Help a Palestinian escape the war in Gaza. Objective: 11,000 euros

“My name is Abdallah Aljazzar, I am 24 years old and I live in Gaza.

Many of us are beginning to plan our departure from here to start a new life in other countries.

“I’m not sure where I’ll end up, but I know I have to get out.”

Aljazzar, a graduate in English Literature, has never set foot outside Gaza, like much of his generation.

For weeks he has been, like more than a million Palestinians, displaced in Rafah, in the south of the Strip, and spends the day looking for some food for his people.

He has lost more than 30 members of his family since the bombing began in October, and his home is a mountain of ruins.

He feels that he can't take it anymore.

He calculates that he needs 20,000 Australian dollars (about 12,150 euros) to cross the border with Egypt, live a few weeks in Cairo, fly to Australia and survive the first three months.

“I belong to an organization of young writers in Gaza and I have a mentor who lives there, she will help me with the visa and will also give me an invitation to make it easier for me to be accepted by the authorities,” he explains to this newspaper via WhatsApp.

For now he has only raised just over 2,300 euros.

“I fear I have asked too much.

There is no deadline to get the money, but the war can kill me at any moment.

If I manage to escape, I will be able to get the rest of my family out and we will start a new life somewhere else,” he says.

The announcement made a month ago by the Israeli authorities of a ground operation in Rafah that will force the evacuation of those already displaced in this area, the hunger that is increasing while not enough humanitarian aid arrives and the desperation generated by five months of war have fact that thousands of Gazans try to leave the territory at any cost.

Many aspire to raise the money through crowdfunding campaigns, with desperate messages in English that multiply every week.

Abdallah Aljazzar, a 24-year-old Gazan, in a photo with his little brothers, the same one he used to raise funds to go to Australia.Courted by Abdallah Aljazzar

The goal is to raise the amount demanded by opaque networks of intermediaries that facilitate the crossing through Rafah, the border crossing with Egypt.

It is

tansiq

(coordination, in Arabic), as they call the operation that consists of a mafia bribing the authorities to ensure that a specific name is included among the 250 newspapers on the list of the Egyptian police at the crossing.

That list has existed for years, but getting on it used to cost between 300 and 600 dollars (between 275 and 550 euros).

Since October, the vast majority of Palestinians who possessed a foreign passport or had enough purchasing power to pay the mafia on their own have already fled Gaza through Rafah.

There are those who have no other option and, in a territory where more than 50% of the population was poor before the war, the only solution now to flee is to resort to collections and micro-patronage.

Paying this network of intermediaries does not automatically imply crossing into Egypt, but rather the possibility of doing so in the coming days, explain Gazans who know the system.

The more you pay, the faster the process is.

The amount required depends on who you are, how fast you are, your contacts or your political inclinations, among others.

In January, it ranged between 4,500 and 11,000 dollars (between 4,150 and 10,150 euros).

Today, between 7,000 and 12,000, according to different testimonies.

Aljazzar estimates that in his case, the payment of this bribe will be about $5,000.

It is the cruelty of the law of supply and demand, with the sword of Damocles of an imminent military invasion, as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reiterated this Thursday: “Whoever tells us not to operate in Rafah, tells us to lose. war.

And that's not going to happen."

Another challenge is payment.

The Israeli blockade in force on the Strip since 2007 and measures to prevent the Islamist movement Hamas from obtaining funds make trade with Gaza difficult.

The war has done the rest.

At this moment, there are endless queues at the few ATMs that are still working in Rafah and in front of the Western Union offices that are still active.

For this reason, those who organize the collections use family and friends abroad to send the money collected directly or indirectly to intermediaries in Cairo.

More money, faster

Crowdfunding platforms are flooded with cases like Aljazzar's.

A photo, a brief history of the person explaining who he is, where he is and what aspirations he has, and a detail of the expenses he must face.

A simple search with the word Gaza on the main GoFundMe brings up more than 500 results.

Every week there are more.

Asma Aldada is 27 years old and has a GoFundMe petition: “When the [Israeli land] incursion into Rafah was announced, we understood that there was no room left for us.

We don't want to be displaced again.

Just return to our homes that we know nothing about.

At the beginning of the war, I was against those who left Gaza and abandoned the connection to the land and

sumud

[perseverance, an important value in Palestinian nationalism], but now I am afraid for my family and the war drags on.

We don't want to end up on the street, that's why I decided to make this request,” she says in WhatsApp messages.

There are six in the family and they sleep in a plastic tent.

“When it rains, the water enters underneath and wets the clothes that are on the floor,” she says.

Some fled in a hurry from the house in the capital with just two changes of clothes in their bags.

Aldada has gone from flying to Jordan last year to represent Palestine with her craft project (

Gaza handmade

) to eating from humanitarian aid and what her mother cooks in a clay oven, due to lack of gas and electricity.

“We buy water to drink and wash.

We have come to drink salt water,” she says.

She tries to raise 50,000 euros so that the six of them can go out.

She wears 355.

His messages on WhatsApp contrast with his humor on Instagram, where he simulates the videos in which celebrities and

influencers

summarize their day.

She narrates in first person her day in Gaza: she took “dad's Land Rover” (shows a cart pulled by a donkey), went “to the mall to buy Prada and Adidas” (second-hand clothes on the streets of Rafah) and he took onions “at Carrefour” (the black market) at 50 shekels per kilo (almost 13 euros, in prices inflated by the lack of food).

Gazan Asma Aldada, before the war, in an image provided by her.

Aldada's mention of

sumud

refers to the dilemma that these initiatives pose: trying to save your life and that of your loved ones, at the same time, feeds the mafias that profit from desperation and turns the right to survive into a question of money. , connections with abroad or command of English.

Furthermore, it reinforces the idea of ​​the Israeli extreme right of a Gaza empty of Palestinians and with Jewish settlements like those evacuated in 2005. In recent months, in Israel there has been talk of "voluntary emigration", a euphemism for forcing Palestinians to leave Gaza. , without expelling them directly.

The Minister of Legacy, Amijai Eliyahu, has even provoked laughter by presenting it as a way for Gazans who wish to “improve where they live” and another, Shlomo Karhi, head of Communications, has pointed out that “the war itself” will make many end up wanting to leave.

“Even when the war is over, it is difficult to imagine what life in Gaza will be like in the future,” Aljazzar says, almost apologizing for wanting to flee.

In recent weeks, most of the contacts maintained with Gazans end on financial issues.

Distraught people ask for help with less and less shame and insist that their request for crowdfunding be disseminated.

Like Tamer Ashraf, 20 years old.

He raises 100,000 Swiss francs (more than 100,000 euros) through a friend in Switzerland to remove 11 members of his family.

“It is a lot, but necessary to escape this genocide, especially before the ground invasion of Rafah,” he justifies.

Among the reasons he indicates on WhatsApp for leaving, he cites treating injuries to a foot and hand or the foreseeable invasion of Rafah, but above all to save himself from what he considers "certain death."

“I wouldn't leave my country and my homeland if it weren't the only way to survive.

And to survive, you need a lot of money,” he summarizes.

Ashraf complains that the price to cross the border “changes every day” and can already exceed $10,000 per person.

This is also the case with Ibrahim.

A medical student, he asks for 27,000 dollars (24,600 euros) to finish his degree abroad and since December he has obtained 7,000.

“I haven't achieved the minimum I need to get out.

I'm very tired.

I wish someone I knew would see my request and decide to support me with the missing money,” he tells this newspaper in a choppy call from Deir el Balah, in central Gaza.

Or Feras Al Jatib, who says through Instagram direct messages that he needs “whatever it takes” to move with his family and, for now, for the rental he found in Zawaida, in the center of Gaza, after having to flee from his house in the capital.

“The landlord is going to kick me out soon because I can't pay him,” she laments.

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