It was a cold morning in November 2023 when Rawan Abu Safiya found herself sitting alone in her sister’s guest room, displaced in northern Gaza. Suddenly, the shelling of a tank obliterated the space she was in. When she regained consciousness, she couldn’t see out of her right eye, as shrapnel had pierced its way through her face. The skin on all her limbs had melted from third-degree burns.
Months later, after relocating from hospital to hospital inside the strip — from Al-Awda in Jabalia to Al-Shifa in Rimal, both medical facilities later damaged or destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — her health was barely recovering. Rawan could hardly believe it when her name, which her father had registered on an evacuation application weeks before, was selected for medical treatment outside Gaza. For dozens of miles, she and her elderly mother trekked to reach Rafah, counting their blessings as they believed they were escaping hell. However, instead of being sent to Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, where other Gazan patients had been evacuated, they were relocated to Egypt. There they found themselves in a painstaking limbo, denied most rights ever since arriving in March 2024.
Rawan Abu Safiya is a relative of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital who was abducted by the IDF last month along with other staff and patients. A photograph of him walking amid the rubble toward Israeli tanks sparked emergency appeals for his rescue worldwide. His condition remains unknown. The Abu Safiyas, like most Gazan families, have met a tragic fate. Those stranded in Egypt have had little opportunity to voice their hardship.
Palestinians in Egypt — who the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) embassy estimated numbered around…
Auteur: Carolina S. Pedrazzi
