‘I would never do it again’: Inside the struggle to enter and leave Gaza
A trickle of Palestinians have passed through Rafah Crossing since its partial reopening. Those returning face intimidation by Israeli soldiers and the Abu Shabab gang, as well as the confiscation of their belongings.
The journey back to Gaza begins by night, and with little advance warning. From the Egyptian coastal city of El-Arish, Palestinians permitted to return to the Strip — averaging around 35 per day since the limited reopening of Rafah Crossing on Feb. 2 — hurriedly pack their bags and board a bus that brings them to their first security screening, on the Egyptian side of Gaza’s civilian entry point.
“We were met there by the Egyptian delegation and the Red Crescent, and their reception was wonderful,” Sabah Al-Reqeb, who arrived at the crossing with her five children in the early hours of Feb. 5, told +972 Magazine. “The problem was on the other side.”
After an inspection by Egyptian forces, returnees pass through a narrow checkpoint surrounded by barbed wire fences that takes them to the Gazan side of the crossing. “I felt like I was in a prison,” Huda Abu Aabed, a woman in her 50s who returned to the Strip with her daughter on Feb. 8, recounted. “The Palestinian side didn’t look Palestinian at all.”
At the end of this checkpoint, returning residents are greeted by Palestinian Authority personnel operating under the supervision of the European Union Border Assistance Mission at the Rafah Crossing Point, known as EUBAM. Here, they must undergo another inspection, which reportedly involves facial recognition checks as well as bag searches that prohibit the entry of liquids or metals, any more than one bag per person, sums of money greater than NIS 2,000 (around $650), cigarettes, and electronic devices besides a single mobile phone.
In practice, this means that many of the returnees’ belongings are confiscated. “I told them I had clothes, cigarettes, and other belongings with me, but they said I had to give them all up,” Al-Reqeb recounted. Abu Aabed, meanwhile, was forced to part with her solar-powered flashlight and children’s toys, keeping only a few clothes and the medications she needs for her high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart condition.
Palestinian pass through the Rafah Crossing under the supervision of EUBAM personnel. (EUBAM Rafah Facebook page)
Upon completing the EUBAM inspection, returnees report boarding a bus escorted by Israeli military jeeps that takes them to a checkpoint controlled by the Abu Shabab militia, one of Israel’s proxy gangs in Gaza that has been allowed to take up residence in Israeli-occupied Rafah. Here, the threats and intimidation begin.
According to Abu Aabed, gang leader Ghassan Al-Duhaini told everyone to get off the bus for another inspection — at which point the militiamen “threw our belongings on the ground.” Their bags were searched again, she said, before “the Abu Shabab men grabbed us and handed us over to the Israeli army.” (Later, she realized that some more of her possessions had gone missing, an experience common to several of the people interviewed for this article.)
At this stage, adult returnees are hand-searched by Israeli soldiers, and some of them are interrogated. Abu Aabed and her daughter, Lamiaa, were questioned separately for several hours. During this time, Abu Aabed was partially stripped while being hand-searched by female soldiers.
When the interrogation eventually finished, she asked where her daughter had been taken. The soldiers, seeking one final act of humiliation, told her “There is no daughter,” despite having already sent Lamiaa back to the bus.
Al-Reqeb, in contrast, was interrogated while her children remained on the bus. “Two female soldiers handcuffed me, blindfolded me, and grabbed me from all sides,” she told +972. “It was dark and I didn’t know where to walk, but they were dragging me with them. I told them I was tired and cold, but they didn’t care.”
During the interrogation, she said, “they asked me about my brothers who were martyred in the 2014 war, whether they were from Hamas, and I told them no. They threatened to arrest me, leave me in the cold, and pour water on me, saying no one would know where I was.” Later in the interrogation, Israeli soldiers offered to deport the family to a foreign country.
Meanwhile, as Al-Reqeb’s children waited on the bus, men from the Abu Shabab gang encouraged them to move to the area of Rafah that is currently under their control. “They tried to recruit us,” Asmaa, Al-Reqeb’s 17-year-old daughter, recounted. “They told us: ‘Our area is safer, you’ll have a better life. The area you’re going to is totally destroyed. Follow us on social media and you’ll see how life is [with us]. We could come and get you.’”
Eventually, once these interrogations are over, returnees get back on the bus to be driven across the “Yellow Line” and dropped off at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Only then does the extent of Gaza’s destruction begin to sink in for those who had not yet witnessed it.
An aerial view of destroyed residential buildings in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood, following the withdrawal of the Israeli army during a temporary ceasefire, Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (Ali Hassan/Flash90)
“All I saw was destruction and desert,” Abu Aabed recounted. “I don’t know where the houses went. What did they do to my country? Was it hit by an earthquake? I was happy to return to Gaza and to my family, but inside I felt sadness because Gaza was one of the most beautiful places. Still, I ask everyone to return to Gaza. Don’t abandon it.”
“We knew we would return to a tent, but in fact I returned to find Gaza a ghost town,” Al-Reqeb’s daughter, Asmaa, reflected. “Our family’s welcome was very joyous, but I don’t advise anyone to ever leave Gaza. If I were offered the chance to travel again, I would never do it.”
Getting in — and getting out
As many as 80,000 Gazans have reportedly registered with the Palestinian Embassy in Egypt to return to the Strip, while some 20,000 sick or wounded residents are desperately waiting for permission to leave for medical treatment abroad along with their companions. Most of them will likely be stuck in limbo for months or even years, with Israel severely restricting the numbers allowed to cross in each direction.
In response to +972’s inquiry, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories stated that around 320 Gazans have entered the Strip since Feb. 2, and roughly the same number of patients and escorts have left. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of patients who have left is 127 as of Feb. 13.
Fariza Barbakh, 49, was among the earliest to return to Gaza after Rafah reopened, crossing in the early hours of Feb. 3. “The experience of returning was difficult — the waiting, the inspections, and the authorities taking most of our belongings,” she said. “But we survived, and that is what matters most.”
Barbakh left Gaza with her daughter on March 2 to receive cancer treatment in Egypt. Even though her physical condition improved, this was counteracted by the psychological toll of being away from her loved ones in the line of fire.
“I felt like I hadn’t received any treatment at all because of the intense mental strain of following the news,” she said. “My brother-in-law, cousins, and other relatives were killed. With each piece of news, I became exhausted and had to be taken to the hospital. Then my children and husband were displaced, and I felt they needed me.
“Many people asked me why I returned to Gaza, saying there was no life there,” Barabakh went on. And it’s true, I felt like I was going to faint from the destruction I saw; I couldn’t believe this was Gaza. But I dreamed of returning every moment.”
Sick and wounded Palestinians prepare to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment through the Rafah Crossing, Khan Younis southern Gaza Strip, February 9, 2026. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
The journey out of Gaza, for those lucky enough to receive permission, is much more straightforward than the journey in. “I was very afraid of traveling because of what we had heard about the suffering of those who returned, but the procedures were relatively simple,” Rasha Al-Farra, who left the Strip with her three children on Feb. 11, told +972. “The most frightening part was the drive: Everything around us was completely destroyed. Seeing Israeli military jeeps along the way was terrifying.”
Al-Farra received permission to leave in order to access medical treatment for her 20-year-old daughter, Doaa, whose right leg and the toes of her left foot were amputated as a result of an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis a year ago. Doaa underwent multiple surgeries in an attempt to save her legs, but severe shortages of medicine prevented her wounds from healing, ultimately forcing doctors to proceed with the amputation.
For almost a year, Al-Farra tried repeatedly to secure permission to travel abroad so Doaa could be fitted with prosthetic limbs. This week, they were finally able to leave Gaza, along with Al-Farra’s two younger children.
“On Tuesday, the WHO contacted us and told us to go to Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis early the next morning,” Al-Farra told +972. “We left the hospital with a group of patients on a bus heading toward the [Rafah] crossing. The bus stopped at an Israeli military checkpoint [between Khan Younis and Rafah], where soldiers inspected us one-by-one using scanning devices that we had to pass through.”
After boarding the bus again, they continued on to the Rafah Crossing. On the Palestinian side, they were screened by EUBAM and the PA before crossing into Egypt.
“There, it felt safe,” Al-Farra recounted. “We were able to sit and rest after the long journey that had started early in the morning and stretched into the evening. Young men received us, offered us water, and welcomed us.”
The family was then transferred to housing in El-Arish, where Doaa is expected to begin treatment. “I am waiting to see where exactly we should go and who will treat my daughter,” Al-Farra said. “I don’t know yet whether we will stay in Al-Arish or be transferred to Cairo. I am still trying to adjust and understand how we will begin her treatment.
“I hope she will receive proper care and be fitted with prosthetic limbs so she can walk again and return to her husband, who is waiting for her in Gaza,” Al-Farra continued. “And I hope I can return as well to my husband and my two older children whom I had to leave behind.”
Sick and wounded Palestinians wait at the medical referrals department of Nasser Medical Complex seeking treatment abroad via the Rafah Crossing with Egypt, Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, February 3, 2026. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
‘There is no substitute for our country’
Meanwhile, Gazans who left the Strip before the start of the war are so far barred from returning. Among them is Yassin Anwar Abu Awda, a social activist from Al-Shati refugee camp who traveled to Turkey for a conference on Sept. 24, 2023, just two weeks before the war began.
His wife and six children remained in the Strip for eight months, which included 20 days in which he lost all contact with them. “I followed the events moment by moment, filled with fear and longing for them,” he told +972.
In April 2024, just a few weeks before Israel shut Rafah Crossing, Abu Awda paid NIS 15,000 ($5,000) to get his wife and children out (one of his children had a foot injury, another an eye infection). The rest of his family — his parents, sisters, nieces, and nephews — had to remain in Gaza.
Since Israel announced the limited reopening of the crossing, he has been following the news constantly and joined online networks of Palestinians in Egypt who were also plotting their return. But with even those who are eligible currently forced to wait indefinitely, it does not seem that those who left before the war will be able to return anytime soon. “I feel like I was forcibly exiled,” he said.
The reports of the harsh treatment awaiting Gazans upon their return has not deterred him. “I want to return to Gaza despite what I witnessed of the humiliation and degradation of returnees at the Israeli army checkpoints,” Abu Awda said. “I haven’t built any future for my family in Egypt because the future for our children and our lives is in Palestine. There is no substitute for our country, and it is our right to return to our homes and our families.”
Rand Abu Mustafa is in the opposite boat: She is desperate to leave Gaza. A year and a half ago, her 12-year-old son, Mohammed, was struck by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike which caused him to lose his sight. Ever since, she has been trying to secure a medical evacuation for him with her as his companion, before his condition becomes permanent. “We need to travel in order to treat my son and save him from a life of blindness,” she told +972.
When the WHO contacted her on the day Rafah re-opened, she thought they had been selected for evacuation. But the call was only to tell her that the crossing was operating again and that she should be ready, when notice does come, to depart. Almost two weeks later, they are still waiting with no sense of when that call may come.
According to the WHO, over 900 Palestinians have died while awaiting medical evacuation from Gaza since Israel occupied and sealed Rafah Crossing in May 2024.
In response to +972’s inquiry, an Israeli army spokesperson refused to comment on the role of the Abu Shabab militia in screening people returning to Gaza.
“No incidents of inappropriate behavior, abuse, arrests, or confiscation of property by the Israeli security establishment are known,” the spokesperson stated, adding that the army “check[s] the identities of those entering against the lists approved by the Ministry of Defense, and carr[ies] out a strict inspection of the luggage. It should be emphasized that the policy for entering the luggage at the Rafah Crossing and the various security procedures were communicated and published in advance to all parties.”
EUBAM responded to +972’s questions about confiscating returnees’ belongings at the Rafah Crossing by noting that “the information relevant to travelers, such as permitted items and basic conditions of travel, is communicated to passengers in advance by the relevant authorities.
“Non-authorized items are confiscated by the Palestinian border officials in accordance with the agreed rules. If toys contain electronic elements, then they will be confiscated by the Palestinian border officials in line with the terms of the agreement.”