GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Following the developments in neighboring Egypt and the dramatic fallout between the army-backed Egyptian leadership and the Hamas government in Gaza, the Rafah border crossing has been closed in the face of Palestinians seeking to travel outside of the Gaza Strip.
Due to the protracted closure of the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing in the north of the Gaza Strip, the Rafah crossing with Egypt has become the only accessible avenue for 1.7 million Palestinians living in the blockaded Gaza Strip. The closure of the Rafah crossing, therefore, has had a grave impact on the humanitarian situation of Palestinians stranded in the Gaza Strip.
Among other groups, Palestinian students constituted one of the most severely affected by the Egyptian authorities’ closing the border. Thousands of Palestinian students have been stranded in Gaza and unable to travel to their universities abroad.
Yousef al-Jamal, a 23-year-old Gaza-based blogger and translator, won a scholarship for a master’s degree program in political science at the University of Malaya in Malaysia. Jamal has been trapped in Malaysia before, after he attended a conference there in July and wasn’t allowed to enter Egypt on his way back to Gaza. Now in Gaza, he has attempted to travel through the Rafah crossing twice, but has been turned back on both occasions.
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