Zionist Regime ‘to Expand’ Gaza Fishing Area

Date: 21 May 2019 - 21:41

News ID: ۶۶۲۶۰

GAZA (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime announced on Tuesday that it would allow the expansion of fishing area off the coastal Gaza Strip to 15 nautical miles.
The Zionist regime coordinator Kamil Abu Rukan claimed in a statement "this step is part of the civil policy to prevent the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip."
The Zionist regime’s naval forces have imposed strict restrictions on the work of Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the Gaza Strip.
Under the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, the Zionist regime is obligated to permit fishing up to 20 nautical miles off the coast of the Gaza Strip, but this has never been implemented.  The Oslo Accords were signed between the Israeli regime and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) during the early-mid 1990s to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The occupying regime maintains a heavy naval presence off the coast of the impoverished Palestinian enclave, severely affecting the livelihoods of some 4,000 fishermen and at least 1,500 more people involved in the fishing industry.
Over the past few years, Zionist troops have carried out more than a hundred attacks on Palestinian boats, arresting dozens of fishermen and confiscating several boats.
The Gaza Strip has been under a Zionist blockade since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in the standard of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.