Palestinians fleeing Gaza to Egypt pay thousands of dollars to Egyptian middleman: NPR

TEL AVIV – As the death toll in the Gaza Strip rises daily and Israel threatens a ground operation in the last Gaza strip where around 1.5 million Palestinians take refuge during the war, the demand to leave grows. shoot.

But Gaza’s only open border for travelers is tightly controlled. Only the lucky few with a foreign passport, a foreign country appealing on their behalf or approved medical treatment in Egypt have managed to secure free passage at the Egyptian Rafah border crossing.

For most Gazans, the only way out is to pay.

Before the war, it cost a few hundred dollars. It now costs $5,000 per adult and $2,500 per child, according to Palestinians who have recently left Gaza.

“After having lost everything in Gaza, all our possessions, we have to raise the amount of money, which is a large sum, just to buy our lives,” says Mazen, a mechanical engineer.

He recently stood at the Rafah crossing with his family of four, waiting for a Palestinian border official to call his name over a loudspeaker. It cost them $20,000 to leave.

“I had to borrow it. It took a long time,” Mazen says. “Not just time, not just money. You pay your money to be insulted.”

He and other Palestinians interviewed for this article declined to give their full names to protect their residency status in Egypt, which now hosts them.

Being able to pay the fees is a pipe dream for most Gaza families, who live in poverty, and a small fortune even for well-off Palestinians who have fled their homes and struggle to obtain basic needs during the war.

Palestinians who hold Egyptian citizenship documents are charged a discounted rate of $650.

The border fee service, known as “coordination”, is operated by a singular entity: Hala Consulting and Tourisman Egyptian company with reported links to Egypt’s security services, whose sister company manages the business aid transport manager towards Gaza.

Hala provides a crucial service: registering names on the Egyptian list of travelers approved to enter from Gaza and operating transportation from the border to Cairo.

Each night, the list of approved travelers for the next day is posted on various Facebook pages and Telegram channels.

On March 1 alone, about 400 Palestinian travelers, including those with Egyptian citizenship documents, who left Gaza paid an estimated combined total of about $1.3 million, according to an NPR analysis of published traveler lists. and an estimate of the fares paid by adults and minors.

Almost every morning, hundreds of Palestinians who have paid the prices of war cross the Rafah border for the privilege of exiting through Gaza’s only portal to the outside world.

A murky process

The application is complicated, fees have fluctuated, and rules change frequently. Palestinians in Gaza need a family member in Egypt to apply to the Hala company on their behalf. Hundreds of people wait in front of the company’s building in Cairo to pay the fare in dollars, in cash. Some say they have paid thousands of dollars on top of standard rates. just to get in the door. Approvals can take months.

One man, Mohammed, said a relative paid him $17,000 to allow him and his four children to leave Gaza in recent weeks, including an additional $2,000 to register after the company halted new registrations due to a delay.

“It’s actually a bribe, but what we can do is the only option and solution we have,” he says.

Egypt needs dollars

Palestinians paying to leave Gaza is not a new phenomenon. In recent years, as Israel and Egypt have imposed strict border controls to contain the Hamas government in Gaza, the hala travel company offered regular paid services on the border with Egypt.

He the company is owned by Egyptian businessman Ibrahim Al Organi. He has helped Egyptian security services establish contacts with tribes in the Sinai border region near Gaza, where security services have fought extremists for years, according to Haisam Hassaneinan Egyptian-American researcher.

Al Organi’s connections are key to managing its fare payment service on the Gaza border, Hassanein says.

“There is no way for them to operate such a company in such critical times without Egyptian security approving it or having full knowledge of it,” says Hassanein.

Egyptian officials, Hassanein alleges, benefit from the fees Gazans pay in wartime to cross the border.

“Today, it is seen as an opportunity to get more dollars into the Egyptian market,” says Hassanein.

Egypt’s economy is struggling, inflation is high and the country is desperate for dollars to buy wheat and pay off its growing debt. Since the start of the Gaza war, revenue from the Suez Canal has collapsed as cargo ships avoid it due to Houthi missile attacks in the Red Sea.

The high tariffs also reflect Egypt’s policy of absorbing Palestinians during the war, Hassanein says. Egypt does not want a permanent mass displacement of Palestinians and does not want any Islamist militants entering from Gaza.

“They are trying to condition traditional Palestinians that coming to Egypt would not be an easy option,” says Hassanein.

The Hala company did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for comment.

In a sentenceDia Rashwan, head of Egypt’s State Information Service, denied that Egypt charged additional fees at the Rafah border crossing and called on Palestinians to report any “illegal fees” charged.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry he told Sky News that Egypt does not approve of Hala’s practice of charging $5,000 for each Palestinian who crosses. “We will take all necessary measures to restrict and eliminate it completely,” Sameh said.

The issue is delicate in Egypt. Days after the Egyptian independent media outlet Mada Masr published a report on Al Organi’s role in the movement of people and aid at the Rafah border crossing, the media said Its editor-in-chief was questioned by Cairo prosecutors on charges related to a report on the possible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt. She was released on bail and the case remains open.

Raise money on GoFundMe

To buy their way out, many Palestinians are crowdfunding through GoFundMe.

Reem Ziad, a Palestinian in London, is seeking donations to help pay for the departure from Gaza of 25 relatives: his parents, his sisters and their families, including 14 children.

“It may seem like a bribe, but it’s really about saving people from death,” says Ziad. He said his sister’s husband was killed in an Israeli attack.

At the time of publication of this story, Ziad had raised only about 2% of what he will need to pay Hala to get his family out of Gaza.