In Egypt, Gazans sought to leave the war. But it’s not far behind.

Unable to move forward or go back, Fatima, like thousands of Gaza residents who have sought refuge in Egypt, lives a life in limbo.

Without a legal status, amid rapidly diminishing funds, and burdened with survivor’s guilt, Palestinians in Egypt face a difficult present and an uncertain future.

It is, they say, far from a normal life.

“In Gaza, time stops. It is one long, never-ending, death-filled day,” says Fatima, an interpreter, who did not wish to use her real name for fear of angering Egyptian authorities and risking deportation.

“Once I entered Egypt, I was shocked to find that time moves; people can go about their daily lives,” she says. “But for Gazans in Egypt, time still moves slower. We may have physically left the war, but the war has not left us.”

According to the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador in Cairo, there are 80,000 to 100,000 Gazans in Egypt who, in the wake of Israel’s military offensive, fled the enclave between Oct. 7, 2023, and May.

Since Israel’s early May assault on Rafah and takeover of the Gaza Strip’s lone border crossing with Egypt, Palestinians can no longer enter or leave the enclave. With the 45-day visas having long expired for the vast majority of those in Egypt, this expat community is caught in a legal and emotional limbo. 

“We are quite literally caught in the middle, unable to fully integrate into our new surroundings or return to our former lives,” says Fairouz Sabbah, a financial manager from Gaza City who has lived in Egypt since December.

Waiting to hear from home

Unable to legally work, Gazans say they spend their days sitting in Cairo apartments they can barely afford, grimly following updates on missile strikes and famine. They launch GoFundMe campaigns for relatives left behind, canvass foreign embassies for help, and anxiously await to hear from loved ones back home.

Etaf Miqdad, a bank teller from Rafah who crossed into Egypt with her husband and children in March, has been in daily contact with her brothers and their families, who have been relocating back and forth in tents within the coastal Mawasi region.

Ms. Miqdad went into a panic when the Israeli military struck a gathering of Hamas military commanders in the so-called safe zone last week, killing dozens of civilians.

“Once they [the Israeli military] hit Al-Mawasi, my heart started to pound. I wanted to cry,” she says.

She since has talked with her brothers, but the conversations are short, her relatives unwilling to burden her with their life-and-death struggles.

“My family don’t like to open the camera when I talk to them so I don’t worry,” Ms. Miqdad says. “All of them are now pale ... and have lost weight. All of them are sick.”

Dwindling reserves

Some Gaza residents were allowed to cross into Egypt on humanitarian grounds or through a foreign passport. But the bulk entered by paying thousands of dollars to Al Hala, an Egyptian tourism company with ties to the Egyptian military that helped put Gazans on a list to cross over to the Egyptian side of Rafah.

Having paid so much to enter Egypt, families now struggle with dwindling reserves. Unable to enroll their children in government schools, families face a minimum $1,000-per-year tuition for private schools in Cairo.

“Egypt is so expensive to live here; you need to have saved a lot of money,” says Ms. Miqdad, who pays $520 per month for her Cairo apartment.

Architect Malak al-Dirawi and her husband paid $13,000 to Al Hala in order for their family to start a new “future” in Egypt, but now struggle to make ends meet.

Owing to their lack of legal status, Gazans are unable to rent apartments directly and instead sign side agreements with Egyptian landlords or rent them through an Egyptian intermediary, further inflating the cost.

Ms. Sabbah and her two children, Kinan, age 8, and Sara, age 5, were allowed to enter Egypt in December thanks to her Moroccan citizenship, part of a policy allowing foreign passport holders and their families to leave Gaza.

But as they crossed through Rafah, Ms. Sabbah’s husband was informed he could not enter Egypt. They faced a “heart-wrenching,” split-second choice: stay in Gaza together, or enter Egypt and leave her husband behind. They decided that Ms. Sabbah and their two children would continue on to Egypt while her husband would remain.

Ms. Sabbah and her two children are now struggling to navigate Egypt, cut off from their support network. “There is no way to transfer money or ask someone for help,” she says.

“I can’t build a life here. I am staying here illegally. We are cut off from everywhere; there is no way to leave and travel elsewhere,” Ms. Sabbah says. She has reached out to numerous embassies in Cairo – of Belgium, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, South Africa. “But no one can help us get a visa or even a humanitarian visa,” she says.

“This feeling of being lost is so difficult.”

Some encounter unexpected reunions.

“By chance, I ran into a friend from Gaza City in a market in Cairo,” Kawther, a mother of three who has lived in Cairo since April, tells the Monitor via Messenger.

“I cried, ‘You are here?!’ and she immediately cried back, ‘You are here?!’” she says. “We immediately hugged each other and laughed, we each didn’t know that the other was alive.”

“Then we recounted all who we have lost from our families, friends, and neighbors and began to cry,” she says. “Our small moments of joy and relief do not last long.”

Survivor’s guilt

As the war continues to claim hundreds of lives per week, Gazans in Egypt say they live with constant guilt.

“It is a difficult decision to leave; it weighs on all our souls. There is a part in all of us that feels we are reliving the Nakba,” the forced displacement of Palestinians in the 1948 war, says Haitham, in Cairo, who was unable to use his name due to his ongoing work with a humanitarian organization.

“As Palestinians, there is a guilt that by leaving we are aiding ‘ethnic cleansing’; we are doing exactly what the Israeli occupation wants.”

“The guilt is always there,” Ms. Dirawi, the architect, admits. “I’m afraid for my family back home. I may have left Gaza physically, but my mind and my heart are still there with my parents and siblings.”

When she speaks with her husband about the deteriorating situation in Gaza, “He tells me there is no food, no basic hygiene,” Ms. Sabbah says. “I always feel guilty to have survived.”

Fatima, whose sister was killed in an Israeli missile strike on their home in October, says she “struggles to accept my new life.”

“I will be walking in the streets when it hits me: Why me? Why should I be the one who survived? Why am I the one who got out?” she says. “These questions follow me everywhere.”

Yet all express a wish to return home – to a Gaza some fear may no longer exist.

“I wish I could return to Gaza today to my previous life, my family, my work,” Ms. Miqdad laments. “In Gaza, there is fear and insecurity because of the missile strikes and bombings. But in Egypt, you do not know anyone. You cannot feel at home.”

Which is why, perhaps, the bulk of Gazans in Egypt prefer to stay in the country, never more than a day’s journey from Gaza.

“We thought, Egypt is the closest, so if the situation in Gaza improves, it will be easier for us to return,” Ms. Dirawi says.