Eighteen-year-old Muhammad has been working in the tunnels for four years Continue reading the main story Middle East crisis Q&A: UN bid New Palestinian powers? Conflict's legality Palestinian territories Newsnight's Tim Whewell talks to two young people's whose jobs highlight the peculiarities of life in the Gaza Strip - Muhammad, who works in the smuggling tunnels into Egypt, and Madeline, who is the only woman in a fishing fleet restricted to trawling the waters inside the Israeli blockade.
It is not even dawn in Rafah, at the southern extremity of the Gaza Strip, when Busaina Ismail leans over her sleeping son Muhammad and tries, with difficulty, to rouse him.
It is a duty she says she dreads because she is sending him for another day's work in a place where many young men have been buried alive - the network of smuggling tunnels that run under the Gaza-Egypt border.
Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteHave you ever seen anyone dig their own grave? While you are digging, the tunnel might collapse. It could collapse any time and kill you”End QuoteMuhammad Ismail After two cigarettes and a glass of tea, he is just about wake. But not eager to go:
"This work," he says. "It's criminal. No-one should do it. Have you ever seen anyone dig their own grave? While you are digging, the tunnel might collapse. It could collapse any time and kill you."
Muhammad is just 18, but he has already been working full-time in the tunnels, digging and carrying heavy loads, for four years.
He hates the job, but he has little choice. His father suffers from a bad back, so Muhammad is the main breadwinner in the family of eight. And with unemployment in Gaza running at 28%, smuggling is one of the few occupations that provide a viable income.
Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the Gaza Strip, 22 miles (35km) away in the harbour of Gaza City, another 18-year-old is also setting off for a hard day trying to feed her family.
Madeline Kullab is Gaza's only fisherwoman. She too has an invalid father. She has been going out to sea almost every day since she was 14, despite attempts by Gaza's police force, run by the Islamist movement Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, to stop her working in an otherwise wholly-male industry.
Madeline, unlike Muhammad, loves her job. But both their stories show the hardships of growing up in a tiny overcrowded strip of land that has been blockaded by its neighbours Israel and Egypt for years, and was at war again with Israel only last month.
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