PA libel: Israeli ban on fishing due to health concerns over ecological disaster is a “racist policy”
Official PA TV newsreader: “The Arab fishermen inside the Green Line (i.e., Palestinian term for Israel; the Green Line is the ceasefire line between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries, 1949-1967) are suffering from the racist Israeli policy, which recently was expressed by preventing fishing on the Mediterranean Sea coast, which has harmed the [fishing] industry for nearly a month (sic., Israel banned selling seafood for all fishermen, not due to a “racist” policy but due to health concerns after a Libyan ship spilled hundreds of tons of tar off the coast, causing one of Israel’s worst ecological disasters of all time).”
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Israeli Arab fisherman from Jaffa Muhammad Jarbou’: “This is a racist policy (sic., the ban is for all fishermen, not just Arabs). Show me who bought a fish and ended up in the hospital. No one. This policy is because they do not want the fishermen. They want to get rid of us in order to occupy and take [the area] under the protection of the law, like they took the homes of the Arabs of Jaffa 30-40 years ago.”
Official PA TV reporter: “Hundreds of Arab families are making a living from the fishing industry, especially in the coastal city of Jaffa, which is suffering from many hardships due to the policy of expelling its fishermen from its historical port, and thus the issue of pollution adds an additional chapter to the series of racism against them, and harms the historical heritage that has always characterized the Palestinians inside the Green Line. As if the tragedy of the Arab fishermen that is in the racist Israeli policy being carried out against them were not enough, the issue of pollution is now taking place to eliminate the last source of livelihood that remained for them.”