Khaled Habib is a fisherman who utilizes a handmade paddle to go across the waves of Gaza City’s fishing port while standing peacefully atop what used to be a refrigerator door.
The majority of the boats in the harbor have been damaged by Israeli shelling throughout the more than 15 months of the Israel-Hamas conflict, ruining the fishermen’s ability to earn a living.
“We are having a hard time fishing today and are in a very tough situation. The fishing boats are gone. “They have all been thrown to the ground and ruined,” Habib told AFP.
“I created this ‘boat’ out of cork and refrigerator doors, and happily it worked.”
Habib thought of putting cork inside old refrigerator doors to make them float so he could keep feeding his family.
To help make the homemade paddleboard watertight, he covered one side with plastic sheeting and the other with wood.
Habib acknowledged that his catch was “modest” but also made a fishing cage out of wire as there were no nets.
In December, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization declared that Gaza’s “once robust fishing sector was on the verge of collapse” due to the conflict.
According to the FAO, “between October 2023 and April 2024, Gaza’s average daily catch fell to just 7.3 percent of 2022 levels, representing a $17.5 million production loss.”
The October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by the Palestinian organization Hamas set off the war in Gaza, killing 1,218 Israelis, the majority of whom were civilians, according to government statistics.
According to the health ministry of the Hamas-run enclave, Israel’s retaliatory attack has killed at least 48,458 individuals in Gaza, most of them civilians.
These casualty numbers are deemed credible by the UN.
“Get proficient at swimming.”
Habib now mostly fishes inside the little port area, using dough as bait.
Habib said fishing beyond the port is prohibited, even though the violence was largely stopped by the shaky truce that went into effect on January 19.
“The Israeli boats will shoot at us if we go (beyond the fishermen’s harbor), and it is an issue we suffer from a lot.”
“I catch enough fish to support my family, and I try to help others by selling the rest at a reasonable price,” Habib added.
The fisherman sells some of his catch at the harbor market, where prices can be high, after separating it into tiny plastic bags.
Essential food, housing, and medical aid were able to enter Palestinian territory thanks to the first phase of the Gaza truce, which ended on March 1.
On March 2, Israel declared that it was halting humanitarian supplies to Gaza, where Palestinians claim they are afraid of food shortages and price increases.
The new improvised floating platforms are also being used by a number of other fishermen, especially the younger ones.
Habib sees the home-made paddleboards as having a dual purpose.
“If we wanted to raise a new generation to learn how to swim, boats should be made for them from refrigerator doors, and then everyone would learn how to swim, row and sail,” he said.
“Thank God, now they’ve learned how to swim,” he added, looking out over the water at children trying to keep their balance.
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