In the suitcase drag almost all their dreams through the gate of the Rafah border. The sociologist Mohamed Ahmad, 33 years old, has been dismissed of his wife and their four children in Gaza with the pretext of an unlikely doctorate in Sudan. Turkey, Greece, western Europe… are all destinations that you’d prefer not to mention in a loud voice. “Once again I have returned to the egyptians”, curses his luck, “but I can’t afford to pay for the coordination [bribery tolerated]”.
At his side, Mashud abu Tagem, of 19 years, keeps the last chance to get through the only outlet to the world that it is in the gaza Strip. “I have to return to time to the Faculty of Law of Alexandria,” mumble. His family has paid 800 euros to the egyptian agency that streamlines the customs clearance process to circumvent a waiting list to be impassable than 40,000 applications.
Two million gazatíes, crammed into a coastal strip of 365 square kilometers —little more than tiny Malta, despair after a decade-long blockade and three devastating wars with Israel. With an unemployment rate of around 50% (70% for young people) and nine out of ten contaminated aquifers, the UN takes time, predicting that the enclave in the mediterranean will be uninhabitable from the year that comes.
About 35,000 palestinians left the gaza Strip in 2018, according to estimates israelis that the UN reduced to 23.500. So far this year, they have gone around to 23,000, according to the count of inputs and outputs of the perpetrators of the Rafah crossing. The majority of those who will allege family visits, treatment of a disease or studies. Egypt reopened the border in may of 2018, after the death of 60 protestors by snipers of the israeli Army. Customs took five years semiclausurada.
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A palestinian in Gaza, at the Rafah border with Egypt. IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA REUTERS Trapped without an exit in the fence of Gaza with the Sinai Come to Malta 58 migrants rescued by the ‘Aquarius’ that four countries will be divided
Many gazatíes do not return. Some have been found months later in other countries of the Gulf, on the coasts of the Maghreb or in refugees camps in the Greek islands of the Aegean. More than 8,500 palestinians have been followed since 2015 in the wake of migration of the barges secret in the Mediterranean, documented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
“does That Gaza will be uninhabitable? Who knows. The palestinians will continue scraping by here. There is not much hope, but we don’t have another option,” replies the veteran political analyst Talat Okal. “If Egypt opened the border wide would come out of a time more than 100,000 people,” he predicts. The egyptian authorities limit the flow in Rafah to 300 visas a day.
To get rid of the queues, you must pay a thousand euros, a fortune in Gaza, where the daily wage daily round 65 shequels (16,5 euros). Those who are going by the ordinary road are exposed to being returned without explanation. Upon payment of the coordination, the getaway driving for about six hours until the Cairo airport, destination of the gazatíes. Otherwise, face a painful journey of two days across the Sinai and the Suez canal, by a path marked by checkpoints antiyihadistas.
The palestinian Siham Zidan, 24 years of age, came with his two sons in the egyptian capital in the early hours of Tuesday and arrived to Rafah on Thursday afternoon. “We were standing four hours at a military checkpoint, in the middle of nowhere. There were No services. The whole thing was a asco”, relates his journey of 350 kilometres.
Between photographs of Amin al-Huseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem before the creation of Israel, and of sheikh Ahmed Yasin, founder of Hamas, Ahmed Shami Mohamud, 45 years of age, exercised from two decades ago as a customer service responsible in Rafah. “The allegations of theft and abuse in the records egyptians are rife,” he reveals.
On the opposite end of the enclave, Israel has opened another outlet to try to contain the explosive pressure of up to 5,000 work permits granted to gazatíes. Mohamed (prefers not to disclose his last name), he has spent six months getting up at five in the morning to work in Israel. Before you must overcome during two hours the security filters —“make you feel humiliated,” relates— on the border of Erez.
This technical architect of 50 years return after a week as an agricultural laborer by 300 shequels (76 euros) per day. “Provide us with permission as businessmen, without insurance; we work on what comes out,” he confesses. “Despite the indignity of the records in Erez, anything goes to bring up my six children.” Late in the afternoon, dozens of taxis land in the sector palestinian Erez controlled by Hamas. Workers carry bags of pomelos, a fruit very difficult to get into Gaza, for their families.
From his office overlooking the port of the capital gazatí, Salah Bardawil, head of the Interior in the Political Bureau of Hamas, says that the work permits have been one of the concessions torn Israel after the marches on Friday in the border, which have taken the lives of 316 protesters in a year and a half of bloody protests.
he Also argues that Egypt has opened the border as a result of the high human price paid in the marches. “There are so many graduates unemployed in Gaza that they can now find work on the outside,” stresses Bardawil. But it denies that Hamas has banned the departure of more than 150 medical specialists —“we have only offered incentives”, as reported sources of the large hospitals.
Raghda Aham, 47-year-old, with five children and a teacher of Arabic language, it also saves row in the gate of the Rafah officially to obtain your doctorate in a Gulf country. It has been apeada quota of visas at the last moment. “This is the third time that I try this week”, he regrets with a gesture of despair. A palestinian policeman reports that Egypt has already closed the border. All return in silence to a territory that is announced uninhabitable.
Sentenced by a sniper isarelí to a month of community work for shooting down a teen
Othman Helez I was bored on Friday in Ziyahia, slum in the outskirts of the capital of the Gaza strip in the border of Israel. On July 13, 2018 he went with his friends to take a look at the manifestation in the old step of Karni. It was, literally, a stone’s throw of your home.
In the same hallway of walls without plaster in which he received the dead body of his 14 year-old son with a bullet in the chest, Rami Helez, driver, unemployed, of 43 years, remembers now what he considers a “tragic boyishness”. A video that reprodce under this text shows Othman scampering along the fence next to other teenagers and two womenyou are waving palestinian flags. When he tried to clamber up the hedge, dropped dead of a gunshot wound.
A sniper israeli military, whose name has not been revealed, has been convicted by a court officer to a month of community service after being found guilty of shooting lethal against the boy. The judges state that did not have the approval of their superiors to make white and that he violated the rules of engagement set by the State Increased. It has not transcended the content of the agreement court imposes 30 days of social work.
Before an image of your child on the poster of condolences sent by Fatah, the nationalist party of palestine in the military, Rami Helez was surprised by the decision of the military court in israel, first known on a armed action in the marches of the border of the gaza Strip. “What kind of justice is this?”, it is the father asks. “At least they could ask for forgiveness if they believe that it was all a mistake.”
A commission of inquiry has submitted to the Human Rights Council of the UN a report with reasonable grounds of violation of international humanitarian law and war crimes in the actions of the israeli Army in Gaza.
