AFPWomen and children queue for water in Rafah in southern Gaza
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 20:51
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Joey Frankhuisen
Editor online
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Joey Frankhuisen
Editor online
“I don’t want my family to die”, “save my loved ones from Gaza” and “help my family before the ground offensive in Rafah starts”. It is a selection of the titles of hundreds of online fundraisers started by people with family in Gaza, in an attempt to get their loved ones to safer territory.
A month ago, a network of Egyptian human smugglers came to light. They asked high amounts of money from Gazans who hoped to leave the area via the Rafah border crossing. Now that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is worsening by the day, according to the UN, and fears of a ground offensive on Rafah are increasing, the need to flee the area is becoming even greater.
But fleeing the Gaza Strip is virtually impossible. And so many Palestinians with family in Gaza see working with human smugglers as the only option to save their loved ones.
But those smugglers often charge thousands of euros per person. That is unaffordable for most Palestinians, especially if they have a large family. That is why a number of them are trying to raise this money through so-called crowdfunding campaigns. The target amounts sometimes amount to 90,000 euros. Various fundraising campaigns by Palestinians in the Netherlands for their relatives in Gaza can also be found online.
NOSThe border crossing at Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip
The network of middlemen and human smugglers has been active from Cairo for years; reported in 2016 Al Jazeera already about this. They probably have contacts in the Egyptian intelligence service and are asking Gazans for money to put them on the list to leave Gaza via Rafah, he said. The Guardian last month. But since the outbreak of war, they have been asking for a lot more money for a place on the list.
“The deeper the desperation to leave, the better the trade,” writes the journalist research organization OCCRP about this. Some Egyptian travel organizations openly advertise this on their websites, the platform discovered; it costs 6,500 euros for someone with only a Palestinian passport to be put on the list, 1,100 euros for someone with an Egyptian passport and almost 2,800 euros for other foreign passport holders.
Very difficult situation
A Palestinian man living in the Netherlands also had contact with these smugglers. He flew to Egypt to try to get his family across the border. This includes his father, mother, sister and brother. His family lived in the north of the Gaza Strip, but their house was hit in a bombardment. Much of his family fled to Rafah, in southern Gaza.
He called it an extremely difficult situation last month. “I want my family to be safe, but I don’t want to contribute to a system that makes money from people who are injured, traumatized and hungry,” said the man, who remains anonymous for security reasons (name withheld).
As the situation in Gaza becomes increasingly dire and fears of a ground offensive in Rafah grow, he sees a deal with these smugglers as the only option to save his family.
55.000 euro
“A group of friends are supporting me and we have tried every official avenue,” he says over the phone from Egypt. “But in the end they said this is really the only way. I had my doubts because there are so many families in Gaza that need to be saved. I am privileged to be able to do this.”
Ultimately, he is now starting a crowdfunding campaign. “I wouldn’t be able to handle it if in a few days I saw on the news that my family had been murdered, even though I could have done something about it.” To get his entire family on the list, he must raise more than 55,000 euros.
His sister-in-law was killed during the bombing of his house. “My nieces and nephews have lost their mother and there is nothing left to return to. There is no infrastructure and there are no schools anymore. They have been through so much trauma. I think it is the right thing to send them to a safe place. place to move.”
2024-02-11 19:51:18
#Palestinians #crowdfunding #save #loved #Gaza
