Gaza Herald — For Palestinians, reaching Gaza is not the end of the journey. It’s another chapter of waiting, searching, and fear.
At Rafah, Gaza’s only land crossing, people describe hours of interrogation, bags emptied, phones taken and broken, and questions that have nothing to do with home.
“I was questioned for three hours about things that had nothing to do with me,” one young woman said after crossing. “They accused me of spying. They took my things. They smashed my phone. One of the soldiers hit me with her rifle.”
Stories like hers come up again and again from Palestinians returning through the crossing.
Hours of checks before you reach home
The trip starts on the Egyptian side, then moves through checks by the European mission, then Israeli military and Shin Bet procedures. Families move from one line to another, from one inspection to the next. A trip home turns into a full day, sometimes longer, before the gate finally opens to the Palestinian side.
Patients running out of time
While travelers wait at the crossing, thousands of sick and injured Palestinians in Gaza wait for a different permission: to leave for treatment they cannot get inside.
Munira Abu Arqoub fought cancer and filed repeated requests to travel. The approvals never came in time. She died in Gaza.
Dr. Khuloud Samhoud, also living with cancer, now shelters with displaced families in Khan Younis, under a staircase. She says she does not want to leave Palestine. She wants to leave long enough to get treatment that could save her life. Without it, she says she is “dying a slow death.”
Thousands still on the lists
More than 20,000 patients are registered as waiting for medical evacuation from Gaza as restrictions on movement continue. Earlier this year, amputees gathered outside Nasser Medical Complex asking for help to travel so they could get prosthetics and start to rebuild after the war.
For many in Gaza, crossing a border is no longer about travel. It is about whether care arrives in time. Every delay means another name added to the waiting list, and another family wondering if treatment will come before it’s too late.
