The port of Sour where the all-artisanal fishing fleet docks between trips to the sea, on March 6, 2025. (Credit: Nic Frakes/L'Orient Today)
It’s a serene early March morning at Sour’s port until the Israeli surveillance drone arrives overhead, but no one seems to take notice. A young man prepares bait and places the loaded hooks neatly in a basket, two veteran fishermen and a statue of the Virgin Mary watching over his shoulder.Many of those who stayed behind during the war between Hezbollah and Israel were fishermen. Israel forbade them from entering the water within 50 kilometers of the border — just south of Saida — so they threw dynamite at schools of fish that came close to the docks or cast nets from the pier.The ban was never officially lifted, and on Feb. 2, over two months after the war was ended by a feeble cease-fire, Israeli forces abducted fisherman Mohammed Jahir, whose fate remains unknown. He’d been fishing off the southernmost port of Naqoura, which Israeli...
It’s a serene early March morning at Sour’s port until the Israeli surveillance drone arrives overhead, but no one seems to take notice. A young man prepares bait and places the loaded hooks neatly in a basket, two veteran fishermen and a statue of the Virgin Mary watching over his shoulder.Many of those who stayed behind during the war between Hezbollah and Israel were fishermen. Israel forbade them from entering the water within 50 kilometers of the border — just south of Saida — so they threw dynamite at schools of fish that came close to the docks or cast nets from the pier.The ban was never officially lifted, and on Feb. 2, over two months after the war was ended by a feeble cease-fire, Israeli forces abducted fisherman Mohammed Jahir, whose fate remains unknown. He’d been fishing off the southernmost port of Naqoura,...
