Palestinian fisherman Ahmed Juha no longer has the boat that carried him across Gaza’s waters for years. The nets and equipment that once provided his livelihood have all been destroyed by the war. Left with no alternatives, he has turned an unlikely object into a lifeline, a discarded Styrofoam refrigerator door that now serves as his makeshift fishing boat.
Intense Israeli bombardment forced Juha and his family to flee the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City about a year and a half ago. He now lives near Abu Hasira Port, where he continues the daily struggle to provide for his family.
“Before the war, I had a boat, fishing nets, and all the equipment I needed,” Juha says. “The war destroyed everything. Nothing was left.”
A Short-Lived Return to the Sea
Following his displacement, relatives and friends helped Juha gather a few basic fishing tools, allowing him to resume work alongside other fishermen on a shared boat. That opportunity, however, was tragically short-lived.
“One day, while we were fishing, we suddenly came under heavy fire from an Israeli naval vessel,” he recalls. “We jumped into the sea and survived by a miracle, but the boat was blown up and completely destroyed.”
The crew was forced to swim nearly two kilometers back to shore. “We reached the beach exhausted,” he says.
Having lost the boat, Juha was left without an income just as hunger was sweeping across Gaza. Then, an unexpected sight sparked an idea.
“I saw a child floating on a piece of Styrofoam in the sea,” he explains. “That’s when I thought about using a refrigerator door. It’s made of Styrofoam, wide enough to float, and I realized I could use it as a small boat for fishing.”
Juha and his companions scoured the ruins of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes until they salvaged two discarded refrigerator doors. They hauled them down to the shoreline and began using them as improvised vessels.
Navigating the Dangers
Learning to fish from a refrigerator door was far from easy.
“At first it was very difficult because it’s completely different from a real boat,” he says. “But over time I got used to it.”
Still, the makeshift craft severely limits his daily catch. “The catch is very small compared to using a boat,” Juha notes. “I can’t travel far from shore, it’s difficult to control, and strong currents can easily carry me away.”
Before the war, Juha and his five brothers fished together aboard their own boat. Today, he goes out alone, while one of his brothers stays on the beach, holding a rope attached to the floating door to keep him from drifting out to sea.
The dangers extend far beyond the tides.
“One of the biggest reasons we cannot go farther offshore is the Israeli naval patrols,” he says. “I cannot paddle as fast as I could with a boat, so if they approach, I could be arrested or shot.”
According to Juha, Israeli naval vessels continually pursue fishermen, blocking their access to Gaza’s waters. “Yesterday they fired at fishing nets and at the tents where fishermen are staying,” he says. “Today we couldn’t even go out because the naval boats were too close, and we feared being directly targeted.”
Even documenting this reality has become perilous. “As soon as the Israeli boats see a fisherman—or even a journalist trying to document our suffering—they open fire. To this day, we cannot go out to sea without fear, even if we’re floating on nothing more than a refrigerator door.”
A Decimated Industry
Juha’s situation highlights the broader devastation of Gaza’s fishing sector. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), more than 6,000 people—including around 4,200 fishermen and boat owners—depended directly on fishing before the war, and the industry supported the livelihoods of roughly 110,000 people.
The agency estimates that 72 percent of the sector’s assets have now been damaged or destroyed. Daily catches have plummeted to just 7.3 percent of pre-war levels, leaving only a small fraction of fishermen able to work.
For Ahmed Juha, a discarded refrigerator door has become much more than a makeshift boat. It is a striking symbol of resilience, and of the extraordinary measures Gaza’s fishermen are taking simply to put food on the table.