As soon as the bird hunting season begins in the besieged Gaza Strip young hunters embark on preparing their nets and snares before going to certain border areas in the east where they can find different types of birds.
Fareed an-Najjar a young man from Khuza’a town in Khan Yunis province has prepared himself recently for this hunting season in order to go on his daily risky trips along Gaza’s border.
As many local bird hunters Najjar enjoys bird hunting as a hobby and also as a means to secure modest financial returns from selling the catches.
Najjar leaves his home nowadays in the morning heading with his gear backpack for an eastern border area in Khan Yunis — where game birds abound but the life-threatening presence of Israeli forces on the border makes it difficult for hunters to catch birds conveniently.
Once he arrives at the place he starts to set up his nets and traps very carefully while being more cautious not to fall prey to Israeli forces that lurk for anyone approaching the buffer zone along Gaza’s border with 1948 occupied Palestine.
With Israeli soldiers standing behind the perimeter fence and watching them Najjar and other young hunters deploy their nets and traps doing their best to ensure that everything is in order.
Bird hunting is an old recreational practice for many Gazans but due to the difficult economic situation in besieged Gaza it helps provide a modest source of income for those who are unemployed.
There are two main bird hunting seasons in Gaza. The first one takes place with the arrival of winter when birds migrate from the northern regions to overwinter somewhere warmer and the second is related the breeding and nesting season in spring and summer when birds lay eggs.
In most places hunting game birds is a classic recreational sport but the situation is different in Gaza which has been under a crippling Israeli siege for the past decade. During that time its border areas have become one of its most dangerous parts.
“Such trip is apparently a great risk in light of the exposure of the buffer zone and anyone moving around to repeated targeting and direct shooting. Many citizens had been either killed or wounded in the area” Najjar told the Palestinian Information Center (PIC).
A few days ago a 40-year-old bird hunter called Mohamed Ammar was cold-bloodedly shot dead in the east of Juhor ad-Dik town south of Gaza City. Medical sources said he was shot in his neck.
Ammar was supporting a family of 10 individuals as he was their main breadwinner and he also worked as a water meter reader for al-Bureij refugee camp municipality in central Gaza.
According to other bird hunters who witnessed the incident Ammar was trying to capture wild goldfinches in a border area that is way far from the separation fence and was about to leave the place near Wadi Gaza (the valley of Gaza) — where he used to hunt migratory birds for many years — when an Israeli sniper shot him directly in the back of his head.
