How displaced Palestinians are adjusting to life in Egypt after escaping beleaguered Gaza

Displaced Palestinian women and gather on a sand dune above a makeshift camp on the Egyptian border, west of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on January 14, 2024. (AFP/File)
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Updated 31 March 2024
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How displaced Palestinians are adjusting to life in Egypt after escaping beleaguered Gaza

  • They describe financial troubles, post-traumatic stress, and survivor’s guilt since reaching safety of Cairo
  • They fear for friends and family still trapped inside the embattled enclave amid violence and looming famine

CAIRO: Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire between Israeli troops and Hamas militants are finding ways to cross from Gaza into Egypt to escape the prolonged conflict. Once there, however, many grapple with financial hardship, survivor’s guilt and intense trauma.

Despite mounting international pressure, Israel has ignored repeated calls for a ceasefire and pleas to permit more aid by road to enter the enclave. The death toll has now exceeded 32,000, with children making up more than 40 percent of those killed, according to local health officials.

Among those who managed to escape in recent weeks the beleaguered territory long controlled by Hamas for the safety of Egypt is Anas, a 23-year-old Palestinian who now resides in a small two-bedroom house in Cairo with his relatives.




Displaced Palestinians talk to Egyptian soldiers at the border fence between Gaza and Egypt, on February 16, 2024 in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group. (AFP/File)

Speaking to Arab News at a coffee house in Dokki, a residential neighborhood on the west bank of the Nile, Anas, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, recalled his family’s displacement shortly after the war began on Oct. 7.

“We were displaced so many times,” he said. “At one point we were forced to take shelter at a school in the area called Awda.” It was there that Israeli troops began rounding up military-aged men and boys for questioning.

“Not only were they keen on killing us, they wanted to humiliate us as well,” said Anas.

“They were not following any rules. The investigations and their results were based on their whims. I saw men stripped down to their underwear with their eyes blindfolded. A lot of them I recognized as grocers, friends and neighbors. These were not militants, but that did not matter to the Israelis.

“They were taken into tents where the alleged investigation was happening and I could hear their screams resulting from what I can only deduce was torture.”




A Palestinian boy looks for cartons to make a fire in the Rafah refugee camp on March 21, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)

Despite his fears about what might happen to him at the hands of his interrogators and amid the death and destruction around them, Anas said he felt duty bound to protect his 13-year-old brother, Mohammad, who had been injured in a bombing raid.

“All I could think of is how to get my brother proper care,” he said. “The house we were staying in at some point got bombed. I lost two friends and a cousin. My father got hit. He still carries the shrapnel. And my little brother’s leg got severely injured.

“I ran with him to the European Hospital in Gaza, but it was so chaotic there — hundreds of injured and a small medical team doing their best in a half-functional hospital.”

INNUMBERS

1.7 million Displaced in Gaza. (UN estimate)

70,000+ Housing units destroyed in Gaza (MoPWH)

32,300+ Reported killed. (MoH Gaza)

74,690+ Reported injured. (MoH Gaza)

The European Hospital in southern Khan Younis was initially intended to treat up to 240 people. However, since the conflict began, it has been overwhelmed by thousands of patients each day, its corridors and grounds packed with displaced Palestinians.

The health system in Gaza has all but collapsed. According to a statement in February from the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, just 12 hospitals remained partially functional, while some 123 ambulances had been destroyed.




This photo taken on February 29, 2024 shows displaced Palestinian children, including a 10-year-old with a pre-existing condition, at Al-Awda clinic in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The boy died on March 4, 2024 from severe malnourishment and insufficient healthcare with the lack of needed medication and severe malnutrition as living conditions in the besieged Palestinian territory deteriorate. (AFP)

“We knew we couldn’t treat Mohammad adequately and we knew our father’s condition may turn into an infection, so we made a collective decision to go to Egypt,” said Anas.

The family paid thousands of dollars to an agent to orchestrate their crossing into Egypt via Rafah. Mohammad, meanwhile, was taken to Qatar to receive medical treatment, sponsored by the Qatari government.

“I felt so relieved when I found out his leg did not need amputation,” said Anas. “That’s my baby brother. If I needed to, I would have chopped off my own leg if it meant healing him.”

Although he is now safe and able to sleep soundly in a bed without fear of bombardment and further displacement, Anas said he still has difficulty sleeping.




Some Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment in Gaza have managed to enter Egypt but at great risk and expense, according to some refugees. (AFP/File)

“I remember the sounds of the screams coming from the investigation tents. I remember the wailing of families at the hospital. I remember the chaos and I don’t think it will ever leave me,” he said.

“I feel guilty being here knowing so many of my friends are gone or still stuck in hell.”

Anas is not alone among those Palestinians who managed to escape Gaza in having to grapple with what psychologists refer to as survivor’s guilt — a common symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We knew on Oct. 7 that things were going to go bad, but we did not expect this level of cruelty and savagery,” Omar, a 40-year-old engineer, told Arab News at his new home in Cairo, where he and his surviving daughters are hosted by an Egyptian family.




Dual nationality holders are among the few fleeing violence in from Gaza to be allowed to enter Egypt through the Rafah border crossing. (AFP)

According to Omar, whose name has also been changed to protect his identity, many families in Gaza make the difficult decision to live in separate places to improve the chances of at least some of them surviving a bombardment.

However, Omar and his family chose to stick together. “If death was coming, it will be coming for us all,” he said. “It took the best of me instead.

“My parents, my brothers, their wives and their children, my sons, my daughters, my wife and I were staying together. A rocket fell and by the grace of God I was standing in the corner, which probably saved my life.”

As the dust began to settle, Omar called out to his family. “But it was mainly silence. Through the ringing in my ears it was deafening silence,” he said.

“I lost everyone except my daughters and my sisters. I gathered my sons’ limbs, piece by piece, meat by meat, to reassemble them again. I wanted to give them a proper burial, but I was deprived of that, too.”




Israeli troops stand guard near Egyptian trucks bringing in humanitarian aid supplies to the Gaza Strip, on the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing with the Palestinian territory on February 6, 2024, as right-wing Israeli protesters gather to block the trucks from entering. (AFP)

Omar’s sisters begged him to find the means to move what remained of the family out of Gaza. Like Anas and his family, Omar was able to raise enough money to pay an agent to help them reach Egypt.

However, Omar says one of his sisters and her children were left behind after the agent left her name off the list presented to guards at the Rafah border crossing.

“I am physically here but my heart is in Gaza,” said Omar. “I cannot stop thinking about my sister and her children. I can’t eat or sleep properly. And I have no idea when she’ll be evacuated.”

He added: “Not only am I left with a huge debt, but also a survivor’s guilt I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shake off.”




Egyptian paramedics transport an injured Palestinian child to a Red Crescent ambulance upon his arrival from Gaza via the Rafah border crossing, on January 10, 2024 amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)

And although he is grateful to have been taken in by his Egyptian hosts, Omar says he feels like a “fish out of water” since leaving Gaza.

“While I am grateful to my Egyptian hosts, I feel stranded and confused,” he said. “My land is gone. I have nothing to return to. Entire neighborhoods have been leveled.

“I am haunted by my previous life, the sound of my wife’s laughter, my sons’ gleeful screams as they played. I feel soulless now. But I have to remain stoic for my daughters and my sisters. I am the only man left from the family. Their husbands have been arrested and we don’t know whether they are dead or alive.

“But after so much suffering, grace must come. God’s justice will not have it any other way.”
 

 


UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN

Updated 22 November 2024
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UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN

  • UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started
  • UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013

UNITED NATIONS: The arrest warrant issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza does not bar UN officials from meeting with him in the course of their work, the UN said Thursday.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started as a result of the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, although there have been contacts with the Israeli leader by UN officials in the region.
Guterres has been declared persona non grata by Israel, which accuses him of being biased in favor of the Palestinians. So talks between him and Netanyahu are very unlikely.
After the warrants issued Thursday by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013.
“The rule is that there should not be any contacts between UN officials and individuals subject to arrest warrants,” Dujarric said.
But limited contacts are allowed “to address fundamental issues, operational issues, and our ability to carry out our mandates,” he added.
In late October, at a summit of the BRICS countries in Russia, Guterres met with President Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the ICP over the war in Ukraine.
That meeting, during which Guterres reiterated his condemnation of the Russian invasion, angered Ukraine.


Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister

Updated 22 November 2024
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Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister

  • Palestinian Authority calls on UN member states to ensure the warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who are accused of war crimes, are acted upon
  • The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, says decision is ‘binding’ on all members of the International Criminal Court

LONDON: Palestinians welcomed the decision by the International Criminal Court on Thursday to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant.

The Palestinian Authority said the court’s decision comes as Israeli forces continue to bomb Gaza in a conflict that has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, and it hopes the ruling will help to restore faith in international law, the official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.

Netanyahu and Gallant are the first leading officials from a nation allied with the West against whom the ICC has issued arrest warrants since the court was established in July 2002. It also issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, the head of the military wing of Hamas. Israeli authorities said in August he was killed by their forces in an attack the previous month, though Hamas have not confirmed this.

All three men are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their actions during the war in Gaza or the Oct. 7 attacks.

The PA said the decision to issue warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant was important because Palestinians “are being subjected to genocide and war crimes, represented by starvation as a method of warfare,” as well as mass displacement and collective punishment.

The PA, which signed up to the ICC in 2015, called on all UN member states to ensure the warrants are acted upon and to “cut off contact and meetings with the international wanted men, Netanyahu and Gallant.” Israel is not a member of the ICC.

The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, posted a message on social media platform X on Thursday in which he described the court’s decisions as “binding” on all those who have signed up to it.

“These decisions are binding on all states party to the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC), which includes all EU member states,” he wrote.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister who has spent 17 years in office during three spells in charge since 1996, denounced the decision by the ICC to issue the warrant as “antisemitic.”

He said it would “have serious consequences for the court and those who will cooperate with it in this matter.”


Between bomb craters: Taxis stuck on war-hit Lebanon-Syria border

Updated 21 November 2024
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Between bomb craters: Taxis stuck on war-hit Lebanon-Syria border

MASNAA, Lebanon: Stuck in no man’s land on the war-hit Lebanon-Syria border, cab driver Fadi Slika now scrapes a living ferrying passengers between two deep craters left by Israeli air strikes.

The journey is just 2 km, but Slika has no other choice — his taxi is his only source of income.

“My car is stuck between craters: I can’t reach Lebanon or return to Syria. Meanwhile, we’re under threat of (Israeli) bombardment,” said the 56-year-old.

“I work and sleep here between the two holes,” he said.

A dual Lebanese-Syrian national, Slika has been living in his car, refusing to abandon it when it broke down until a mechanic brought a new engine.

His taxi is one of the few that has been operating between the two craters since Israeli strikes in October effectively blocked traffic on the Masnaa crossing.

The bombed area has become a boon for drivers of tuk-tuks, who can navigate the craters easily. 

A makeshift stall, the Al-Joura (pit in Arabic) rest house, and a shop are set up nearby.

Slika went for 12 days without work while waiting for his taxi to be fixed. The car has become his home. A warm blanket covers its rear seats against eastern Lebanon’s cold winters, and a big bag of pita bread sits on the passenger side.

Before being stranded, Slika made about $100 for trips from Beirut to Damascus.

Now, an average fare between the craters is just $5.50 each way, though he said he charged more.

On Sept. 23, Israel intensified its aerial bombing of Lebanon and later sent in ground troops, nearly a year after Hezbollah initiated limited exchanges of fire in support of Hamas amid the Gaza war.

Since then, Israel has bombed several land crossings with Syria out of service. 

It accuses Hezbollah of using what are key routes for people fleeing the war in Lebanon to transfer weapons from Syria.

Amid the hardship of the conflict, more than 610,000 people have fled from Lebanon to Syria, mostly Syrians, according to Lebanese authorities.

Undeterred by attacks, travelers still trickle through Masnaa, traversing the two craters that measure about 10 meters deep and 30 meters wide.

On the other side of the road, Khaled Khatib, 46, was fixing his taxi, its tires splattered with mud and hood coated in dust.

“After the first strike, I drove from Syria and parked my car before the crater. When the second strike hit, I got stuck between the two holes,” he said, sweat beading as he looked under the hood.

“We used to drive people from Damascus to Beirut. Now, we take them from one crater to another.”

Khatib doesn’t charge passengers facing tough times, he said, adding he had been displaced from southern Beirut, hammered by Israeli raids since September. He moved back to his hometown near the Masnaa crossing.

Despite harsh times, a sense of camaraderie reigns.

The drivers “became like brothers. We eat together at the small stall every day ... and we help each other fix our cars,” he said.

Mohamed Yassin moved his coffee stall from the Masnaa crossing closer to the pit after the strike, offering breakfast, lunch, and coffee. “We try to help people as much as possible,” he said.

Farther from the Lebanese border, travelers crossed the largest of the two crevasses, wearing plastic coverings on their shoes to avoid slipping in the mud.

A cab driver on a mound called out, “Taxi to Damascus!” while tuk-tuks and trucks ferried passengers, bags, and mattresses across.

Nearby, Aida Awda Mubarak, a Syrian mother of six, haggled with a tuk-tuk driver over the $1 fare.

The 52-year-old said she was out of work and needed to see her son after the east Lebanon town where he lives was hit by Israeli strikes.

“Sometimes we just can’t afford to pay for a tuk-tuk or a cab,” she said.


Netanyahu says ICC warrant won’t stop Israel defending itself

Updated 21 November 2024
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Netanyahu says ICC warrant won’t stop Israel defending itself

  • “No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said
  • The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity“

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court over his conduct of the Gaza war would not stop him defending Israel.
“No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “We will not yield to pressure,” he vowed.
The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
He described Thursday’s decision as a “dark day in the history of nations.”
“The International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was established to protect humanity, has today become the enemy of humanity,” he said, adding that the accusations were “utterly baseless.”
Israel has been fighting in Gaza since October 2023, when a cross-border attack by Hamas militants resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Its retaliatory campaign has led to the deaths of 44,056 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
UN agencies have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including possible famine, due to a lack of food and medicines.
The court said it had found “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore “criminal responsibility” for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, as well as the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
Netanyahu said the court was accusing Israel of “fictitious crimes,” while ignoring “the real war crimes, horrific war crimes being committed against us and against many others around the world.”
In addition to Netanyahu and Gallant, the court also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military wing chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel said was killed in an air strike last July.
Hamas has never confirmed his death.
Netanyahu mocked the court’s decision to issue a warrant for “the body of Mohammed Deif.”


Italy says would have to arrest Netanyahu after ICC warrant

Updated 21 November 2024
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Italy says would have to arrest Netanyahu after ICC warrant

  • Crosetto believed the ICC was “wrong” to put Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Hamas
  • It was not a political choice but Italy was bound as a member of the ICC to act on the court’s warrants

ROME: Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Thursday his country would be obliged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited, after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant.
The ICC earlier also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu’s former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif.
Crosetto — whose country holds the G7 rotating presidency this year — told RAI television’s Porta a Porta program that he believed the ICC was “wrong” to put Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Hamas.
But he said that if Netanyahu or Gallant “were to come to Italy, we would have to arrest them.”
It was not a political choice but Italy was bound as a member of the ICC to act on the court’s warrants, Crosetto said.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani had earlier been more cautious, saying: “We support the ICC, while always remembering that the court must play a legal role and not a political role.
“We will evaluate together with our allies what to do and how to interpret this decision.”