BADIL

Hassan Muhammad Hassan Shahin, from Jabalya refugee camp (Gaza), married his cousin, Amal Muhammad Hussein Abu Watfe, in Saudi Arabia in 1980. His wife was born in Gaza, but had left in 1966. The couple has five children: Muhammad (10), Reem (9), Ahmad (7), Fatmeh (5), and Miryam (3). None of the children are registered on their father’s identity card.
Immediately after the Gulf War they left Saudi Arabia, first to the Sudan, then to Libya. From Libya they flew to Egypt, since Hassan had left Gaza through Egypt and must re-enter that way. But Egypt refused to let Amal, holder of an Egyptian travel document and a visitor’s permit to Gaza, and her children in.

This report is based on preliminary field work in Gaza City and Deir Al-Balah and Rafah refugee camps, and on 110 cases. Although it is not comprehensive, it shows that conditions in the Gaza Strip are far more complex and difficult, and that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are far less protected by policies in effect elsewhere.
Until 1967 Gazans were ruled under Egyptian sovereignty; unlike West Bank residents, who were given Jordanian citizenship (it was withdrawn July 31, 1988), Gazans were identified in their documents as Palestinians and were stateless. In 1967 when Israel conquered the Gaza Strip, it forced thousands of young men to leave. Residents of Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis, for example, report that all men between 16 - 60 were assembled in the center of the camp and town and forcibly driven to the Egyptian border. As in the West Bank, those who remained when the census was taken were issued with Israeli identity cards and given resident status.