As Gaza unravels, Palestinians flee

By the time the Islamic militant group Hamas declared victory in Gaza Thursday, thousands of Palestinians had already fled the coastal strip.

Recent figures collected by European monitors at Rafah, the crossing into Egypt, show that some 14,000 Palestinians have left Gaza in the past year, driven by a combination of political insecurity and economic strain.

Now, the violence between the two main Palestinian factions, which began to escalate Saturday and turned into brutal street warfare early this week, is driving even more Gazans to find a way out.

Hazem Balousha, a journalist, says that during the fighting between Hamas and Fatah, bullets and mortar rounds have been flying past his home at a furious clip.

"Some of the bullets entered my house," Mr. Balousha said in a phone call from his home. "It's a civil war. Why should I stay here? Hang around waiting to get killed?" Balousha is one of the relatively lucky ones. He's already been abroad – he did his B.A. degree and a master's in international relations in Turkey – and has recently obtained visas to more than one European country. The trick is getting out of Gaza itself.

"Today, there is no way to get out of Gaza. All passages are closed," says Shlomo Dror, Israel's spokesman for the coordinator for government activities in the territories.

"The real people controlling Rafah are Hamas, because they're just outside the checkpoint and they're controlling who can come and go," he says.

Palestinian officials had asked to close Rafah over the weekend when they saw they could not protect European monitors there, Mr. Dror says.

"We're not in charge there and we can't do anything about it. The only way we can help the Palestinians is to take over the area, which we don't want to do," he adds.

Dror says that Hamas militants have set up a checkpoint on the Palestinian side of the Erez Crossing into Israel, about 330 feet beyond the one Palestinian Authority police usually run, and are stopping cars to arrest anyone who's a member of Fatah. "It's enough for people not to even try to come to the checkpoint," he says.

Balousha's departure can be counted as one drop in the brain drain, occurring in the Palestinian territories, which also includes people who returned with the promise of peace in the mid-1990s. Equally desperate to leave are many Palestinians of extremely moderate means, some of whom are selling their homes and cars in order to pay travel agents and brokers able to arrange tickets and visas – often at exorbitant rates.

Moreover, the tortuous route out can often include obtaining false identification papers or scrambling for the fastest route to a Western European country in order to ask for asylum.

Gazans who hope to leave are turning to agents who demand sumsof several thousand dollars, a reporter for the Monitor in Gaza has learned. In exchange, they get a plane ticket and a visa. One well-worn route includes obtaining a visa to Cuba. The idea, however, is to get to Egypt, and then, when the plane stops somewhere in Europe on its way west, to get off the plane and ask for political asylum.

Assad Abu Nihad, who didn't want to use his full name for fear of legal problems or retribution, helped his young son get out this way. After paying $2,500 to a broker to arrange his trip this time last year, the 23-year-old got off the plane in Spain on his way to Cuba and told a story of torture to authorities that he knew would help his claim for asylum. After being held for six months in a detention center, he was granted the right to stay, and is now doing kitchen work in Madrid.

Without the money his son sends back, Abu Nihad doesn't know how the rest of the family would survive.

"I wish he could take me to Spain, and the entire family with him. But he's going to start gradually, by pulling out his mother, and she'll be able to take me later on," says Abu Nihad.

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