Jaffa, Israel – Johny Saba, an amiable 58-year-old fisherman, longs for life in the ancient Mediterranean port to return to what it was before the war.
He holds his young child in his arms while a colleague repairs a rickety wooden fishing boat in the quiet of the evening.
The shipyard is quiet; only a handful of people come and go. Behind Johny, a tattooed, stocky, bald fisherman repairs a tangled fishing net; he doesn’t listen to any music, instead, free of distraction, he is lost in thought as he methodically threads the mesh fabric between his hands.
“Before the war, there were no problems here; Jews and (Palestinians) could work together,” Johny said before heaving a sigh.
On weekends, he said, thousands of people came to buy fresh fish from local family businesses that had often been around for generations.
It paints a portrait of a community of fishermen – Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisting, working along the sun-drenched Mediterranean coast, linked together by the toil and experience of their craft rather than separated from each other by the resulting tensions and divisions. existed between their communities.
“Here we are all like brothers; If everything was like Jaffa, it would be paradise,” he reflects.