The body in Cairo, the head in Gaza

Photo: Mathieu Carbasse Le Devoir The view from the Okal family residence, in Cairo, Egypt.

Mathieu Carbasse

Published at 12:00 am

• Middle East

“I didn’t want to leave. I just had to escape death.”

Leaving Gaza had never been an option for Amjad Okal, a 53-year-old retired police officer and father of five. Not even during the wars of 2008, 2012, 2014, or 2021. Not even on October 7, 2023, when the first Israeli bombs rained down on his neighborhood of Al-Zaytoun, southwest of Gaza City.

But on October 28, the house next to his was completely destroyed in a single strike: 75 dead at once. Corpses and body parts littered the ground. That day, Amjad decided to leave immediately with his family. His house would be destroyed the next day.

“All our efforts, our life’s work, have been wiped out. We have nothing left now.” Our dreams ended suddenly,” says this man with a generous smile, who is wearing a well-fitted Ralph Lauren polo shirt.

Photo: Mathieu Carbasse Le Devoir Amjad Okal and his son

Amjad and his family now live in a modest apartment in Cairo’s Nasr City neighborhood, paying US$600 (C$813) a month from his pension and the meager salary his wife Rana, a civil servant at the Gaza Media Ministry, still receives. The expatriate family also helps out sometimes.

The Okal family is among some 120,000 Palestinians who have sought refuge in Egypt through the Rafah crossing. After several trips through the Gaza Strip, she crossed the border by bus on January 1, 2024.

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The refugees had to pay a high price: $5,000 per adult, $2,500 for those under 16. Amjad gathered all his savings, sold his car and the few belongings he had left. He also asked his brothers who had moved to the United States for help. To get his wife, three sons, two daughters and their partners across, he paid a total of $45,000.

The price was set by the private agency that managed the system, Hala Company, owned by an influential businessman in North Sinai who is close to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. A lucrative business that continued until May and the closure of the Rafah border crossing.

Welcome… in the short term

Upon arrival in Egypt, Palestinians are granted a 45-day visa by the Egyptian authorities. After that, nothing. It is impossible to obtain a new visa and therefore to work, send children to school or apply for a residence permit. It is also impossible to benefit from refugee status since the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) is not mandated to work in the country.

“There is obviously a sense of solidarity from the Egyptian population towards the Palestinians. But the approach of the Egyptian government is much harsher. He considers any stay by Palestinians to be temporary and insists that they must return home sooner or later,” summarizes Michael Lynk, professor of law at the University of Western Ontario and former United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.

This is one of the reasons why there are no refugee camps in Egypt, with the government preferring to see them blend into the mass of a megalopolis of 25 million inhabitants.

Photo: Mathieu Carbasse Le Devoir Another view from the Okal family’s apartment

This loss of status is also the reality for Palestinians evacuated for medical reasons. The latter, numbering around 7,000, are taken care of by the government and treated in public hospitals, but they too lose their legal status after 45 days. This complicates the work of the few international charities authorized on Egyptian soil.

In her office in Cairo, Ingy Akoush, director of programs for Save the Children in Egypt, explains that this 45-day limit is a real problem. Her organization supports 400 children as part of its emergency education program, children who could benefit from access to public schools if they had legal status, like Syrian or Sudanese refugees. The 45-day question also complicates medical follow-ups.

This text is part of our Perspective section.

Unable to work, some families live in destitution once their visas expire. As of June 2024, Save the Children had already financially supported more than 1,800 Palestinians in Egypt.

“The worst things in my life”

Among the Palestinians who were evacuated for medical reasons is Amal, a mother who came to Egypt in January to accompany her 15-year-old son Ahmed, who was seriously injured in an Israeli attack (their names have been changed in this text for security reasons) in which her youngest son, Mohamed, lost his life.

Under her niqab, Amal has only her eyes to express her grief as a mother to the world. In her hand, the phone she holds shows the photo of her “martyr” son.

Photo: Mathieu Carbasse Le Devoir Amal shows a photo of her “martyr” son.

“I have seen the worst things in my life, people with their heads blown off, bodies in pieces. On October 9, we took refuge in an UNRWA school. It was in the explosion of this school that my son Mohamed was martyred [was killed, Editor’s note] on the 85th day of the war. His shoulder was torn away from the rest of his body. My other son, Ahmed, was badly injured in the leg and face.”

Amal still sees the image of her dead son, carried to the hospital in the shovel of a bulldozer. As for Ahmed, he lost his right eye and will keep many after-effects.

Far from a land at war but also from her family, Amal wants to find her husband and her other children who remained in Gaza. She also wants to mourn her son. But for now, she cannot leave Egypt.

A precarious mental health

Beyond the physical injuries, the psychological damage is also very present. For some, it is nightmares that plunge them back into the bombings, which make them see scenes of mutilated bodies and destroyed cities. Others are afraid of the dull noises and what comes from the sky. Le Devoir has observed this several times in interviews, when Tala would go to take shelter in the middle of an interview or when Islam would get nervous as soon as a plane passed over him. Even Poppy, Amjad's dog, runs to hide under a piece of furniture as soon as he hears a plane.

There are also the losses that could not be dealt with and the survivor’s guilt syndrome that manifests itself in many refugees with these unanswered questions: “Why me ?” or, rather, “Why not me ?”.

“For the moment, people are in denial, particularly because they are in action,” warns Save the Children spokesperson Omneya Ghamry. “As soon as the ceasefire is declared, we will have incredible mental health needs. It will even be the main issue.”

Deprived of school

For many Gazans, forced into blockade since 2007, education is seen as a window on the world. For some parents, not seeing their children sit on a school bench for a year causes great anxiety.

For Lina Taha, who arrived in Cairo with her family on February 17, it is even her greatest source of current worry.

“I have always tried to give our children a good education. And then, in a few days, I saw them in the war… I watched my children go and get water and I said to myself: “This is not possible, we can't live like this!” ” explains the mother, from the wealthy class of Gaza, over coffee and pastries in her apartment in Nasr City.

Photo: Mathieu Carbasse Le Devoir Lina and Jamel Alfadi with their children (Kareem, Tala and Miriam)

It was to give their children a chance that Lina and her husband, Jamel, decided to leave Gaza. A project coordinator for the Islamic Relief Worldwide organization, she continues to work remotely and hopes to obtain a visa to be able to stay in Egypt.

While waiting for their status to change, Lina and Jamel have enrolled their youngest daughter, Mariam, 13, in a private school in Cairo so that she can continue her education that she began at the Catholic school in Gaza.

Those who stayed behind

For these expatriates, contact with Gaza is difficult. They dread bad news. Many do not dare call their families, not knowing what to tell them. They don't want to pretend that it will get better, because they know that it's not true. And then, they don't always have the words to console.

Ahmed, the son of Amjad, the former police officer, is 19. He has kept in touch with his friends from Gaza, whom he has not seen since October 7. One of them lost his entire family while he had a broken spine. He will be operated on in Italy, but he will never walk again.

“When I talk to them, I avoid asking questions like ‘how are you ?’ or ‘what do you eat ?’, because I know my friends will not feel comfortable answering me. I put myself in their shoes… I ask them about their work, we talk about politics or more general questions,” explains Ahmed, who had to put his management studies at the University of Gaza on hold.

Ahmed says he is not in the mood to make friends in Egypt. “When I go out, I always feel sick thinking about my loved ones there, I can’t fully enjoy it,” he explains. “I get depressed, so I prefer to stay home.” »

And the future ?

If for all the Palestinians with whom Le Devoir spoke, the dream is to return to live in Gaza, no one can predict when this will be possible, or even if it will ever be possible.

And since Egypt cannot offer them legal status or temporary residence, all have their eyes turned abroad, where they hope to obtain asylum, generally in a country where a member of their family already lives. But places are expensive and no country is ready, for the moment, to welcome Palestinians in large numbers.

Canada, for example, has been offering a unique family reunification program since January 2024. Nearly 4,000 applications from Palestinians have already been received, for a total of 5,000 places offered.

It is an understatement to say that the possibilities of rebuilding their lives elsewhere are rare for the 120,000 Palestinians stuck in Egypt without any legal status. Rarer still than the places offered on the Hala agency’s buses.

This report was funded with support from the Transat International Journalism Fund-Le Devoir.