Rafah, the testimony of those who have to pay 5 thousand dollars to escape Gaza: war speculators

RAFAH CROSSING (Egypt) – Five thousand dollars. This is the price that those who want to escape from the Gaza Strip must pay today. Not even 7 months of war – after the massacre at the Supernova music festival of Hamas fighters in the Re’im kibbutz where 1,200 people were killed and 240 Israeli citizens taken hostage – there have been almost 35 thousand deaths in Gaza. “The lack of drinking water and safe places adds to the difficulty of finding food which, when it is available, costs a lot. Traders speculate on the war. And fleeing to Egypt is expensive.”

The witness. Speaking is Haitham Ghanem, 58 years old, physicist and mechanical engineer, who with his family suffers the consequences of the total isolation to which the war with Hamas has forced Gaza since 7 October: goods do not enter, people do not leave. And if in the last few hours a prospect of truce seemed to have opened up, with Hamas having finally agreed to the agreement promoted by Qatar and Egypt, the Tel Aviv government said no: “the proposal is not acceptable”, and proceeds with the final operation on Rafah, with bombs and tanks deployed at the crossing: the crossing point with Egypt was therefore closed, the only country with which Gaza shares its borders besides Israel.

Humanitarian aid is difficult. With the Rafah crossing closed, not only is a vital entry point for aid for the population of 2.3 million lost, but it means civilians will be unable to leave. One million six hundred thousand people remain trapped, including inhabitants and refugees from all over the Strip. In recent days, given the prospect of the final attack on Rafah, Haitham Ghanem opened a fundraiser on the platform GoFundMe to save his family – wife, three children aged 25, 23 and 21 and his elderly mother. “If you want to leave Gaza – she explains – you have to pay 5 thousand dollars each”.

Dozens of fundraisers. There are dozens of fundraisers like yours. A Palestinian agency, with staff also in Egypt, decides the price. There are no official estimates, but since the agency publishes the list of people assisted every day, it is estimated that between 50 and 100 thousand Palestinians have managed to enter the Land of the Pyramids. However, very few have the possibility to pay out of their own pocket, and so fundraisers are opened on online platforms. But the goal, the engineer clarifies, is “just to survive. We don’t want to leave Gaza forever. It’s our land and I want to die and be buried there.”

Photovoltaic systems to bring light. Before what he calls “the crazy war” Haitham Ghanem was among the members of the NGO Sunshine for Palestine (S4P), which built photovoltaic systems in Gaza to bring light 24 hours a day. Since 2006, the Strip has suffered daily blackouts and limited entry of fuel and other essential goods. Very important was therefore the photovoltaic system that S4P – made up mainly of Italian engineers and activists – managed to build thanks to donations for the Jenin Charity Hospital, near the refugee camp on the coast of Gaza, where Haitham lived with his family. Today there is no news of that hospital, as well as of the solar energy generator.

We live in terror. But Ghanem’s job has now become to restore light to his family: “We don’t sleep at night, we live in fear that they might invade Rafah. In these 7 months we have already had to move six times. Here I managed to rent a 15m2 room with a bathroom, a luxury for a few.” While international diplomacy makes weak pressure to stop the Israeli army, Ghanem launches an appeal: “Help us. We must be able to continue to hope. These injustices must end. Our children, as every human being deserves, have the right to live in a world free”.