KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Iyad Kodeih lives 400 meters away from the border overlooking the town of Abasan, east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. He looks with suspicion toward a group of Israeli military jeeps driving a few meters away from the border fence, hoping that calm will continue to prevail. Kodeih looks worriedly at his watch and warns this Al-Monitor correspondent, “It is 4 p.m. You have only one hour to finish your report and get out of this place.” At 5 p.m., he said, Israeli soldiers start shooting sporadically at the houses in Gaza.

On a dirt hill adjacent to his house, which looks like “a sponge full of holes,” Kodeih talked about living along the border. “Life here is hell on earth. With nightfall, people flee their houses and go to their neighbors’ who live a little behind, a strategy they adopt to escape death,” he said.

Kodeih shared that Palestinian social life in the area is almost paralyzed and that visitors dare not come to the area because they fear for their lives. Meanwhile, the local residents live in a state of ongoing terror, hoping to avoid the bullets stopped by the walls of their homes.

“My wife's family did not want us to continue living in such danger, so they offered us a piece of land to live on. My wife sold her gold jewelry so we could afford to build a new house, which was targeted by Israeli shelling that reduced it to rubble,” Kodeih confided.