When Fady Abukhousa traveled to the Gaza Strip from Australia a few weeks ago, he never imagined the nightmare scenario he would find himself in.
He, his wife Amani and their two young children, Mohammed and Yazan – all Australian citizens – were visiting family in the besieged enclave.
Abukhousa returned home early and returned to Sydney in late September, leaving his wife and children behind. Today, they are trapped in the blockaded enclave amid Israel’s devastating bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip. Other members of his family who are not Australian citizens, including his mother and brother, are also stuck.
“It’s really difficult,” Abukhousa told Al Jazeera, adding that her children, aged seven and 10, cannot sleep at night because of the incessant bombing.
Since learning that the border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip was temporarily opened on Wednesday to allow the exit of a limited number of seriously injured people and foreign nationals, Abukhousa has been desperately trying to reunite with his family.
His wife and children, along with some 500 others, are among a list of foreigners and dual nationals that the Gaza Borders and Crossings Authority said it contacted early Wednesday, urging them to leave for the Rafah border post.
But due to the communications blackout that Israel reimposed on Gaza overnight, Abukhousa doesn’t know if they got the news, as he hasn’t heard from them in two days.
His situation is emblematic of the challenges that persist in getting Gaza residents out of the Israeli bombardment of the Strip following Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7.
“I don’t think they know (the passage) is open,” Abukhousa said, referring to his family.
Her family has already made the journey to the crossing point four times in recent weeks, while sheltering about 20 minutes’ drive away in the Bureij refugee camp in the center of the strip. from Gaza.
But they left each time, realizing that the border remained closed and that the situation at the border was too dangerous for them to stay.
The Australian embassy, meanwhile, told Abukhousa there was little it could do to help his family.
No security, bombs everywhere
In Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, Nadia Eldin shares Abukhousa’s despair.
Eldin is not a dual citizen herself or a foreign national. But his daughter Lama is a Bulgarian citizen, born in this European country when the Eldin family lived there around 15 years ago.
Although Lama is on the Gaza Borders and Crossings Authority’s list, she has not received a call telling her to head to the Rafah border, her mother said.
Instead, Eldin received a call from friends in Ramallah on Wednesday, as communications were restored, urging them to head to the terminal.
This mother of three desperately wants to leave, seeking refuge with relatives she has in Cairo, Egypt, but the family has no car – nor the certainty that they won’t be bombed along the way, said she declared.
“What should I do now?” » Eldin asked, sobbing as she spoke to Al Jazeera on the phone. “There is no security. Bombs everywhere.
As she spoke, she noticed that her phone battery was dying. She can only recharge it using a generator for brief periods of the day.
Additionally, it is unclear whether people wishing to cross at Rafah need an Egyptian visa.
Amena Nasrate is not taking any risks. His mother and grandmother are in Gaza. The Palestinian student from Cairo, who is also an Australian citizen, was heading to her country’s embassy in Egypt on Wednesday to obtain visas for her relatives after learning of the terminal’s opening.
Nasrate’s father, Sam, is also listed by the Gaza Borders and Crossings Authority as an Australian citizen. He too remains in Gaza.
“The situation is getting worse,” she told Al Jazeera, eager to get her family out.
No secure passages
Al Jazeera spoke to four other dual nationals on the Gaza Borders and Crossings Authority list.
Two of them, having dual Japanese and Indonesian citizenship respectively, did not receive any calls from their embassy or other authorities asking them to head to the border post.
A woman, Samira Ismail Abusharkh, with dual citizenship in Austria, said she received a call from the Austrian embassy asking her to head with her husband to the Rafah crossing, but they did not provide them with information about means of transportation, she told Al Jazeera. .
Another man, whose two children, Islam and Hisham, have Japanese nationality, was invited by the Japanese embassy to head to the Rafah crossing.
But airstrikes continue around them and there is no safe passage out, he told Al Jazeera.
Back in Sydney, Abukhousa said he was shocked by the pace of the conflict and its destruction, as he awaited further news from his family.
“The situation is very tough,” he said.
