‘In Egypt now. Free!’ First evacuees from Gaza feel relief and gratitude

With no fuel available, some arrived on foot, others by donkey cart, carrying as much luggage as possible. Then they went inside to wait. The mood was tense, but also tended towards relief.

So much depended on the bureaucratic minutiae of passports and visas, on the long, cumbersome list of names that determined whether someone could make the crossing—and perhaps whether he or she would survive.

Adal Abu Middain, 18, an Egyptian, went to Rafah with her sister, a US citizen, and other relatives on Thursday morning, hoping to evacuate after three previous attempts. Sometime during that time, an Israeli airstrike destroyed their home, she said.

Although most of the family had been allowed to cross, Ms Abu Middain said they all had to return because her six-year-old niece, Maha, who she said also had US citizenship, was not on the list of names provided by foreign nationals. authorities had been constituted. embassies and approved by Israel, Egypt and Hamas. They couldn’t leave her.

“She is only six years old. How is she going to travel alone without her family? she said. ‘She can’t eat alone. She can’t go to the toilet alone.”

At about the same time, halfway around the world in Colorado, three weeks of agony came to an end for Danny Preston. His mother, Dr. Barbara Zind, a pediatrician from Colorado, was volunteering with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund when war broke out.

When she heard weeks ago that the border might open to foreigners, Dr. Zind, 68, was so optimistic she could leave that she gave away many of her clothes to others who needed them more. She spent the rest of her time in Gaza sleeping in jeans in the basement of a United Nations building, in the parking lot of a U.N. school and in the playroom of another building’s kindergarten, her son said.