting Gaza with Sinai, as well as frequent closures of the Rafah border crossing. The tension thickened on September 25 when Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy warned that Hamas, which rules Gaza, would face a “severe” response to any violations of Egypt’s security.
Fishermen in Gaza say that until recently they routinely fished in the area along the border, and even crossed into Egyptian waters. In July, the Egyptian Navy banned fishing off the north Sinai coast, citing security considerations. The Gaza fishermen’s union claims it was not officially informed of the change in policy, but according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, naval vessels often warned fishermen through loudspeakers to leave the area.
Though the five were not charged with a violent offense, the Egyptian government, engaged in an ongoing military operation in Sinai and a sweeping crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, has couched its position on the fishing issue in terms of security.
CNN Arabic quoted the Egyptian ambassador to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, Yasser Othman, cautioning Palestinian fishermen to stay away from the border, which “is witnessing a sensitive security situation.”
The Egyptian government insists the now-imprisoned fishermen crossed the maritime boundary into territorial waters. Nizar Ayyash, the head of the fishermen’s union in Gaza, says he does not know which side of the border the boat was on at the time of the interception. However, he says the Egyptian Navy had previously allowed Palestinian fishermen into the area where the incident occurred since the Mubarak era. “There was a surprising change in the policy in the previous limit, and this is the problem,” he says. “Even if they crossed the border, I don’t think there’d be any problem, because this had been allowed by Egyptian forces.”
The fishermen’s families also argue that the boats could not have posed a threat.
“They are truly fishermen. They are not involved in politics, neither Hamas nor Fatah, or any organization,” says Jamal Basala, the father of Khaled and Ismail Basala and a fisherman himself. “Two of them were just young kids, 16 and 17 years old.”
Some fishermen say they have been pushed toward Egyptian waters by the Israeli-imposed limits on fishing in Gaza’s own waters. The 1994 Oslo peace accords grant Palestinians the ability to fish up to 20 nautical miles from Gaza. As a part of its blockade of Gaza in 2006, Israel enforced a six-mile limit on fishing, reducing the limit to three miles in 2008 during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. Since then the limits have been reset several times and are enforced with the Israeli Navy firing on or near Palestinian fishing boats and detaining their crews. In January 2013, Israeli forces arrested 13 fishermen, according to the Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights.
The blockade has undermined Gaza’s fishing industry, and as a result fishermen are now among the poorest of the enclave’s 1.7 million residents. According to a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross, as of 2010, 90 percent of Gazan fishermen lived in poverty, up from 50 percent in 2008. In a bizarre twist of events, the underground smuggling tunnels became a main source of fish in Gaza. Until July, an average of 118 tons of fish were imported to Gaza through the tunnels each month, according to the UN. These imports have ceased due to the recent closure of the tunnels.
Gaza-based political analyst Haidar Eid placed the incident in the context of the post-Morsi shift in Egypt’s policy toward Gaza. “The Egyptian government wants to punish Hamas for being part of the Muslim Brothers,” he says of the organization, which was originally founded as an offshoot of the Brotherhood.
“Even if they go to Egyptian territorial waters, it’s not a kind of infringement on Egyptian national security,” he says. “These are poor fishermen who are not allowed to fish in the Mediterranean because Israel has been imposing a siege on Gaza since 2006, so they’re trying to find a way out of this dilemma.”
