Al Mizan Center for Human Rights has documented 351 violations committed by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian fishermen working off Gaza’s coast in 2019.

In a report on Thursday, the rights group explained that the Israeli violations included restricting the fishing zone off the blockaded Gaza Strip in which Palestinian fishermen are permitted to operate and opening fire at them offshore, leaving many of them injured.

Detaining fishermen and seizing their boats and sabotaging their fishing equipment by Israeli occupation navy forces are also among such violations, the Gaza-based non-governmental organisation added.   

These violations have affected the number of people working in the fishing industry in the besieged Gaza Strip, the group continued.

Compared to 1997 in which about 10,000 people worked in this industry, according to previous figures by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of people working in this field has dropped in 2019 to nearly 5,600, including 3,600 fishermen, the report found.

As a result of the unabated Israeli violations against them, the report continued, the people operating in the fishing industry, particularly the fishermen, have been reduced to extreme poverty.

 “These violations confirm the behaviour of Israeli occupation towards the fishing sector off Gaza’s coast, which aims at undermining it,” the human rights group confirmed. “Occupation forces have perpetrated organised and grave violations of the international humanitarian law and international law of human rights.”

The rights group concluded that such violations had affected the “right to work and benefit from marine wealth, the right to life, security and personal safety, and the right to protection from arbitrary detention, as well as the right to protect private property.”