Syrian Refugees' Struggles in Gaza

Now, my husband is Palestinian-Syrian, you are Syrian Palestinian.

Exactly.

For a little over a year, I've been covering news from Syria, and before that, for a little over a year, I covered

the Israeli genocide in Gaza. This is the first time the two issues have come together

in one story. Syrians stranded in Gaza.

A Syrian's situation is worse than a Palestinian's in Gaza.

This is Anas Qaterji, or al-Halabi as he is known in Gaza, a representative of a group of

Syrian families in the Strip.

They contacted me so you could hear their story. Honestly, the first question that came

to mind was, what brought Syrians to Gaza in the first place? And that's where I began

researching. People who fled the war and sought refuge in Gaza in the early

years of the Syrian revolution. Gaza was actually safer than Syria.

Some people were invited by Palestinian families living in Egypt.

Some people, like me, were invited by project owners here to come

work in Gaza. We used to say that the war

in Gaza was child's play compared to what the regime did to us.

During the latest war's massacre, we realized no war

in the world had ever seen anything like what happened in Gaza.

Syrians spent three years enduring bombing, displacement, and hunger alongside

Gazans. They lost loved ones, livelihoods, and the ability to

provide for their children. Today, most are displaced, living in tents,

and even the land where they pitch them requires rent of

at least $120. But Syrians have an additional problem.

First, they had no relatives they could flee to

instead of

staying on the streets. Second, they struggle to get aid

because they don't have Palestinian documents, so they rarely receive anything to stave off

their hunger or help them through these difficult conditions.

But now that the regime they fled from has fallen, can't we bring them home? In fact,

since Assad fell, families have begun appealing to the new Syrian government

to help get them out and bring them back to Syria.

They've been doing it for a while, actually, but it still hasn't happened.

But after extensive digging, I learned from various sources that their way out

involves approval from the Israeli side to remove them from the Strip, and the issuance of

single-use passports by the Palestinian Authority so they can pass through

its territory to Jordan, and approval from Jordan for the Syrians to travel

through its territory to the Syrian border. I contacted the Syrian Foreign Ministry

and asked them directly about the matter. They told me that the Expatriates Directorate

is following up on the matter, but it will not make any statement about developments before

the work on it is completed.

The real support and credit go to the Palestinians themselves,

who were there in the street and shared the street with

the Syrians. Meaning, a Palestinian family set up a tent here, then they would go

bring this Syrian family, the women and children, and put them beside them in the tent.

The men would fend for themselves wherever they could and find somewhere to shelter.

Between Syria, which they want to return to, and Gaza, which they cannot

leave, their lives remain suspended in a wait whose end they do not

know.