Mohamed Imad can’t take it anymore. Together with his family, eight members, and that of his aunt, he has been displaced for 120 days in a friend’s apartment in the center of Rafah, in southern Gaza. He is very small, but he thanks God that everyone has a roof to stop the cold.
“There are many people, some friends and family, who are in tents or on the street,” explains the 27-year-old to La Vanguardia, who before October 7 – in that life that today seems so distant – was working as a medical representative of a pharmaceutical company.
Originally from the north of the strip, a few days ago he received a painful video in which he was able to see for the first time his house devastated by an Israeli bombing. “They literally destroyed our entire life. I have lost my job, my house, my girlfriend, her family… They have all died. “I don’t have anything now.”
With Israel’s threat to assault Rafah, the last refuge for more than a million Palestinians in the enclave, which is experiencing an increase in attacks, the only solution Mohamed is betting on becomes even more urgent: “What I want It is to leave Gaza and start another life with my family, anywhere in the world that is safe, without bombs or anything.”
Not having a foreign or Egyptian passport, nor being among the specific cases of evacuations for medical reasons that Egypt has officially allowed since November, Mohamed’s fight to survive comes at a cruel price: $10,000 per person, $90,000 for him and his family. . That is what reveals that he charges an intermediary to include him in the list of those authorized to cross through the Rafah border crossing.
“Each person has to pay $10,000 to escape death in Gaza, to flee the ongoing genocide, to save their lives,” he details with indignation. You have to pay after suffering all this, after being destroyed, killed and robbed.”
In this land it has always been known that there is an opaque network of agents with alleged links to the Egyptian authorities, including intelligence, who collect bribes and “fees”, a service known under the euphemism of “coordination”, to facilitate the departure of Palestinians. from Gaza to Egypt.
Already in 2018, the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned about the existence of two systems for the passage of people through Rafah: the procedure carried out through the internet with the Gaza Ministry of the Interior, controlled by Hamas, and a faster parallel route, coordinated by the Egyptian authorities.
However, since the start of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, these brokers’ fees have skyrocketed. According to an investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Egyptian media SaheehMasr, some intermediaries are charging between $4,500 and $10,000 from Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza, while the figure It fluctuates between 650 and 1,200 for Egyptians who have not yet been included in the official lists. Mohamed witnesses this grim price rise. In September 2023 he had to pay $500 to leave Gaza for a trip to Europe. Today they ask for 20 times more.
In a statement on January 10, the president of Egypt’s State Information Service, Diaa Rashwan, denied that additional fees were being collected and asked Palestinians to report whether they were being asked for illegal payments.
But in early February, Egyptian officials quoted by the London-based Qatari outlet Al Araby al Jadeed reported that official fees would be imposed on those crossing through Rafah, under “transparent procedures and strict scrutiny, in order to prevent any manipulation.” or exploitation.”
Cairo defends its policy of keeping the border closed as a way to prevent a mass exodus of Palestinians to Egypt, which, under the eyes of President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, would pose a threat to national security and facilitate the cleanup. ethnic strip.
For Mohannad Sabry, an expert on the Sinai Peninsula, these justifications only “cover the corruption that occurs on the ground.” “This is not low-level corruption, it is corruption facilitated by the State,” he denounced in an interview with the British media The Guardian.
Be that as it may, Palestinian and international social networks have been filled with desperate requests. In Facebook groups, queries about possible intermediaries and at what prices are multiplying.
And many have set up online crowdfunding campaigns to raise the exorbitant sums that will allow them to flee Gaza. These initiatives do not always come from the Gazans themselves, but are also managed by relatives in the occupied West Bank, by Gazans who have been blocked there after 7-O, from outside the occupied Palestinian territories, or by “sponsors” in the foreign.
Driven by “many friends who are outside of Gaza,” especially from Venezuela, a country where he spent two years studying and where he learned Spanish with a Caracas accent, Mohamed has launched his own crusade on the GoFundMe platform.
This initiative goes hand in hand with their reports on Instagram from the south of the strip. Being one of the few who do it in Spanish has allowed him to gain visibility for his campaign, but it also confronts him with the hunger, thirst, desperation and fear of his compatriots.
“A few days ago I uploaded a video because I went to Al Mawasi, where people put up tents, in these camps. And I came back crying to see how my people live. I hope all this ends and I can leave Gaza. “It’s all I want now.”