The Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip once had a strong fishing industry and a vibrant hotel and restaurant scene. Through the lives of four Gazans, we map out the scale of the damage to the coastline and weigh if there is any hope of rebuilding these businesses once the current war is over.
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00:00If you look at recent satellite pictures of Gaza's coastline,
00:07you can see the outline of a once-thriving hotel and restaurant industry.
00:13Before and after images show a beachfront transformed into a sea of tents.
00:21A busy port that provided income for 10% of Gaza's population, empty.
00:29Now, people are more likely to catch fish that falls from the sky.
00:44People who lived and worked on this part of the Mediterranean coast for generations
00:49are afraid they may never be able to return and rebuild.
01:00There have been grand plans for Gaza's coast before,
01:06and even now, amid the destruction, it is a coveted slice of land.
01:19We talked to fishermen, business owners, and their families,
01:23and then zoomed out to see exactly how their beloved coastline has been transformed.
01:29And if there is any chance, they will get it back.
01:37The port in Gaza City was once the center of the local fishing industry.
01:42About 4,000 fishermen worked along the coast, providing food for many more,
01:49in a place where most people relied on humanitarian aid.
01:55Israel has controlled access to the enclave since the Six-Day War in 1967,
02:00except for a short border with Egypt in the south.
02:05In recent decades, it has increasingly sealed the Gaza Strip off from the outside world.
02:12Even access to the sea, Gaza's only window on the wider world, is under Israeli military control.
02:28When we first met Ahmad Abu Hamada in 2020,
02:32fishermen like him were not allowed to go farther than six nautical miles from the coast.
02:38Far enough to find sardines and shrimp, but not much more.
02:49In the fall of 2023, Ahmad was catching just enough to get by.
02:57Then, on October 7, the militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack into Israel,
03:03killing more than 1,000 people and taking hundreds of hostages.
03:12Israel began bombing targets across Gaza, including the port.
03:18After October 11, satellite images showed a gaping hole in the seawall.
03:24And two weeks later, we could make out these impact craters.
03:30The hundreds of boats visible before the war were almost entirely gone, or sunk.
03:39Less than a week after the war started,
03:42the Israeli military ordered almost half of Gaza's 2.3 million people to evacuate to the south,
03:50including Ahmad, the fisherman.
03:53We tracked him down to a large makeshift camp close to the Egyptian border,
03:58where he was sheltering with his wife and five children.
04:03When we spoke to Ahmad on a video call,
04:05he said his family had lost all their fishing equipment and boats, worth about $150,000.
04:29Chocolate and chips.
04:33Chocolate and chips.
04:36And we make fish.
04:39We haven't eaten fish in a long time.
04:46Fishermen who do dare to go to sea, even in shallow waters,
04:50now risk being shot by Israeli patrol boats or helicopters.
04:55Israel says it targets boats it suspects of transporting weapons for Hamas.
05:01But according to local authorities,
05:0390% of Gaza's fishing boats were destroyed within a couple of months of the start of the war.
05:24My children.
05:30Everything is available to you.
05:32I will teach you the best education.
05:34I will teach you how to live with the best families.
05:42Tourism in Gaza has also been torn apart.
05:47Before the start of this latest war,
05:49there were high hopes for the luxury hotel industry.
05:54This was Gaza's first five-star hotel,
05:57less than two miles up the coast from the port.
06:01It cost $45 million to build in 2011,
06:05boasting marble floors, five restaurants and swimming pools.
06:11Satellite images show it in ruins.
06:14The only visitors to the area today are people searching for food, like Mohamed Al-Halabi.
06:44Each parachute can carry over 1,000 pounds of aid.
06:47But that can turn deadly.
07:15There's a man. There's a man in a cell.
07:18His belt is torn.
07:26What happened to him?
07:28He was hit by a cartridge.
07:30Thank God you're safe.
07:32This is one of the citizens.
07:34We got this from the aid fund.
07:38Dessert.
07:39This is Egyptian.
07:41This is tuna.
07:43People are risking their lives to get help.
07:50Less than a mile away from the beach,
07:52Mohamed's neighborhood, Al-Maqousi Towers, is also in ruins.
07:58Before the war, I had more than I had now.
08:01But everything has been destroyed and gone with this war.
08:08This is all that's left of his personal office.
08:13Mohamed was a graphic designer for Al-Isra University.
08:19Israel blew it up in a massive controlled explosion,
08:22saying Hamas used the building for military activities.
08:26Even with the aid drops,
08:28not enough supplies have been getting through.
08:31And Mohamed says people here have resorted to eating leaves
08:35and even animal feed.
08:41Before the war,
08:43Hamas used the building for military activities,
08:46saying Hamas used the building for military activities,
08:49saying Hamas used the building for military activities,
08:54Before the war,
08:56decades of tight restrictions imposed by Israel
08:59pushed some of Gaza's fishermen onto land.
09:04These dark circles are pools full of fish.
09:08Or at least they were.
09:11We met one of the owners of this fish farm in 2020.
09:16He showed us around the farm and the restaurant next door.
09:21With 70 workers,
09:23the farm produced 30 metric tons of fish every month,
09:27mostly sea bream.
09:37But two days after the bombing started,
09:39Israel shut off Gaza's electricity.
09:42The pumps and filters at the farm stopped working.
09:46All the fish died.
09:49Today, the pools are dry.
09:53And satellite images show the farm is now
09:56at the center of a large improvised camp
09:59for hundreds of displaced families.
10:06Hassan fled to Egypt four months after the war started.
10:10He and his business partners say they have lost around $15 million.
10:17Some family members stayed behind to keep an eye on the farm.
10:28This is Mousa Zaroub, a brother of one of the owners.
10:33The farm's solar panels are mostly gone.
10:36The structures are now used to build shelters
10:39or simply dry laundry.
10:46We have no electricity.
10:53We have no place to stay.
10:56It's hard to talk about it, but the situation is very bad.
11:06Hassan's sea bream was served at seaside restaurants and hotels
11:09by the port in Gaza's most affluent neighborhood, Al-Rimal.
11:14The area was heavily bombarded at the start of the war,
11:18and then the Israeli military flattened large sections with bulldozers
11:22as part of their hunt for Hamas strongholds.
11:28Zones shaded in red were either damaged or destroyed.
11:34These include the portside Al-Hassani Mosque,
11:37one of the most famous in Gaza,
11:39Al-Azhar University and Al-Shifa Hospital,
11:42which Israel claimed was sheltering a Hamas command center.
11:47On October 27, 2023, a missile landed close to a Salam restaurant,
11:52one of Gaza's oldest,
11:54blowing out windows and collapsing the roof.
11:59It was a dark night.
12:01I couldn't sleep.
12:03I cried a lot.
12:05I was devastated.
12:13This restaurant has been in Mahmoud Abu Haseera's family for generations.
12:20He says his business suffered more than $5 million in damage.
12:26When we located Mahmoud,
12:28he had fled south to a camp in Al-Qarara.
12:32By that point, according to Gaza's health ministry,
12:35more than 40,000 Palestinians had been killed in the war.
12:40And the fight against Hamas continued.
12:44The war was not over yet.
12:47The war was not over yet.
12:50The war was not over yet.
12:52More than 40,000 Palestinians had been killed in the war.
12:55And the fighting seemed to be following him.
13:01Just as we were filming, a bomb landed a few miles away.
13:13He moved south to look for work,
13:16while his wife and young son remained in northern Gaza.
13:20But Israel has since blocked access,
13:23and he hasn't seen his family or his restaurant for months.
13:38His only connection to them is the unreliable cell phone network.
13:49Hello?
13:54Rebuilding has always been a feature of Gaza's history.
13:59This slice of strategic coast has been fought over for millennia.
14:04It was a major trading hub.
14:06Napoleon called it the outpost of Africa and the door to Asia.
14:11Pilgrims flocked to the region to visit the holy sites,
14:15and tourists were drawn to the beaches.
14:18Even Australian troops stationed in Gaza during World War II enjoyed the beach.
14:24News from Palestine.
14:26Wherever Australians go, there you will find a surf carnival,
14:29if it's humanly possible to have one.
14:31And it certainly seems possible at Gaza.
14:35Tourism has disappeared over the past decades.
14:39But there are still riches to be found here.
14:43Gaza and Israel both border the Levant Basin province,
14:47which holds a wealth of oil and gas reserves.
14:51Gaza Marine, a store of natural gas worth $4.5 billion,
14:56is recognized as being in Palestinian waters,
14:59just 20 miles off the coast of Gaza.
15:03It holds enough gas to supply electricity to the Strip for years.
15:09But since it was discovered in 2000,
15:12repeated conflicts have stalled negotiations,
15:15and Gazans have not been able to access this lucrative natural resource.
15:22More recently, Israel drew up plans for an artificial island
15:26three miles off Gaza's shore,
15:28with an airport, seaport, and power plant,
15:31designed to benefit both Israel and the Palestinians.
15:36Construction of an artificial island
15:38with a port and civilian infrastructure installations off the coast of Gaza
15:42will provide the Palestinians a humanitarian,
15:45economic, and transportation gateway to the world,
15:48without endangering Israel's security.
15:52But the project was shelved because of security concerns.
16:00The future is something that most Gazans can't imagine.
16:05The present and the daily search for food and water takes priority.
16:13Food and aid deliveries by land have often been blocked from entering Gaza.
16:21These images show long lines of trucks at a standstill in Egypt,
16:25waiting to cross the border while their cargo is left to rot.
16:31The U.S. looked at the coastline for a solution
16:34and constructed a temporary floating pier in Apron
16:38to deliver aid by sea,
16:40at a cost of more than $300 million.
16:44But as satellite images show, it was damaged by heavy seas.
16:49In the end, the pier was only operational for 20 days.
16:54Meanwhile, Gazans have been constantly on the move,
16:58trying to stay one step ahead of the fighting.
17:03The U.N. says that 9 out of 10 people in Gaza
17:06have been displaced at least once.
17:10A constantly shifting sea of improvised camps
17:13has sprawled across the Strip,
17:15with no running water or electricity.
17:19As yet, there are no official plans on the table for post-war Gaza.
17:26These images show a sci-fi vision of a Gaza of the future,
17:30with skyscrapers, rail lines and industrial zones rising from the ashes.
17:36The renderings were published in an Israeli newspaper in May 2024
17:41and attributed to Netanyahu,
17:43but no one has claimed responsibility for them.
17:48The U.N. says it will take 40 to 50 billion dollars and decades to rebuild Gaza,
17:55the biggest post-war reconstruction effort since World War II.
18:01Many Gazans say they fear the coastline they once knew,
18:05along with their businesses, is gone for good.
18:31The destruction I caused in Gaza,
18:33and the destruction I caused here,
18:35will continue for another two years.
18:37There is no end to it.
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