Archive for October 21st, 2014

Oct 21 2014

Travel challenges for Gazans fuel frustration

Published by under Articles,Palestinian politics

AlMonitor

By Daoud Kuttab

Meral, a pseudonym, 28, from the Gaza Strip, has traveled the world and returned to her hometown in Gaza. But her account of the trip she took last week and related to Al-Monitor was so traumatic that it might be the last one she attempts to take out of Gaza.

A freelance journalist who works with leading global media outlets, Meral was invited to a media conference in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The trip out of Gaza was tricky, she said. One needs to organize a trip out of the Gaza Strip weeks in advance. Normally, the Rafah border crossing — still controlled by Hamas — has two days reserved for students and two days for those wishing to perform hajj or umrah in Saudi Arabia. Business and leisure trips simply do not have their own day at the border, so these trips require careful planning ahead of time.

Meral knew that she needed a visa to enter Lebanon, but when she was notified that she could leave on Oct. 1, she decided to leave then in the hope that the visa to Lebanon, applied for long ago, would arrive within the days she would be waiting in Cairo. Had she turned down the Gazan government’s offer to leave on Oct. 1, it would have been uncertain when she would have been able to leave next. This could have taken weeks, and she would have certainly missed attending the conference on journalism and social media sponsored by Canal France International (CFI) and the Samir Kassir Foundation. Continue Reading »

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