Yousef Abu Rabee: The farmer who fed Gaza as bombs fell, killed by Israel

Yousef Abu Rabee was just 24 when he was killed in an Israeli airstrike. But in his brief years, he left a lasting mark on Gaza. His fields were bombed twice as a part of Israel’s systematic strikes on agricultural lands, and he survived the first attack. He did not survive the second.

“I don’t expect to live long because I do what drives the occupier crazy the most,” he said in an interview before Israel targeted him while he was distributing seedlings on Monday.

An agricultural engineer with a family tradition in farming, he became a lifeline for his people when Israel launched its latest war on Gaza in October 2023, cutting off essential supplies like food, water, and medicine.

Despite the destruction of his family’s farm, including a hydroponic greenhouse that had been his personal experiment to reduce traditional farming costs, Yousef persisted.

Working alongside his brother in northern Gaza, Youssef managed to cultivate vegetables amid the ruins and blockade. "In Beit Lahia, we managed to grow zucchini, cucumbers, and molokhia, which helped meet some of our basic needs," Yousef shared.

"It was my personal project to reduce traditional farming costs," Yousef told TRT World in an earlier interview. "But the war erased everything."

He distributed seedlings to others, ensuring that even in a place of overwhelming devastation, life would find a way to endure.

“We managed to meet some of our basic needs,” he had said, his resilience emblematic of a people long accustomed to hardship.

In a video he recently shared on his social media on October 2, he says he found his friend “planting in a place that was targeted by F-16 planes. He was reclaiming it and planting it with his brother Nasr.”

Yousef Abu Rabee and two other Palestinians were killed on Monday while distributing seedlings.

Fear, anxiety, injury, death

Gaza’s blockade, in place since 2007, has strangled its economy and shattered any semblance of normal life. But Youssef’s quiet resistance—his determination to nurture life in a land of destruction—stood out.

When he last spoke to the TRT World three months before his death, Yousef described the harrowing conditions of daily life in northern Gaza.

“The environment we are living in now is extremely dirty, not even fit for animals,” he said, painting a grim picture of a place ravaged by disease, lack of clean water, and an overflowing waste crisis.

Despite these dire circumstances, he maintained a calm resolve, believing that patience and faith would eventually bring relief. "We don’t crave food, nor even tea," he said.

"We need to control ourselves more, to be more patient, and endure the circumstances we are living in." Yousef said he believes God will relieve their hardships and quoted the Quran: "After every hardship comes ease."

Reflecting on the unending violence, Yousef spoke of the daily fear, anxiety, injury, and death that northern Gazans experience. "We in northern Gaza have witnessed all kinds of bombardments. We have experienced all forms of fear, anxiety, injury, and death. There is no scene that could be depicted in any series or movie that we have not lived through, from the youngest to the oldest."

Yousef Abu Rabee’s story is one among thousands in Gaza, a place where resilience has become as much a part of life as the daily struggle for survival. His farming may seem small in the face of war, but it was an act of profound resistance.

“We have witnessed all kinds of bombardments,” Yousef explained, speaking of a landscape where fear, injury, and death had become an unremarkable part of life. “Today, we can pass by a martyr or a wounded person, and it feels ordinary,” he concluded.

Israel has killed at least 42,718 Palestinians in 383 days of its war on Gaza, but Youssef’s determination to nurture life amid destruction, as TRT World was in touch with him, remains a testament to the enduring Palestinian resistance.