"The market is hungry for fish but the amount of fish caught is not enough to feed the people"

The title is extracted from an article published on January 31st by MEL FRYKBERG for the Middle East Times. The article is a good recapitulation of the fisheries situation in the Strip of Gaza.

Key points are:

Under the 1995 Oslo Accords, Gazan fishermen were permitted to fish up to 20 nautical miles from the coast. That limit was reduced to 12 miles in 2002 during the second intifada. In October 2006, Israel imposed a further six nautical mile restriction on fishing following the capture of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit by Hamas fighters on the Gaza border.

The bans have seriously limited the quantity and quality of catch Gazans can make: i) Gaza's sardines (the main catch) and shrimp seasonally migrate further out to sea and beyond the enforced limit, and ii) the permitted fishing zone is overfished. Furthermore, Israel forbids Gazans to export their catches to higher paying customers abroad. Collectively, Palestinian fishermen saw their monthly catch plummet from 823 tons in 2000 to 50 tons in 2006. Fishing has become so bad that most think it's pointless to go out to sea (too costly if you don't catch anything0.

"The market is hungry for fish but the amount of fish caught is not enough to feed the people," said Finn Ebbesen of the Danish International Development Assistance, which has been working in Gaza for almost a decade.

Gazan fishermen are kept alive by monthly World Food Programme (WFP) food rations of wheat flour, sugar, olive oil and lentils in exchange for maintaining the upkeep of their boats and nets. The Programme supports some 1,470 fishermen households, or 8,820 people affected by the conflict.

[All figures are those of the article]