When Amira returned to her country, there was no welcoming committee waiting for her. The 30-year-old Arab-Israeli citizen arrived on November 16 with her two children – four and a half years old – in Taba on the Egyptian border with Israel on the Red Sea coast. Left behind under the bombs were her husband and her mother, without the right to leave because they were not of the same nationality. Amira starred in an odyssey in which she and her children crossed half of a war-ravaged area to Rafah. Arriving in Egypt exhausted, she crossed the entire Sinai Peninsula with other evacuees in a military convoy whose members did not allow her and her children to rest or eat. When she re-entered Israel, she received only reception from the Shin Bet, Israel's secret service, which treated her as a suspect. “That was the worst part of this process,” he says. “Tell us everything you know about Hamas!” they shouted at him between threats and asked him if his children were really his. “They checked every photo, every number and every message on my phone.”
Amira (not her real name because she prefers to keep her true identity secret) is among the group of 71 Israelis who managed to leave Gaza in two convoys on November 16 and December 6, all Arabs and the majority of Bedouin origin . Some left the country along with the rest of the foreign citizens – no Gazans with citizenship or legal residency in Israel were able to leave the Strip. The woman traveled with her children from her mother's home in the town of Al Qarara, north of Khan Younis, and they went from shelter to shelter, skirting the rubble with essentials to reach the Rafah border crossing, the only exit from Gaza into Egypt . Unlike those rescued from Gaza with American, French or Spanish passports, the Israelis who managed to escape the horror were unable to take many of their closest relatives with them. The majority of the group consisted of women who married, moved, settled and started families from Gaza residents. In many cases, their husbands and children remained there.
“It was a very painful journey, we had bombings the whole time,” recalls Amina, who now lives with her Israeli family. “There was no gas, there was nothing. “We ended up finding a car that took us to the border, but we had to pay the driver double because he didn’t want to take the risk of taking us,” he continues. As they crossed the Rafah Pass they were searched from top to bottom. Exhausted, they had to sit on the ground for hours until a bus escorted by Egyptian soldiers picked them up and took them across the Sinai to Taba. “They didn’t let my husband and my mother pass. “They had to stay in Gaza.” The evacuee describes the horrors of the street in detail. “My four-year-old daughter knew what was going on. When he heard the explosions, he covered his ears and couldn't stop screaming. I noticed that my little son was also scared because he was constantly moving and looking at the windows. We had to go. We could all have died in a bomb attack,” says Amira.
Two Israeli human rights organizations were responsible for coordinating the rescue with the Israeli government. Both NGOs are responsible for managing military permits so that these families can meet their relatives on both sides of the border. About 15% of Gazans have relatives in Israel and intermarriage is common on both sides of the fence. “This is called the 'split family process' in Israel,” explains Daniel Shenhar, the head of the legal department at HaMoked, which, together with the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, works to ensure freedom of movement for Palestinians. worked hard to get these people out. “The majority are women who have been turning to us for years to obtain a permit that would allow them to live permanently in Gaza and return to Israel to visit their relatives.”
“The problem for these couples is often the children,” Shenhar continues. “Many of these women fear that their children born in Gaza have Israeli documents that allow them to leave and re-enter Israel on a regular basis, but when they turn 18 they have to leave Gaza and from that moment on they are barred from returning forbidden.” to go home because they don't give them permits.” For this reason, many others stay when they come of age and cannot leave Gaza, although they retain Israeli citizenship.
After the initial confusion of the days following the attacks, HaMoked and Gisha began work. Both organizations contacted COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body responsible for civil affairs in the occupied territories. “We called and wrote to them for weeks to explain that there were Israeli citizens in Gaza and that we wanted to get them out of there,” recalls Shenhar, the legal adviser. “Until we sent them a list of everyone we had been in contact with before the war started. Surprisingly, they promised us that they would get her out. I remember the upscale atmosphere in the country seemed a bit strange to us.”
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Missing or dead
Compiling this list was a huge and largely unsuccessful task. “We couldn’t contact everyone. Many of the people in our recordings didn't answer their phones, about half. We believe they may be missing or dead,” Shenhar continues. They asked those who responded to pass the information on to those who were in a similar situation. Faced with the prospect of being part of a divided family, there were women with the right to leave who chose to stay because they had not managed the Israeli papers for their children. Others did not want to separate from their husbands. HaMoked and Gisha are now asking COGAT to allow them to go out with the children but have not received a response so far.
Among the Arabs with Israeli nationality who were also captured were several families, women with children, who came to Gaza in the days before the start of the war with special permission from the military to visit sick relatives, attend a wedding or a funeral, for reasons judged to get it. When the bombs began to fall, they remained trapped there.
Certainly Amira says that the most dramatic moment was arriving in Israel, after hours without food or drink. “After checking our records over and over again, the agents wanted to make sure that my children were really my children, and to prove that, I had to show them the photos on my phone of them being in my house,” he recalls itself. “Then they put us one by one into interrogation rooms and started asking us questions.” It didn’t matter that Amira was one of his nationals. “They asked me where there were Hamas people or if I was trying or working for Hamas. “Tell us everything you know about Hamas, where the rockets are, if you know anyone from Hamas.” “I told them I don't know anything.”
Then another investigator arrived who seemed to behave like a good police officer. He says he gave his son chocolate and then said, “Look how we treat Palestinian children instead of killing them like Hamas did.” “But they are Israeli children with Israeli papers,” I replied. They have nothing to do with Hamas or the war. Children are dying and it is neither my fault nor theirs.” The woman complains that they barely brought them food and water until they insisted. The same applies to blankets. That three people from the group were arrested, shouted at others and accused of rejoicing in the October 7th attacks. “You will not return to Gaza after this. There will be no Gaza Strip to return to. “We will not allow you to make a single mistake, we will take care of you,” they told him. I explained to him that I hoped to settle in Israel with my husband and mother. “That won’t happen,” they said. “Think about taking your husband with you to go to another country.”
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