A few weeks prior, an Israeli soldier had shot the man's cousin in the neck, killing him. An extended family of 16 people depended on the meagre income of these young farm labourers.
Or the 17-year old girl an Israeli soldier shot in the knee when, a month after the 2008/2009 war ended, she returned to her southeastern Gaza destroyed home to see what remained. This was 800 metres from the fence.
Or the 20-year old farm labourer shot in his chest while working on land beyond the 'buffer zone'. The 16-year old working beside him died from the bullets to his chest.
Or the youth left paralyzed after being shot by an Israeli soldier. His crime? Sitting outside the home of an aunt he was visiting.
The 'buffer zone' robs Palestinians of a third of Gaza's agricultural land - the best and most fertile bits. Decades and Israeli bulldozers prior, this same area was rich in olive, nut and fruit trees, and a variety of grain, legumes and vegetable crops.
Nowadays, if Palestinians are lucky, they can plant low maintenance crops, hoping they don't get burned, or bulldozed before harvesting, testimonies of which I've taken time and time again, and have witnessed while it happened.
A 2020 UN report noted that at the time Gaza's fishers were allowed to access water eight nautical miles off the coast (less than half the 20-mile distance agreed on under the Oslo Accords).
However, from my experience working with fishers when the limit was just six miles, Israeli gunboats would target them even less than one mile off the coast, machine-gunning, shelling, water-cannoning or kidnapping the fishers and boats.
As a special bonus, the Israeli navy often adds a chemical to the spray which leaves the soaked victims stinking of excrement for days.
The preventable stench
When travelling from central or southern Gaza on the coastal road, the shared taxi I was in would pass through Wadi Gaza, a slight valley which at times was overwhelmed by the stench of up to 90 million litres of raw and partially-treated sewage daily draining into the sea.
Because Gaza cannot treat its sewage and is not allowed to import materials needed to maintain or improve its sewage holding tanks, the only solution is dumping it into the sea. Otherwise, the sewage holding pools overflow into residential areas.
In 2007, a sewage treatment reservoir's wall ruptured, overflowing into a village, drowning five people, including two children.
Less dramatic but still terrible, heavy rains combine with the sewage to flood streets, leaving people to wade through the foul water, and damaging homes of people that have neither the money nor means to rebuild.
When, in December 2013, massive flooding and sewage overflow ruined 400 homes, a UNRWA spokesperson said: "Any normal community would struggle to recover from this disaster. But a community that has been subjected to one of the longest blockades in human history, whose public health system has been destroyed and where the risk of disease was already rife, must be freed from these man made constraints to deal with the impact of a natural calamity such as this."
That was over seven years ago, and nothing has changed.
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