Real Lives
Israel's navy wounds three Gaza fishermen fishing under the ceasefire
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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The ceasefire that quieted Gaza's skies has never reached its water. On Friday, Israeli naval boats and quadcopter drones opened machine-gun fire on a fishing boat west of Gaza City, wounding the three fishermen aboard, Zakaria Bakr, who coordinates Gaza's fishermen's committees union, told the WAFA news agency.
The three men had gone to sea for the same reason every Gaza fisherman does now: there is little other way to put protein in front of a family. The sea they work is the only stretch of their world the war did not level — and the only part of the ceasefire that never took hold.
The closed sea#
A United Nations report said on 2 July that the Israeli navy continues to bar Gaza's residents from their own waters despite the truce in force since October 2025. Boats that test the invisible line meet gunfire; the port, the boats and the equipment that survived the war sit damaged and unrepairable under the import restrictions.
The union counts more than two hundred fishermen killed since October 2023. The youngest deaths are the ones the record keeps returning to: in June, Israeli fire killed fifteen-year-old Mohammad Mousa Abu Jiyab off Deir al-Balah while he worked a boat, the Middle East Eye reported.
The continuing attacks are stripping Gaza's fishermen of the last livelihood the sea still owes them.
Zakaria Bakr, fishermen's committees union, to WAFA
Palestinian tallies put the human cost of ceasefire violations since October 2025 at 1,260 killed and more than 4,100 wounded. The fishermen's share of that ledger is written a few hundred meters offshore, in range of the machine guns.
A kilo or two#
What the risk buys is almost nothing. A Deir al-Balah fisherman, a father of seven, told the World Food Programme in July that a day's work brings up a kilo or two of fish where his nets once fed a family and a market stall.
He keeps going out. They all do. Gaza's fishermen put to sea knowing the navy is watching, because a kilo of fish is a kilo of fish, and because the sea is the one inheritance the war could not demolish — only fence.
Friday's three wounded men are the newest names in that oldest of Gaza's professions: the men who feed a besieged coast from a boat, under fire, a kilo at a time.
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