Muhammad Hessi.. When a father’s only wish is to grant his son a grave

Gaza (QNN)- Only God knows how much pain the family of Muhammad Hessi has been enduring since the murder of their son back in 2017 when Israeli soldiers attacked him while he was fishing.

In the deep sea, which used to be Muhammad’s main source of livelihood, his body is still missing and the Israelis refuse to find and hand it over to his family.

The only wish of his parents and children is to put his body in a grave so that they get to visit and cry over it, the father told QNN.

“I tried everything, from rights institutions to courts, to recover the body of my son, but that was in vain”, he said.

Three days after his murder, Muhammad’s family held a token funeral for their son and continued hoping to recover his body someday.

Muhammad’s children are the most painful part of his story, as they “have been feeling a double orphanage recognizing that the body of their father was lost in the sea”, said the father.

The suffering did not stop at the martyrdom of Muhammad, as the PA Martyr Fund refuse to pay for the family under the pretext of not knowing the fate of Muhammad and that his body is missing.

“After Muhammad’s martyrdom, we lost our sole breadwinner”, the father told QNN. “We need some payment to address our needs so that his children live a decent life”.

The life of Gaza fishermen could be simply described as a series of daily suffering, which begins with the Israeli attacks on their boats and doesn’t end at arresting and preventing them from earning their living.

“Many fishermen were killed in the sea but until now there aren’t any international or rights institutions to protect us”, Muhammad’s father told QNN.

Zakariyya Baker, chair of the Gaza Fisherman’s Union, told QNN that “10 fishermen were killed in the recent few years, while the Israelis arrested nearly 600 others, wounded 300, and damaged hundreds of fishing boats”.