Daily Times

Just after daybreak, Hamed al-Shaer came down the narrow stairway of his family’s home in southern Gaza pulling a black suitcase and said goodbye to his mother. They hugged at the gate and he kissed her hands in a show of devotion as she struggled to control her emotions.

“Emigration is better,” she said of his plan to return to Saudi Arabia where he has lived for the past 13 years, most recently working as a driver.

But by nightfall he was back, despondent after his third failed attempt this week to exit the blockaded Gaza Strip through the congested Rafah border crossing. Egypt has opened Rafah for the duration of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, temporarily easing a border blockade of Gaza that it has enforced, along with Israel, for the past 11 years. But thousands of people hoping to travel are on a waiting list, a backlog created by long periods of closures, and Egyptian border officials are processing them at an excruciatingly slow pace.

Al-Shaer, whose name was near the top of the list of those cleared for travel, was getting increasingly desperate. If he didn’t get out by early June, his Saudi residency permit would expire.

“I was shocked,” al-Shaer said, adding that he had considered not returning to his mother’s home after his latest failed attempt, “because I don’t want to make another round of hard farewells.”

Despite his anxiety-filled ordeal, al-Shaer, 34, considers himself lucky.

Most Gaza residents can’t travel at all under the strict blockade imposed after the Islamic militant Hamas group seized the territory in 2007.

Israel permits only a small number of medical patients, business people and aid workers to exit each month. Egypt opens Rafah sporadically, and those trying to leave Gaza must sign up with Hamas, which gives priority to patients, students at foreign universities, dual nationals and those with residency in third countries.

Published in Daily Times, May 26^th 2018.