Media coverage
Ultra Palestine · 2022-10-26
The piece examines the political and economic symbolism of Gaza’s seaport as a dream of liberation from the occupation rather than a project to separate the Strip from the Palestinian national project. It recounts Palestinian and solidarity efforts to assert Gaza’s right to a port and maritime corridor in the face of continuous Israeli obstruction, while experts stress that development plans in Gaza will remain doomed as long as Palestinians are denied their natural resources and the right to build a real port.
The piece examines the political and economic symbolism of Gaza’s seaport as a dream of liberation from the occupation rather than a project to separate the Strip from the Palestinian national project. It recounts Palestinian and solidarity efforts to assert Gaza’s right to a port and maritime corr…
At a height of 14 meters and with a diameter of two and a half meters, the Gaza Port lighthouse is no longer a marker guiding the fishing boats of fishermen who spend their nights at sea. Its lights have been out for months due to some malfunction or neglect, and they now use instead the twinkling lights of the city several miles away as their guide.
That lighthouse, created by a visual artist in the summer of 2016, stands dozens of meters from a sign that was translated from English into Arabic in reverse and bears the phrase “Arrival–Departure,” under the header “Ports Authority.” It had been installed 15 months before the lighthouse at the entrance to the port, which extends over an area of 48,000 square meters.
On the ground, the darkened lighthouse and the “badly translated” sign are no more than two symbolic steps in an attempt to give Gaza a kind of liberation and disengagement from the occupation. This reminds us of the resistance’s condition in ceasefire negotiations during the 2014 war, which lasted more than seven weeks, that a port for the city be put into operation.
Yet the symbolism of Gaza Port has, throughout the past years, not witnessed long periods of symbolic political steps. From their balconies, residents of the apartment buildings adjacent to the port recall scenes of boats setting out toward the sea horizon, carrying “travelers” with their suitcases in late May 2018, before Israeli commando forces intercepted them and arrested them as soon as they passed the twelfth nautical mile.
From their balconies, residents of the apartment buildings adjacent to the port recall scenes of boats setting out toward the sea horizon, carrying “travelers” with their suitcases before Israeli commando forces intercepted them
These “travelers,” symbolically, were fully aware that their journey departing from the port would not last long and that they would be arrested, after they had previously failed to travel abroad, whether for medical treatment or university study, during earlier periods when the Rafah border crossing with Egypt had remained closed for extended times.
According to observers, those “symbolic” strategies led by activists or Palestinian factions were driven by the principle of “completing” the process of the Israeli ground withdrawal from Gaza 17 years ago, and that this could be paralleled by another “freedom,” this time a maritime one, similar to the “air freedom” Gaza experienced for less than three years through its airport, which was one of the fruits of the Oslo Accords that Palestinians had hoped would lead to the establishment of their state five years after its signing.
Before that, there had been attempts “in the opposite direction.” In May 2010, 10 Turks were killed by Israeli naval gunfire when they tried to reach Gaza Port from their country aboard their famous ship the Mavi Marmara, when the forces surprised them in international waters near Ashdod.
Only two solidarity ships succeeded in reaching Gaza Port: one from Cyprus and the other from Italy in 2008, while similar solidarity ships were repeatedly intercepted by Israeli naval forces.
Mukhaimer Abu Saada, Professor of Political Science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, told Ultra Palestine that the occupation authorities do not accept the idea of any symbolic maritime activity that could lay the cornerstone for establishing a port in Gaza. Among this, he sees the interception of blockade-breaking ships, which saw heavy activity years ago, as an extremely important necessity for destroying any idea of creating that port, which could provide 50,000 job opportunities if built and operated.
As for Omar Shaban, Director of PalThink for Strategic Studies, he stresses that creating this maritime frontage as a real economic facility in no way means implementing the idea of politically separating Gaza from the Palestinian political project.
Shaban told Ultra Palestine: “That is a ridiculous idea. Gaza has always rejected all forms of separation attempts, in addition to having nationally rejected pressure from some parties to place it in the isolated and neglected corner throughout the years.”
Last September, Palestinian factions unveiled the cornerstone for inaugurating a water corridor in the port, calling for the Gaza Strip’s right to the two natural gas fields (Gaza Marine and Marine 2) that lie off its shores, when they were discovered during 1999–2000.
Observers agree that even the best development plans in the Gaza Strip are doomed to failure so long as Palestinians are deprived of their land and natural resources and denied their right to establish a port
Observers agree that even the best development plans in the Gaza Strip will be judged failures so long as Palestinians are deprived of their land and natural resources and denied their right to establish a port that would enable them to engage in the most basic commercial and economic activities.
It is worth noting that many studies had been launched on establishing a real port in Gaza, such as constructing a cargo dock over an area of 200 meters and a landing station at a depth of 11 meters in the water, in addition to equipping the harbor with a breakwater extending 730 meters.
Economic expert Osama Nofal believes that the Gaza Port area is indeed suited to become a real harbor for a Mediterranean coastal city, and that it is a strategic option, as the Palestinian Authority at the beginning of its establishment was “struggling” to halt the state of economic dependency on “Israel,” in addition to the possibility of increasing the revenue balance in favor of the Ministry of Finance.
Nofal adds that operating the harbor would mean, to a large extent, breaking free from the economic agreements concluded between the Authority and “Israel,” foremost among them the Paris Protocol. It would also mean reducing the expenses that traders in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are forced to pay to the Israeli Ports Authority, such as transport fees for each truck at a cost of 3,500 shekels, and another 600 shekels for each truck entering through the Kerem Abu Salem crossing separating the Gaza Strip from the Green Line.
Before 1967, Gaza Port was a small station for import and export in its rudimentary form. According to a presidential decree during the era of the late Yasser Arafat, the establishment of the “Ports Authority” was announced shortly after the agreement in Egypt, followed by the construction of the port in the spring of 2000 with funding from European Union countries. However, occupation aircraft quickly bombed the port site by the summer of that year, before it was rebuilt in accordance with the Agreement on Movement and Access signed in 2005 after the Israeli withdrawal from the Strip.
Palestinians fear that their future may resemble that of 30 countries around the world that possess no port or maritime outlet. Today, the role of this “dream port” goes no further than being a harbor for fishermen in the morning and a family promenade in the evening, besides its quays stirring the memory of fishermen who were killed by Israeli naval fire, and of boats that once arrived carrying activists and some medicines.
Text © Ultra Palestine — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source