Israeli Navy Guns Down Gazan Fisherman

The BBC reports:

Every night off Gaza beach you can see the lights of fishing boats rising and falling in the swell.

But they are defying an Israeli ban on all Palestinian fishing, and Rami al-Habeel knows how dangerous that can be.

Last week, he saw his friend, Hani al-Najaar, shot dead on the deck of their trawler.

An Israeli spokesperson has said that Israel is unaware of any of their “warning shots” actually hitting fishing vessels. Yet trawlers in port, miraculously, are riddled with bulletholes. If the Israeli military is “unaware,” the reason is simple: they have no interest in the matter. They are too busy with “defending themselves” from fishermen who rely on their trade for what little livelihood they might enjoy—while the Israeli government has banned the fishing, I would doubt that there has been a ban on the fish in Israeli markets.

It is said that the reason for the ban is to prevent Palestinians from smuggling Israeli captives out by sea. More realistically, the reason for the ban is likely to cruelly ratchet up economic pressure in the already beleaguered Arab port city.