#ImFromGaza
Share this post to highlight the daily struggle and restrictions of movement for people living in #Gaza #Wise13 #ImFromGaza
This past October, students from Gaza were supposed to make the journey from Gaza to Doha to attend the annual global education WISE conference being held at the QNCC in Qatar. Due to the blockade, they wouldn't make it.
The trip would include a tenuous border crossing into Egypt at the Rafah border crossing, the only possible exit for people in Gaza, often times the border is closed, or people wait days to have their visa’s checked only to be rejected while seeking education opportunities or medical treatment abroad.
Once they are granted permission to enter Egypt to travel to Doha, they Egyptian authorities deport them to Qatar, escorting them on a six hour bus ride across the Sinai peninsula to the airport where they are held in a deportation area until their flight boards.
This year due to safety concerns, the difficulty getting visas and permission, the students were informed it would not be possible for them to travel just two days before they were due to begin their journey to Doha.
One student, Esraa M. Yaseen shares her thoughts on receiving the news, and once again being told that because of where she is from, she does not have the freedom of movement most of us take for granted:
“I was supposed to be in Egypt now, to start my trip to Doha tomorrow along with a distinct group of Palestinian students, we were supposed to speak on behalf of educated students in the Gaza Strip. We were supposed to attend the WISE conference for which we spent three months preparing. We dreamed of the most unforgettable trip ever. As for myself, my passport, with its very distinguished sentence “Valid for ALL countries” written inside it, was kept under my pillow for days! I was thinking of myself day by day feeling prettier, glorious, confident, and holding my country and people’s message. I thought that this event will make my year! I imagine myself at the airport, and another image in the plane flying between clouds. I might be exaggerating, but honestly this is the logic of a girl who has her dreams hovering over the world but is restrained by borders. I was expecting a lot to happen as I live in Gaza, the city where disappointments and surprises always pop up out of everywhere, bringing out the fact that our passport isn’t valid to ANY country. The disappointing fact was that none of us were able to get out of the border frame created by the occupation. The message received to tell us the following: "Due to the critical security situation in Egypt that keeps deteriorating, I regret to tell you that the Trip to the WISE Conference has been cancelled.” Tomorrow, at 01:55 is the time of the plane to take off. Tell the people in Doha to put a Legion of Honor on our seats, for we should have been there, if the world had not been having this attitude. Sincerely, Esraa M. Yaseen”
