Many Palestinians have been desperately trying to leave the Gaza Strip and get to Egypt via the Rafah border crossing since October 7 and Israel’s subsequent military campaign, which has killed more than 25,000 people, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. However, it’s nearly impossible to get an authorisation to leave the enclave, especially if you don’t have another nationality and a foreign government working on your behalf.
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Many Gazans are resorting to paying exorbitant sums to intermediaries with connections to Egyptian authorities, according to testimonies gathered by our team, to try and leave Gaza. But as increasing light is shed on this practice, many fear that even this way of leaving the country will no longer be possible.
“You need to pay $9,000 (roughly €8,200) per person to get your name on a list of people authorised to leave Gaza,” a Gaza resident told our team via the messaging service WhatsApp. In light of this situation, hundreds of people have started online fundraisers in the hopes of raising enough money to pay a black market passage for their family members trapped in a war zone.
The average salary in Gaza is between $500 and $600 (equivalent to €460 to €550).
So who are these people who can get you out, if you can raise that much money? Mysterious intermediaries who, our witnesses say, have been asking for higher and higher sums since the start of the war.
This well-oiled system is known locally as “al-tansikat al-misriya”, which translates roughly to “Egyptian coordination”.
‘If you talk about it, your name is added to a blacklist’
Mohannad Sabry, an Egyptian journalist who has been investigating the situation, says that it amounts to “corruption on a wide scale”.
It is the most vulnerable people who have to go through these intermediaries, these dealers in misery. Injured people, those with serious illnesses like cancer— people who are desperate to leave Gaza as soon as possible.
These intermediaries are located in the places in the south of the Gaza Strip, where people have fled, especially in Khan Younis and Rafah.
If you pay, then your name will appear on the lists published by the Rafah crossing relatively quickly.
There are different government bodies involved in this practice— the Egyptian passport and immigration services, the army, the intelligence services and others.
Everyone knows this is going on. At the same time, there is clearly an omerta going on [Editor’s note: a policy or code of keeping silent about crimes and refusing to cooperate with the police] because, if you talk about it, your name goes on a black list of people forbidden from leaving Gaza.
Since the start of the war, about 6,000 Palestinians have been able to leave the Gaza Strip [Editor’s note: The FRANCE 24 Observers team has been unable to independently verify these numbers].
The Rafah border crossing regularly posts on its website lists of people authorised to leave the enclave.
Most of them are Palestinians with dual nationality who have been repatriated thanks to the intervention of their respective countries or those with serious injuries who need emergency care.
For people who only have Palestinian nationality, pretty much the only option to get out is to pay this network of intermediaries. Their names will then be published on the website of the Rafah border crossing. People in Gaza say usually those who have paid bribes are added to lists of Egyptian nationals who will be evacuated.
This practice isn’t new. It began during the 2007 Gaza siege, according to a man from Gaza who spoke to our team from Europe, where he now lives.
I have a friend who left Gaza in 2017 because he had a scholarship to study abroad. Back then, if you wanted to leave the Gaza Strip, you’d have to make a request with the Palestinian ministry of the interior. But it might take a few months before you got a response. And, because he didn’t have a lot of time, he decided to go the black market route.
Everything goes by word of mouth. My friend went to see an intermediary who had links with the Egyptian intelligence services. He took a photo of his passport and then sent it to his contacts. In a few weeks, his name was on the lists of people authorised to leave published by the Rafah border crossing.
Back in 2017, this “authorisation” to leave the territory would have cost between $2,000 and 3,000 [Editor’s note: between €1,800 and €2,700].
By 2020, the practice was so widespread that there were even so-called tourist agencies offering this service. They were well established in Gaza and in Cairo, Egypt and offered to “facilitate” the journey for Palestinians who wanted to leave Gaza.
However, since the start of the war, these agencies have closed.
In parallel, the price of these so-called “coordinations” has increased considerably, reaching $9,000 [roughly €8,000] per person.
The FRANCE 24 Observers team contacted several people who had started online fundraising campaigns to try to raise the money for loved ones to leave Gaza by these illegal routes. However, no one wanted to speak to us. They said they were afraid that if there was media coverage about this practice then it would be suspended and their hopes of evacuating their loved ones would end.
‘There are also intermediaries in Europe’
Our team spoke to a man from Gaza who now lives in France. He is currently trying to get his mother out of Gaza. He said he wasn’t sure how to feel about this practice.
On one hand, you want to denounce this practice. But on the other hand, you are afraid that it might be stopped and, in the end, it’s us who would suffer.
I personally paid an intermediary in France because, yes, there are intermediaries in Europe, too. You have to pay in cash so that there is no trace.
I’m concerned because it seems like this type of evacuation of Palestinians has been suspended since the media like the Guardian started reporting on it.
The Facebook page of the body that runs the border post in Rafah hasn’t published any lists of people who are authorised to leave since January 11. Before, they were posting lists almost daily.
Our team reached out to the State Information Service, the official press office of the Egyptian government, in an attempt to find out more about these accusations.
More than 25,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli bombs and military operations, most of them women, children and teenagers, according to the Hamas ministry of health. Hamas is the ruling party in Gaza.
This story originally appeared on France24
