CD Web Desk
What Huda Abu Abed feared was bureaucracy. What she endured was brutality.
After two years in Egypt receiving urgent medical care during Israel’s war on Gaza, the 57-year-old heart patient believed returning home would mean long queues, document checks, and the usual indignities of occupation. She did not imagine being blindfolded, handcuffed, interrogated for hours, watching her daughter beaten, and having her belongings seized before being allowed back into her own land.
Abu Abed was among the first Palestinians notified by the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo that they could return to Gaza following the partial reopening of the Rafah crossing this week — the first since May 2024. The reopening, however, came wrapped in suffocating Israeli controls that turned a humanitarian passage into a gauntlet of humiliation.
Only 12 Palestinians completed the journey that day.
Dignity on one side, degradation on the other
The group crossed from Egypt first, where officials treated them “with dignity and respect,” Abu Abed told Middle East Eye. That dignity ended the moment they reached the Palestinian side of Rafah.
There, travellers were funnelled through a layered security regime involving European Union Border Assistance Mission (Eubam) supervisors, Palestinian staff, Israeli-backed militias, and ultimately the Israeli army itself.
Under the new arrangement, EU supervisors oversee searches and coordinate directly with Israeli authorities, effectively determining who may return to Gaza and what they are allowed to bring.
“The treatment there was the worst,” Abu Abed said.
She had carried toys for her grandchildren and essential medicines for heart disease, blood pressure and diabetes. European officials confiscated all of it — along with her mobile phone and seven new phones she had bought for her family.
“They took everything,” she said. “The Palestinian staff only searched us. The Europeans decided what to confiscate. Not even food was allowed — only clothes.”
After repeated pleading, she managed to recover her personal phone, which contained family photos and vital information. Even then, the ordeal was not over.
“We still had to wait for Israeli approval of our names before we could enter our own country,” she said.
A border reopened — on Israel’s terms
Although Israel was obligated under the October ceasefire agreement to reopen Rafah during the first phase, it delayed the move for months, eventually tying it to the recovery of the body of the last Israeli captive in Gaza.
When the crossing finally reopened, Israel imposed a strict quota: just 50 Palestinian patients allowed to leave Gaza per day — each with two companions — and only 50 people permitted to return.
Only Palestinians displaced during the genocide are eligible. Those who left Gaza before 7 October 2023 remain barred.
As of late January, at least 30,000 Palestinians registered with the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo alone, according to officials. At Israel’s imposed rate, it would take nearly two years for them to return — assuming uninterrupted operations. Tens of thousands more remain stranded worldwide.
On the first day, 42 people were supposed to enter Gaza. Thirty were turned back. No one has explained by whom — or where they are now.
‘Bring that old woman’
After crossing Rafah, the 12 returnees — nine women and three children — boarded a bus escorted by Israeli military jeeps.
South of Khan Younis, the bus was stopped by an Israeli-backed gang led by Ghassan al-Dahini, a criminal figure with past links to the Islamic State group and part of a militia network cultivated by Israel in Gaza.
“They ordered everyone off,” Abu Abed recalled. “An Israeli officer said, ‘Bring that old woman.’ They grabbed me and handed me over.”
She was taken to a makeshift military barracks and forced into an interrogation facility crawling with Israeli soldiers.
A female soldier searched her electronically, then compelled her to remove her abaya. After half an hour, Abu Abed was blindfolded and handcuffed.
“They treated me like a criminal,” she said.
The interrogation lasted up to three hours. The officer questioning her wore a balaclava and spoke Arabic with calculated menace.
“He kept asking: ‘Who do you know from Hamas? Why does Hamas use you as human shields? Why did you come back? Why didn’t you stay in Egypt?’”
Then came the threat — not just to her, but to Gaza itself.
“Tell all the people of Gaza to pack their belongings and get out.”
Beatings, threats, and coercion
Abu Abed later learned her daughter, Rotana Atiyya al-Raqb, was interrogated separately.
A female Israeli officer beat her, grabbed her violently, and struck her head.
“She told her, ‘Why did you come to Gaza? You should have stayed in Egypt,’” Abu Abed said.
Another returnee, Sabah Ismail al-Raqb, travelling with her five daughters, described being drenched with cold water, blindfolded, handcuffed, and interrogated for 90 minutes.
“They offered to help me migrate if I cooperated,” she said. “When I refused, they threatened me with detention and beatings.”
An Israeli officer refused to release her until a European convoy intervened.
Only then were the women and children allowed back onto the bus and driven to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
‘They want to force us out’
For Abu Abed, the message was unmistakable.
“They want to force us out by all means,” she said. “After what we went through, I say no one should travel outside Gaza.”
For Palestinians returning home after displacement, Rafah has not reopened as a lifeline — but as another checkpoint of domination, where survival itself is treated as a provocation.
