Tel Aviv/Gaza City: Israel on Wednesday again restricted the Gaza fishing zone due to recent violence.
“A decision was made tonight (Wednesday) to restrict the fishing zone off the Gaza Strip to 10 nautical miles until further notice,” Cogat, Israel’s chief liaison office with the Palestinians, said in astatement.
“The decision was made subsequent to the dispatch of explosive balloons from the Gaza Strip towards Israel.”
The move came only a day after Israel had expanded the Gaza fishing zone on Tuesday, some three weeks after the worst outbreak of violence between the two sides since 2014.
Cogat on Tuesday announced that the zone had been increased from 12 nautical miles to 15 nautical miles.
Zakareya Bakker, chairman of the union of the fishermen committees, noted that the permitted fishing zone varied in different parts of Gaza, with 15 nautical miles being the greatest and 6 nautical miles the smallest.
At the beginning of May, Israel entirely closed the fishing zone when violence erupted between Palestinian activists in Gaza and the Israeli army. The army attacked more than 350 targets in Gaza in response to some 700 rockets and mortar shells fired at Israel by Palestinian activists in Gaza.
The situation has been relatively calm since Egypt and the United Nations mediated between the two sides. Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Gaza for over a decade, which they say is for security reasons.
“A decision was taken this Wednesday evening to reduce the fishing zone off the Gaza Strip to 10 nautical miles until further notice,” said COGAT, the defence ministry unit that oversees such regulations.
“The decision was taken after the launch of incendiary balloons from Gaza towards Israel,” it added.
Palestinians in Gaza have frequently floated balloons fitted with firebombs over the border to damage Israeli property and have in the past succeeded in setting fire to large areas of farmland.
Israel banned fishing completely when two days of deadly violence erupted earlier this month, but lifted the ban with a restriction of up to 12 nautical miles following a truce.
The 15-nautical-mile limit that had been restored on Tuesday was the largest allowed in years by Israel, which has fought three wars with Palestinian activists in the enclave and has blockaded it for more than a decade.
But human rights activists note that it still falls short of the 20 nautical miles agreed under the Oslo accords of the 1990s.
Israeli authorities have not said whether the 15-mile limit was one of the understandings reached as part of the May 6 ceasefire in Gaza but Israel media reported on Monday that it was.
The additional nautical miles are important to Gaza fishermen as they bring more valuable, deeper water species within reach.
Four Israeli civilians and 25 Palestinians, including at least nine activists, were killed in this month’s exchanges across the border.
— AFP
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