Published on 6/14/2026
“The war destroyed everything in us,” Abu Assad says with a sigh that chokes the tone of his voice as he stands on the Gaza beach. “The port that used to be crowded with fishermen, and with boats and launches filling the horizon, has today turned into nothing more than broken structures and ruins inhabited by memories.”
The Israeli planes and gunboats were not just targeting wooden planks and fishing nets with their bullets and missiles. Rather, they were assassinating the “memory of the place” and the only source of livelihood for thousands of families who knew no profession other than being friends with the sea.
In Gaza, fishing has transformed from a livelihood profession into an “adventure fraught with death”; The tight naval blockade and continuous persecution did not prevent these men from flirting with the waves, but the tools this time were no longer what they were.
Speaking about this surreal reality, Zakaria Bakr, head of the fishermen’s committees in the Gaza Strip, describes the genius and cruelty of the need: “Fishermen today use small oars that are recycled and manufactured from the remains of destroyed boats.” Cork boards and doors of old refrigerators have also turned into rafts that the fisherman improvises to cut through the sea.
Bakr added: “Today the Gazan fisherman digs into the rock to secure his daily livelihood. The occupation deliberately completely destroyed most of the boats and fishing equipment in the port, to ensure that the fisherman’s movement was paralyzed and prevented from working permanently.”
Suffering is no longer confined to the open sea and within the permitted and besieged miles; Rather, the persecution extended to the fishermen, even while they were lying on the sand.
One of the fishermen says: “Danger follows us every second. Many times we are shot directly at sea, and what’s worse is that bullets even reach those who sleep inside their tents on the beach after a tiring, tiring journey.”
Today, these boats are unable to pierce the sea, not because the fishermen are tired of riding the waves, but because the siege has closed its jaws on them at sea, just as it has encircled the Strip by land and air. With the continued aggression and the destruction of the components of this human craft, thousands have lost their only source of livelihood, so empty nets have turned into a reign of hunger and loss that threatens entire families, in a scene that has come to sum up the major human tragedy that the Gaza Strip is experiencing.
