Gazans desperate to leave still struggling to do so, even as Israel claims door is open

Appearing on a screen from his home in Spain, 30-year-old Ezzadeen Shehab looked like any ordinary young European studying for a master’s degree in writing. Clutching a pen, with a piece of artwork propped next to a cabinet behind him, Shehab appeared ensconced in domestic tranquility. The comfortable scene, though, belied the struggles and suffering of a young man who had spent the last three years on an odyssey to leave the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre and the war that erupted in its wake. Shehab was born and raised in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. After finishing school, he left for Egypt to pursue higher education, eventually moving to Isfahan, Iran, to study medicine. Throughout his nine years of studies in Iran, he did not return to Gaza once. His first trip home, to celebrate completing his studies, came on October 4, 2023. He planned to stay for a few days and then leave for a medical internship in Germany. Nearly three years later, at the end of July 2026, Shehab finally left Gaza, going to Spain instead of Germany after receiving a scholarship for a master’s degree in writing. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Newsletter email address Get it By signing up, you agree to the terms He won the scholarship after his writings on the war, initially published on social media, were turned into a book, “Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes From the Genocide in Gaza,” published earlier this year by Scribe UK. War-wounded Palestinians and other patients prepare to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment through the Rafah border crossing, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, February 9, 2026. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) Israel’s government says it wants Gazans to leave the territory, and many Palestinians are eager to escape the rubble-strewn and poverty-stricken enclave. But nearly a year after the ceasefire that began in October 2025, Gazans still face immense difficulties when trying to leave the Strip. Advertisement The main obstacle is finding a country willing to accept them. But even for those who do have somewhere to go, bureaucratic hurdles stemming from the situation inside Gaza can make the process of leaving lengthy and uncertain. A slight rise in departures Exclusive data obtained by The Times of Israel from authorities overseeing the crossings illustrates the scale of the bottleneck. Since the ceasefire began, some 10,500 people have left Gaza — more than 6,000 through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt and some 4,500 through the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Israel. The figure is only slightly higher than during a comparable period of the war: Between June 2024 and July 2025, some 8,000 Gaza residents left the Strip, indicating that the complicated mechanism governing departures has remained largely unchanged since the ceasefire. That is despite the Defense Ministry announcing the establishment of a directorate for the “voluntary departure” of Gaza residents in early 2025, saying it was meant to help hundreds of thousands of Palestinians get to third countries. The Israeli move came after US President Donald Trump unveiled an initiative that envisioned relocating some 2 million Gaza residents outside the Strip as part of a broader proposal for ending the war. Advertisement But the 20-point plan Trump presented in September 2025 took a markedly different approach. World Health Organization vehicles leave the Red Crescent center as Palestinian patients and war-wounded, are escorted towards the Kerem Shalom crossing to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment abroad, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 2, 2026. (Bashar Taleb / AFP) “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza,” the plan stated — an apparent reversal from his initial proposal to relocate Gaza’s entire population. Nonetheless, Defense Minister Israel Katz said earlier this month that the initial plan was still under discussion between Israel and the US, though the White House denies this. Katz claimed surveys showed that around 80 percent of Gazans sought to leave but had nowhere to go. “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” Katz said at a conference on September 2. “Hamas isn’t allowing them [to leave], and there are no countries in the world taking them in. President Trump put the issue on the agenda. Now every country needs to take people in — and that’s the big issue.” Should other countries be open to taking in Gazans, Katz said the Israeli government “is organized and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible.” Members of the international community have repeatedly accused Israel of attempting to facilitate the mass transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population, a charge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denies. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment. However, right-wing politicians, including figures in his government, have repeatedly called for efforts to encourage Gazan emigration. Advertisement In recent weeks, as Israel heads toward elections, several political parties — including the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and a party headed by controversial former IDF general Ofer Winter have stressed that they would promote “voluntary migration” from Gaza as part of the next government. Thanks to disastrous living conditions, many Gazans seem willing to take Israel up on the offer, though some experts note that there is nothing voluntary about migration under such circumstances, accusing Israel of pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing. For now, those trying to leave contend that their efforts are being stymied rather than facilitated. No contact between Gazans and Israel When the war broke out on October 7, Israel completely sealed off its border with the Strip, though the Rafah Crossing into Egypt remained open for those wishing to leave. Palestinians move through the Rafah Crossing as a European Union official looks on, February 2026. (EUBAM) The Egyptian company Hala facilitated the departure of anyone able to pay — around $5,000 per person — regardless of whether they had ties to a third country or required medical treatment, subject only to security approval by both Israel and Egypt. Shehab’s plans to leave for Germany were stymied by the suddenly steep price of exiting, as well as the difficulty of reaching Rafah, at the Strip’s far southern edge, from his family home in Jabalia, on the other end of the suddenly war-sundered enclave. The IDF’s capture of the Gaza-Egypt border in May 2024 led to Rafah being closed for several months, making it impossible to leave the Strip. Beginning in July 2024, Israel started allowing a limited number of medical evacuations from Gaza to third countries through the Kerem Shalom Crossing into southern Israel. From there, evacuees would either travel to Ramon Airport near Eilat for a flight to their destination or travel overland to Jordan and fly from there. The evacuations began following a petition filed by several human rights organizations — Gisha, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual. In early February 2025, Israel began allowing Gazans with certain kinds of visas for third countries to leave through Kerem Shalom using the same mechanism, even if there was no medical necessity. Advertisement The Rafah crossing has been reopened since February of this year, though Egypt no longer accepts Gazans simply on the basis of payment. Instead, only those with permission to seek specialized medical care may enter. Cairo also allows some Gazans to transit via Egypt to a third country, so long as they have a visa and a connection to the foreign locale, such as family or a job there. Palestinian patients prepare to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment through the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt on February 8, 2026. (Bashar Taleb / AFP) France, for example, accepted a group of 115 Gazans in July 2025 through its PAUSE program for “scientists and artists in exile.” The program is intended to allow researchers, academics and artists who cannot continue their work in their home countries because of war, persecution or security threats to relocate to France and continue their work there. A scholarship to study in a third country is also a ticket out via Egypt, so Shehab began trying to find a school willing to sponsor him. He began applying widely, contacting institutions and officials in more than 20 countriesin hopes of finding a way to leave. “In the end, I wrote a book [about life during the war] and got a scholarship for a master’s degree in literature in Spain in January 2025,” he said. Thanks to the book, he was able to get in touch with a professor at a Spanish university, who helped him secure the scholarship. Gazans wishing to leave must coordinate their exit with Israeli authorities, but the standard liaison for such approvals, the Palestinian Authority, plays practically no role in the process, according to both Shehab and Shai Grinberg, a spokesperson for the Gisha rights group, which assists Gazans seeking to leave the Strip. At most, said Grinberg, the PA may sometimes assist with issuing documents, such as Palestinian passports, or forwarding travel papers to relevant authorities. Instead of the PA, the host country’s local mission serves as the intermediary between the two sides: On one end, it communicates with the Gaza resident to complete the visa process; on the other, it works with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which carries out a security screening of the individual whom the country is seeking to evacuate. COGAT, a Defense Ministry body which deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, confirmed to The Times of Israel that a Gazan seeking to leave the Strip communicates only with the relevant foreign embassy, and not with Israeli authorities. In Shehab’s case, the university that agreed to sponsor him contacted Spain’s Foreign Ministry to begin the process of coordinating his departure from Gaza with Israel. Ezz al-Din Shehab, a Gazan who left the Gaza Strip, at his new home in Spain, July 2026. (Courtesy) Only countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel and maintain a mission in the country capable of working with COGAT can use the mechanism to evacuate Gaza residents they have agreed to accept. Though ties between Israel and Spain have frayed significantly over the Gaza war in recent years, Madrid continues to maintain an embassy in Tel Aviv that could coordinate the departure. According to Grinberg, some countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel have refused to operate through the mechanism, meaning Gazans cannot travel there from the Strip. She declined to name the countries. She added that the level of effort and involvement varies considerably from country to country. “There are countries that have been significantly involved in evacuating residents from Gaza, and there are countries that, unless we’re talking about their actual citizens [who need to be evacuated, rather than family reunification and other cases], tend not to help,” she said. Connections needed For Shehab, getting the scholarship was just the first step of a process that would force him to stick around Gaza for an extra year and a half. Most of the scholarship and visa application process could be completed online. But to finalize it, Shehab was required to send physical documents to the Spanish Consulate General in Jerusalem, which handles matters concerning residents of Gaza and the West Bank. For a Gaza resident, that seemingly mundane requirement presented an enormous obstacle. Since the war began, postal services connecting Gaza with the outside world have ceased operating, leaving residents unable to mail documents abroad. “The university asked me for documents that I had to send to them at the [Spanish mission] in Jerusalem. How was I supposed to send something to Jerusalem?” Shehab recalled. A Palestinian woman shows her passport to the camera as she waits at the Rafah border crossing in the southern