"'I would never do it again': Inside the struggle to enter and leave Gaza"

Last edited Sun Feb 22, 2026, 01:39 PM - Edit history (1)

This is the headline from an article from the news site "+972" dated 02/13/26 with a byline from Ruwaida Amer. The article details the experiences of several Palestinians trying to enter or leave through the Rafah crossing that is falsely called "open" when in fact it is highly restricted and only processing a trickle of those who have asked to pass.

The people returning to Gaza are passed through 4 different inspections. Two are the Egyptian inspectors on their side of the crossing and then a Palestinian Authority checkpoint being supervised by the EU and that organization is known as EUBAM. Then the terror really begins. The people are loaded onto a bus and taken to an inspection point run by one of the IDF established gangs known as the Abu Shabab militia. As one of the returning Palestinian women recounts:

"According to Abu Aabed, gang leader Ghassan Al-Duhaini told everyone to get off the bus for another inspection — at which point the militiamen “threw our belongings on the ground.” Their bags were searched again, she said, before “the Abu Shabab men grabbed us and handed us over to the Israeli army.” (Later, she realized that some more of her possessions had gone missing, an experience common to several of the people interviewed for this article.)"

Afterward the Palestinians returning are handed over to the Israeli forces.

One of the other women reported her experience with the IDF:

"During the interrogation, she said, “they asked me about my brothers who were martyred in the 2014 war, whether they were from Hamas, and I told them no. They threatened to arrest me, leave me in the cold, and pour water on me, saying no one would know where I was.” Later in the interrogation, Israeli soldiers offered to deport the family to a foreign country."

Interestingly this attempt to coerce also applied to the Abu Shabab gang that has been given partial control in Rafah and preferential treatment by the radical right wing Israeli government. One of the women reported:

"Meanwhile, as Al-Reqeb’s children waited on the bus, men from the Abu Shabab gang encouraged them to move to the area of Rafah that is currently under their control. “They tried to recruit us,” Asmaa, Al-Reqeb’s 17-year-old daughter, recounted. “They told us: ‘Our area is safer, you’ll have a better life. The area you’re going to is totally destroyed. Follow us on social media and you’ll see how life is [with us]. We could come and get you.’”

The people trying to leave through the Rafah crossing for medical treatment fare little better. According to the WHO over 20,000 sick and wounded have desperately applied to cross to Egypt for medical treatment. Only a small handful have been allowed to do so. The WHO reports 127 have been allowed to pass between February 2nd and February 13th. At this rate of about 11 per day it would take nearly 5 years to clear just the current backlog and that's if they operated 7 days a week every week. According to the WHO over 900 people died waiting for approval for exit for medical reasons since the IDF closed the Rafah crossing in May of 2024. Obviously many thousands more have had their untreated conditions needlessly worsen as well.

People returning are finding that anything over $650.00 in cash is confiscated, obviously being kept and never to be returned, and really there is no assurance that the Abu Shabab militia won't take all of a persons money no matter the amount. The IDF refuses to comment on any aspect of their creating the militia and turning them loose on the Palestinians.

Like so much of what the radical right wing government of Israel unleashed on Gaza they continue to refuse to truly disclose information and to allow the international press to go into Gaza to truly give a complete picture of what has been done by the IDF. That fits a long standing pattern that has gone on for many years in the West Bank as well. Here is one photo of what was once a Gaza neighborhood.



https://www.972mag.com/gaza-rafah-crossing-israel-abu-shabab/