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Palestinians use old fridge doors for fishing

The Israeli aggression has destroyed most of boats of Palestinians.

Web Desk

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11 Mar 2025

Palestinians using old refrigerator doors for fishing in Gaza city's fishing port.

Israeli bombardment over more than 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas has destroyed most of the boats in the harbour, wrecking the fishermen's means of making a living.

"We're in a very difficult situation today, and struggling with the fishing. There are no fishing boats left. They've all been destroyed and tossed on the ground," Fisherman Khaled Habib said.

"I made this 'boat' from refrigerator doors and cork -- and thankfully it worked."

So he could continue feeding his family, Habib came up with the idea of stuffing cork into old fridge doors to make them buoyant.

He covered one side with wood and the other with plastic sheeting to help make the makeshift paddleboard waterproof.

Habib also crafted a fishing cage out of wire because of the lack of nets, but admitted that his resulting catch was "small".

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said in December that the conflict had taken Gaza's "once thriving fishing sector to the brink of collapse".

"Gaza's average daily catch between October 2023 to April 2024 dropped to just 7.3 percent of 2022 levels, causing a $17.5 million production loss," the FAO said.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Palestinian group Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,458 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.