Leaving

Today is the 24th of December and I want to write about the rising number of people attempting to leave the Gaza Strip. In every war there are so many civilians who get caught in the crossfire and people in Gaza are no exception. There are people who are trying to leave by any means possible and everyone is using whatever contacts they have - relatives, co-workers, previous colleagues, friends, anyone - in order to try and facilitate the process of them leaving Gaza for the time being. How can we blame them as more and more innocent civilians are losing their homes and their lives every day. 

For me, I have brothers in Canada who I can go to and rely on. However, I still love my home and I like being in Gaza. It’s going to be a hard decision for me to leave because, like many others here, this is the place where I was born, where I’ve been working, where I made friends, where I went to school, where I’ve lived most of my life, and so I have loyalty to this place. 

There are also high numbers of fraudulent people who are making use of civilians being desperate to leave and are taking advantage of them. This is making many people lose trust in the process. It's ironic that many of the injured still cannot even leave Gaza, yet many others have been able to leave just by paying money. And this is the worst part of it because it makes you feel like life is really unfair, especially to those who need to leave for treatment.

Some people pay money and some people commit fraud and it’s very unclear how people manage to leave. If someone leaves they don’t tell their closest friends they are leaving. There is a sense of confidentiality in this matter because they are afraid that someone will report that they are leaving (to whoever) and then they will be stuck here forever which is not also an option for them. People are finding ways to leave and unfortunately the market for services around leaving is also booming, like any other illegal thing during this type of situation where people take advantage of others who are desperate for specific services or products.

For one person to leave, prices are really fluctuating.  There are now people who pay 5,000 USD to leave, there are those who pay 7000 USD - depending on who you are dealing with. The prices are not about the quality of the ‘service’ in this regard but it’s also about who you get stuck with. So there are prices like 10,000, and 9,000 USD and they go up to 13,000 USD in some cases for just one person. So a family of five (3 children and 2 parents) would end up paying about 25,000 USD just to make the arrangements to leave Gaza. These prices are extortionate and unfair - a lot of people are selling their own properties in order to be able to leave Gaza.

There are other people providing ‘services’ for those wanting to leave who charge much less but they have zero or very few contacts within the Egyptian authorities. It’s essential for them to have contacts both within the authorities in Egypt and on this side in order to facilitate from here. The fraud isn’t just happening on this side - it’s happening on the Egyptian side too. They ask for 500 USD per person, they end up having one or two successful cases and then out of the blue they disappear. We have no idea where they go - perhaps some of them get imprisoned. 

This makes it very difficult because if you do have access to support, sometimes you ask people to help out but it depends on the level of trust if asking for money or other types of help. So sometimes it makes those who ask for that support feel and wonder and spend days and nights and a lot of time just wondering who they can speak to, to manage to secure these large amounts of money. And of course once you’ve left, if you actually manage to - yes you’re in a safer place but there will be other big expenses depending on where you’re staying. A lot of people request to stay in Egypt because it’s so close to Gaza. It all depends on the prices you’re able to pay and your standards of living. Sometimes people, even in their worst circumstances do not accept lower standards of living than what they’re used to and I’ve seen that here as people have become displaced in Gaza.