On day of my travel, one heads to the Stadium of Palestine, hoping to board the bus. Since the Egyptians do not share much information about who gets to travel on the designated days and since Hamas has a large list of people wanting to travel out of Gaza. No one quite knows what they get to board the bus. Thus on the three days the crossing opens, people go to the stadium everyday so they won’t miss their bus. The last day the crossing opened was last week and the Egyptian press release made it sound like they will allow Gazans wanting to travel will be able to do so. Unfortunately the reality was much different. Instead of processing fifteen Palestinian buses a day as this became the standard, the Egyptian side on the Rafah border processed seven a day. This is a grave tragedy since the Palestinians have fifty buses ready to go once the Egyptians ask for them; the total of buses processed this time was fifteen. My bus number is 36 thus it’s unlikely; I would have been able to leave on this opening.
The good news came as the Egyptians decided to extend the work of their side for one more day and many in Gaza celebrated this news as again the Egyptians made it sound via their media cheerleaders that they will let many people to travel. Upon hearing the news I headed to the Stadium where the buses headed to Rafah take off. I wasn’t alone, there were easily a thousand people hoping to return to their jobs, universities and some to their families. We arrived at five in the morning; the Palestinian officials arrived at nine and announced the bad news as communicated to them by the Egyptians, they will only load three buses and maybe three more later on during the day. Chaos broke and officials had to heard to too many pleas and too many women telling heart breaking stories about how they need to get back to their kids who are waiting fro them in Egypt or the story of the man whose wife has been waiting for him to return to Libya for two years now. Too many stories and too little to dot help them, the Palestinians officials had to be harsh in enforcing the law and making sure they only ones who board the bus are the ones whose names are on the bus list.
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