Israel's Blockade on Gaza Coastline | WION News

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Well, the crisis in the Gaza Strip, it is far from over even though the ceasefire was enforced in October of last year. Israel's blockade of the enclave is not just focused on the entry points via land. The waters touching Gaza's shores are also under Israeli control and out of access for more than 2 million Palestinians. Here's a report on Gaza's untouchable sea.

[00:00:25]>> [music] >> Gaza's fortunes took a turn for the worst after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel.

[00:00:41]What followed was months of carpet bombing, >> [music] >> mounting death toll, and a war-induced humanitarian crisis of disastrous proportions.

[00:01:00]While Israel's strikes have reduced substantially, but still unfold intermittently, the Palestinian territory is still fighting a battle of survival.

[00:01:20]Compounding this challenge is a blockade [music] enforced by Israel, not just on the strip's land borders, but also the sea.

[00:01:30]However, this blockade is just an intensified version of control that Israel has long exercised on Gaza.

[00:01:42]While landlocked on three sides, Gaza has a coastline of 40 km, a stretch of the Mediterranean Sea that has historically been a key lifeline for the enclave and its 2 million residents.

[00:01:58]But Palestinians have no access to these waters, neither for occupation nor recreation.

[00:02:04]Israel's blockade means no drilling of reserves, no fishing in the waters, no swimming by locals. In fact, no vessels or flotilla are also allowed to reach Gazan shores.

[00:02:18]>> [music] >> But this blockade did not happen overnight. Israeli authorities walled Gaza's coastline in stages.

[00:02:28]In 1995, Israeli and Palestinian sides reached an interim agreement, which was called the Oslo II Agreement. Under this, Palestinians in Gaza were allowed to access waters for fishing up to 20 nautical miles, which is roughly 37 [music] km.

[00:02:45]But this was never allowed on Israel's part.

[00:02:51]Then, 7 years later, a top UN diplomat in 2002, Catherine Bertini, brokered a new commitment, which Israeli government agreed [music] to.

[00:03:01]This new agreement mandated Israelis to allow access to Gazans for 20 km [music] into the sea.

[00:03:08]But Israeli authorities eventually did not allow even this.

[00:03:13]After Hamas took control of Gaza in the year 2007, Israel further reduced the allowed fishing zone to 11 km, which is just under 6 miles.

[00:03:24]Two years later, in 2009, Israel officially declared a naval blockade of Gaza.

[00:03:32]It halved the fishing zone to just under 3 nautical miles and stopped all vessels from entering Gaza's waters.

[00:03:39]Most recently, in 2025, Israel marked Gaza's waters as a no-go zone, leaving no part of the coastline open for swimming or fishing. Zero access [music] for Palestinians.

[00:03:52]This has directly impacted life and [music] livelihood for thousands on the strip. According to UN data, at least 211 Palestinian fishers [music] have been killed by Israel between October 2023 and May 2025.

[00:04:10]Israel's sea blockade also denies Gaza access to a crucial marine gas field in the area, which contains approximately 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

[00:04:22]Over the years, all flotilla bound for Gaza have been stopped by Israeli forces in international waters. More recently, global activists have tried to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza carrying symbolic amount of aid because the objective was to end the siege, but all attempts have failed as Israel continues to intercept vessels bound for Gaza.

[00:04:48]For more than 2 million Palestinians, the crisis did not begin on October 7, 2023, but it has intensified since [music] then as Gaza remains an open-air prison due to persistent Israeli blockade.