Desperate Gaza fence jumpers willing to risk jail in quest for better life
GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER: From his spartan room in the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Abdalla al-Haddad, 18, could glimpse a narrow chance at a better life 1km and a 1.5m-high fence away.
So, on a cold February night, he and a friend made a dash for it, scrambling over the heavily secured steel and wire fence that separates Gaza from Israel. “I was not thinking,” he told Reuters back in the threeroom home he shares with 11 family members.
“Ten minutes after we jumped, illumination rounds were fired, there was a lot of gunfire and we were surrounded by Israeli army forces, who arrested us,” he said.
He spent the next three months in an Israeli jail. “I was desperate because there is no work in Gaza,” he said, describing his daily life as sleeping and playing soccer, with little prospect of finding a job.
While it is by no means a mass phenomenon, a rising number of Palestinians are try- ing their luck at jumping the fence from Gaza into Israel. Barely a week goes by without a report from Israeli security forces of another attempt.
The Israeli military says it has caught 130 in the past year. It won’t provide comparative figures, but the anecdotal evidence from Gazans and organisations that monitor the trend is that numbers have been climbing steadily.
The lure of work is strong. A day’s labour on a construction site without a work permit in Israel pays about 250 shekels (R820), according to Israeli watchdog Workers Hotline. In Gaza, it would be a fifth of that.
But jumping the fence comes with huge risks. Israeli law allows punishment of up to five years in jail for unarmed infiltration. Crossing with a weapon risks up to 15 years in jail and with a firearm or explosives a life sentence.
An Israeli military officer in the Gaza division said most border jumpers are unarmed teens looking for work or to es- cape family hardship. For some, jail may be more appealing than life in Gaza, with three meals a day and a chance to study.
According to the Israeli Prison Service, 50 Gazans are currently in jail for crossing the border. The average prison term is 11 months, an Israeli justice official said.
Hamas has its own reasons for trying to stop them and has increased security along the border, according to Hamas interior ministry spokesman Eyad al-Bozom. The fear is some of the fence jumpers will be pressured by Israel into becoming collaborators – supply – ng intelligence on Hamas.
Acknowledging an increase in the numbers over the past two years, Bozom said most of those stopped on the Gaza side are aged 17-25.
Israel enforces a 300m no-go zone on the Gaza side of the fence, an area where dozens of Palestinians have been shot and wounded by Israeli gunfire this year. – Reuters