Summary
Gaza doctor whose attempts to leave Gaza to lecture in London and then in Ireland open Chapter 3, “Outside In”, of Palestine Inside Out: even with an Irish embassy and HaMoked intervening for her, her exit permit failed, was declared expired inside the Erez crossing, and was declared expired again the next morning at Allenby Bridge (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.208-211).
Details
- In January 2007 she was due to fly to London for a speaking engagement but never got out of Gaza: repeated trips to the Rafah crossing ended in failure, Rafah having been shut continually since June 2006; in the week the border was supposed to open she saw some two hundred patients waiting in the cold and rain to seek urgent medical care in Egypt, and the Israelis, citing security concerns, never allowed the crossing to open (PDF p.208).
- She was due to present a series of lectures in Ireland on the situation of women back home, sponsored by the Irish charity and development organisation Trócaire; HaMoked offered assistance in leaving Gaza (PDF p.208-209).
- The promised route was Erez, through Israel and the West Bank, and over the Allenby Bridge to fly from Amman; Gazans are not allowed to use the Tel Aviv airport, and Israel, having destroyed Gaza’s own airport in 2001, will not allow it to reopen (PDF p.209).
- On the first day the permits were not approved and she and her daughter were back home by 10 A.M.; the next day the Irish embassy intervened, and after hours stalled at Erez — soldiers telling her through the Palestinian border officials, “You cannot cross today, come back tomorrow”, while the embassy and HaMoked telephoned her not to give up — she was waved through at 7:30 (PDF p.209).
- Inside Erez she walked with her daughter and ten sick people through a long cement tube under cameras and loudspeaker instructions, and met tens of Palestinians returning from visiting their sons and daughters in the Israeli jails; at the desk an officer said her permit was expired, and only further behind-the-scenes negotiations let them through (PDF p.210).
- Her daughter, fifteen, saw anything of her native land other than sealed-off Gaza for the first time and cried with joy and disbelief; the next morning at Allenby Bridge the one-day permit was again declared expired — she would have to return to Gaza and reapply — and again, after embassy calls, stamped (PDF p.210-211).
- Her flashback on seeing the embassy’s VIP car: a Swedish volunteer at Al Awda Hospital, Mr. Steig Collin, stopped with her at a Gaza checkpoint in 1999 and asked if they were VIPs, replied: “Every human being is a VIP.” (PDF p.211)
Related pages
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Gaza, HaMoked, Population registry and family unification, Bantustans