“Aimer la Mèr en Gaza”
Sarah Katz’s documentary film – Fragments of Fishermen’s Lives – 2011-2014
AIMER LA MER A GAZA – YouTube link
Prologue
After the 1993 Oslo Accords, the people of Gaza were granted a 37 kilometer stretch of free sea.
However, in the years that followed, the Zionist regime launched a plan to reduce this stretch of sea, essential to the livelihood of fishermen, through violent actions and declarations of unilateral restrictive limits. The regime was implementing a plan, undeclared to the United Nations, to exploit the underwater fossil resources off the coast of the Strip, which would rightfully fall within the Palestinian-administered area.
Many oil companies, including ENI, entered into commercial partnerships with the Zionist regime for the exploitation of these deposits. The direct result of this exploitation was the suffocation of the local community: Under the yoke of the Zionist occupation, Gazan fishing families witnessed, from 2009 to 2023, attacks targeting equipment and construction sites, equipment depots, and even their nets. They have been deprived of their access to the sea, then their economy, their human rights. They have seen their country taken away from them, taken piece by piece by bombings and land attacks. Nevertheless, they resist stubbornly—and they would have no other choice—putting on the line everything they have left: solidarity, faith, know-how, resilience.
Their work is a hard life of daily sacrifices, facing challenges such as the deprivation of freedom of movement, at sea and on land, surrounded on all sides by military forces, the progressive and illegal reduction of territorial waters by the Zionist occupation, the scarcity of fish in Gaza’s waters due to overcrowding, and the pollution of the ecosystem deliberately perpetrated against them by the Zionist regime. Not least, the daily sabotage of their work and their boats by speedboats and military vessels. The attacks are ongoing, disrupting work and causing economic loss, culminating in armed attacks, firebombing of vessels, and the killing of defenseless sailors.
After 2023, the situation deteriorated definitively with the start of the Zionist regime and the United States’ genocide in Gaza. This story, which precedes that tragic moment, reveals a difficult reality even before its epilogue.
The Documentary
The documentary film tells the story of Madleen, the only fisherwoman in the Gaza Strip. A fishing captain, responsible for her family since the age of 13, she is now a mother of five.
In the years preceding the genocide, she had already experienced, at a young age, the struggle for survival and her rights.
In 2011, the crew of French volunteers boarded one of their fishing boats and documented a typical day for Madleen, witnessing the attacks firsthand.
Israeli attacks are an ever-present ingredient in the daily life of fisher population in Rafah. More than work, Madleen and her family’s life is one of resistance, self-defense, and survival. Over the years, their life has transformed into a slow economic and ecological suffocation. A slow-motion genocide.
Their only weapon in the fight against the injustices perpetrated against the fishing population and their families is their willpower.
Considerations
The international Community declared many times that it is clear that only external humanitarian action can guarantee the safety of the people of Gaza and Madleen. Only a global embargo and a series of direct interventions, such as sanctions and the deployment of military forces to protect the Palestinian population, can lead to the lifting of the blockade, the structural dismantling of the Zionist occupation, and ultimately the lifting of the barricades and walls erected around their country. Only the application of international law can eliminate the apartheid and colonial regime and guarantee Palestinians a future.
Fishers have every right to earn a living in their sea, doing the work they have always done, in peace.
