Yousef Kronz was sitting on the ground well within Israel’s designated “safe zone,” wearing a Press vest, taking photos. When he stood up, he was shot in both legs by two different snipers. Another young man ran to help him, only to be shot in the leg as well. Adding insult to injury, Israel refused him passage to the West Bank for treatment that would have saved at least one of his legs.

Israel advocates might consider it “restraint” that these young men weren’t shot in the head, but the question hangs in the air: why was this life-changing horror inflicted on Yousef – and thousands of others – as they did nothing more scandalous than carry flags run around, pray, demonstrate, or take photos in the shadow of Israel’s violent oppression?

by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, Ha’aretz

His left leg was amputated in Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, and now efforts are underway, in Istishari Arab Hospital in the West Bank, to ensure that his right leg doesn’t suffer the same fate. More than two weeks passed between the amputation of the first leg – which itself could have been prevented – and the action undertaken to save the other one. Precious time in which Israel refused to allow Yousef Kronz, the first Palestinian seriously wounded during the recent weekly protests in the Gaza Strip, to be moved to the hospital outside Ramallah. The High Court of Justice finally forced the Defense Ministry to bring this disgraceful conduct to an end and allow the transfer of the 19-year-old student and journalist from Bureij refugee camp, to that more sophisticated facility.

On Friday, March 30, Kronz was shot, first in the left leg, by an Israel Defense Forces sniper, and then, seconds later, when he tried to get up, in the right leg, by a second sniper. According to Kronz, the rounds that slammed into his legs and shattered his life came from two different directions. In other words, he was shot by two different marksmen, as he stood 750 meters away from the Gaza border fence, armed with no more than his camera, wearing a vest with “Press” emblazoned on it, trying to document the incessant firing by IDF snipers at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators. After he was hit, he tells us now, he saw more and more people falling to the sand, bleeding, “like birds.”

The incident occurred on Land Day, the first day of the Marches of Return opposite the Gaza fence.

Istishari Hospital is situated high in the village of Surda, north of Ramallah. It’s a large, new, sophisticated private facility, luxurious and glistening. Kronz has a private room, spacious and well-lit with an adjustable bed, a television, wood-paneled walls and a breathtaking view. Israel did not allow anyone from his family to accompany Kronz to the West Bank or tend to him, other than his grandfather, Mohammed Kronz, who’s 85, and who, after a few days, was compelled to go to the home of relatives in the distant Aroub refugee camp, near Bethlehem, to rest. Now Yousef, who is suffering from serious pain in his stump and in his remaining leg, is being looked after with infinite devotion by a cousin, Ghassan Karnaz, who is also from Aroub.

The two cousins had never met before. Like all the young people in Gaza, Kronz had never been outside the Strip. Now he’s breached the siege on it – without his leg.

A first-year communications student at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, he is from a family that hails from Faluja, in the Negev. His father receives his salary as a Gaza-based police officer from the Palestinian Authority. Kronz was active in the social networks, reporting on the situation in the Strip. A few months ago, he purchased a Canon 5D stills camera for $5,000, half of it from savings, the rest from his father, and started to work for the local Bureij news agency.