On December 3, Israel announced that the Rafah border crossing with Egypt would reopen “in the coming days”, allowing Palestinians to leave Gaza for the first time in months. Of course, this statement was framed as a humanitarian measure to allow the return of people who urgently need to travel for medical care, education, or family reunification.
However, Israel’s announcement was met with an almost immediate rejection by Egypt, followed by a firm rejection by several Arab and Islamic countries.
To other countries, this response may seem cruel. It may appear that Arab states want to forcefully keep Palestinians in Gaza who are desperate for refuge somewhere safe. This fits perfectly into Israel’s claim that neighboring Arab states are responsible for Palestinian suffering because they do not “accept” them.
This is a falsehood unfortunately perpetuated by Western media, even though it is easily disproved.
Let me be clear: No, Arab countries are not keeping us in Gaza against our will, and neither is Hamas.
They want to make sure that if some of us are temporarily evacuated, when we can come back again. We want the same thing: guaranteed returns. But Israel refuses to acknowledge it. An announcement on December 3rd said the Rafah border would be open only one way for Palestinians to leave.
This was therefore clearly a move intended to begin the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homeland.
For Palestinians, this is not a new reality but part of a long and deliberate pattern. Since its founding, the Israeli state has focused on the dispossession, erasure, and forced displacement of Palestinians. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland and were not allowed to return. Among them was my 88-year-old grandfather. He still keeps the taboo (land register) of the Dunam land he owns in the village of Barka, 37 kilometers (23 miles) north of Gaza, and we are still not allowed to return there.
When Israel occupied Gaza in 1967, it barred Palestinians who had been studying or working abroad from returning. In the occupied West Bank, where colonization has not stopped for the past 58 years, Palestinians are regularly expelled from their homes and land.
In the past two years alone, Israel has occupied approximately 55,000 dunams of Palestinian land and displaced more than 2,800 Palestinians. In Jerusalem, Palestinians whose families have lived in the holy city for centuries are at risk of losing their right to live there unless they can prove that it is their “center of life.” More than 10,000 Palestinians have had their residency rights revoked in the past 25 years.
Since October 2023, Israel has repeatedly orchestrated forced evacuations in the Gaza Strip, dividing it into isolated zones separated by military corridors and “safe” axes, and attempting to launch a series of operations to drive northern residents southward. Each wave of mass bombing had the same underlying purpose. The goal was to drive the people of Gaza from their homes and push them to the border with Egypt. The latest push came just before the latest ceasefire took effect.
According to Dia Rashwan, head of Egypt’s National Intelligence Service, Cairo rejected Israel’s proposal. That’s because it was an attempt to circumvent Israel’s commitments outlined in the second phase of the ceasefire. This step would require Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, support the reconstruction process, allow the Palestinian Commission to take control of the Strip, and facilitate the deployment of security forces to stabilize the situation. By announcing the reopening of Rafah, Israel sought to avoid these obligations and reorient the political debate toward depopulation rather than reconstruction and reconstruction.
Other policies make it clear that Israel wants to create conditions that make our expulsion inevitable. It continues to bombard the Strip, killing hundreds of civilians and terrorizing hundreds of thousands.
The flow of sufficient food and medicine remains blocked, and reconstruction materials and temporary housing have not been allowed. It is doing everything possible to maximize the suffering of the Palestinian people.
This reality is made even crueler by harsh winters. A cold wind blows through an overcrowded camp filled with exhausted people who have endured every form of trauma imaginable. But despite our hunger, fatigue, and despair, we continue to cling to our land and reject Israel’s efforts to displace and wipe us out.
We also reject any outside guardianship or control over our destiny. We demand full Palestinian sovereignty over our lands, resources and borders. Our position is clear. The Rafah intersection must be open in both directions. Not as a means of transportation, but as a right to move freely.
Rafah must be accessible to those who wish to return home and those who need to be temporarily separated: students seeking to continue their education abroad, patients in need of urgent medical treatment not available in Gaza, and families who have been separated and are looking forward to being reunited. The siege has left thousands of critically ill Palestinians denied life-saving treatment, while hundreds of students with offers and scholarships from prestigious universities around the world are unable to travel to pursue their education.
Rafah should also be open to those who simply need respite after years of trauma – those who have left Gaza for a short period of time and need a return with dignity. Mobility is not a privilege. It’s a basic human right.
What we’re asking for is simple. It is the right to decide our future without coercion, without games over our existence or forced displacement under the guise of a humanitarian project.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
