at the Egyptian border, a travel agency pays for border crossing

To reach Egypt, many Gazans, stranded in the enclave, are forced to pay extravagant sums to an Egyptian travel agency which takes them across the border.

In Gaza, life has a very specific price… which was set this weekend by an Egyptian travel agency. This organization, along with others, proposes an exit from the Gaza Strip legally through the Egyptian border. This single exit door has until now been double-locked, except for humanitarian or diplomatic actions. It is a service for the wealthiest: the passage permit costs 4,600 euros. An obvious way to make money from war victims.

Assia is one of the first Gazans to leave the enclave. She was able to settle in Cairo thanks to her Egyptian passport. Since this weekend, she has hosted a Palestinian family who, however, had to pay a high price to leave Gaza: “There are five of them, they paid almost $42,000 to be able to get out. There, they waited almost a month for their names to appear.”

“I don’t have this money in cash”

This family went through an intermediary in Gaza. But since Saturday evening, this border pricing has become official: the Egyptian agency is offering a price per adult and per child. In Rafah, Khaled tries to raise money for a total of seven people: “They opened this for the Palestinians, the price was $3,000 [pour un adulte] and $1,500 for a child. The next day, the price doubled. That became $5,000 in my case. I’m trying to find money. I don’t have this money in cash. Their procedure is complicated, you have to pay in Egypt.”

Despite the difficulties, for several days there has been a queue in Cairo in front of the agency in question: Hala. Close to Egyptian intelligence, it already paid for entries and exits before the war. She therefore increased her prices and resumed her activity. Ahmed Benchemsi, Middle East advocacy director for Human Right Watch, recalls: “We had already published a report two years ago, in which several Palestinians said that to exit through Rafah, it was necessary to grease the paws of certain Egyptian officers. So the practice is not new.”

“But today, the situation is, one imagines, a hundred times, a thousand times worse. There are nearly a million internally displaced people in Rafah, insists the Middle East advocacy director for Human Right Watch. In a pure logic of supply and demand, it is conceivable, as reported by press investigations, that the price of the bribe, demanded by the Egyptian officers, has increased considerably. More and more Gazans want to leave the enclave. But the vast majority of them are destitute.