“My mother and sister were martyred in the war, and I died a thousand times after them, because I was deprived of seeing them,” and the Gazan girl Lamia longs after the war to set foot on the soil of Gaza and kiss the soil of their graves.
Lamia Abu Teir, 39, represents the situation of Gazans abroad, who lived with their loved ones and witnessed the horrors of war around the clock. They lost those they lost, and the horrors of the missiles did not subside inside them, even while they slept.
“As much as I love her and she loves me, I suffered from her separation and being deprived of saying goodbye to her,” Lamia, who lives in London, told Safa.
She adds, “When the war intensified, I accepted my mother’s passing, believing that God had chosen her as a martyr. I began to see all of Gaza as martyrs, and I lived with all of Gaza, not just the tragedy of losing my mother.”
“The alienation and separation are a war no less horrific than the Gaza war. In fact, we suffer more for them than they do,” Lamia describes her life throughout the two years of the war of extermination.
Today, after the ceasefire was declared, and although the dust of the Gaza war has not settled and life there remains gray, Lamia longs to visit and “share everything with her family, and visit the graves of the martyrs and my mother,” she says.
There is no precise figure for the number of Palestinians from Gaza abroad, but it is estimated that their numbers are in the tens of thousands, including expatriates and hundreds who left hoping to return after the war, including patients and their companions.
However, the government media office in Gaza stated in a statistic to Safa News Agency that the numbers circulating about Gazans traveling abroad should be accurately clarified. The office explained that the number of travelers since the start of the aggression is approximately 120,000 citizens, including approximately 80,000 stranded in Egypt awaiting their return, and approximately 40,000 others in 19 countries around the world for temporary reasons.
The dream of return and the nightmare of being banned
Anas Baraka, 27, a resident of the UAE, was planning to return to Gaza at the start of the war of extermination, fearing for his family and being unable to live abroad under those circumstances.
He told Safa News Agency, “For two years, returning to Gaza has been a dream of mine. I tried at the beginning, but my family prevented me, hoping it would end well.”
He adds sadly, “But what we hadn’t expected happened. They destroyed our home, displaced my family and uncles, and the whole family was left with no home.”
“Every piece of news, every picture, every video broke my heart over and over again, and I kept texting my family out of fear for their lives.”
“My brother was seriously injured during the war. Communication was cut off that day, and no one from the family responded. This was the most difficult moment of the war, when your mind wanders to all the possibilities, including the martyrdom of everyone,” he describes his state of alienation throughout the war.
He wishes he could “return to Gaza, but if Gaza were as it was, not as it was, I don’t know how I would bear the scene of the resurrection that I see there from afar, and that burns my heart.”
The alienation of distance and the agony of loss
Since her sister passed away in the UAE during treatment, Reham Shahada, 50, has been counting the days until her return to Gaza, despite the scenes of destruction there, including her home and neighborhood, which have been reduced to nothing.
She told Safa News Agency, “I left Gaza at the beginning of the war to accompany my sister who was sick with cancer. I left my home and my husband, hoping to return as I had left.”
She added, “But everything went against our wishes. My sister died months later, and I was left alone in the UAE, denied the right to return due to the border closure.”
“My night was neither night nor day. I was tormented by every scene in Gaza,” says Rehab.
Since the ceasefire, Shahada has been following the news of the Rafah border crossing and the return of Gazans from abroad. She hopes “the day will come when they knock on my door and tell me to leave and return to Gaza.”
Although the ceasefire stipulates in its first phase that it will be opened for the return of Gazans and that travel will not be restricted, and even though the Palestinian embassy in Cairo has announced its intention to partially resume operations at the crossing to enable those stranded to return, Israel has so far refused to implement the agreement.
On October 11, a ceasefire agreement in Gaza came into effect, following a genocidal war that lasted more than two years, during which more than 54,000 people were killed, thousands more wounded, and more than 10,000 missing under the rubble.
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