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Palestinians Are Leaving Gaza in Droves

(Economist-UK) Yarub Ikhdeh and his friends had been waiting half their lives to get on a bus. The six young men had never left Gaza. "We're all recent graduates in business and IT, and we're all unemployed," he says. They would soon board a bus for Cairo, then a flight to Dubai. In 2018 there were 60,900 crossings into Egypt. There were another 33,000 crossings in the first half of 2019. Hamas does not release statistics on emigration, lest they highlight how bad life in Gaza has become during its rule. But those leaving seem to be mostly recent university graduates. A poll in December found that 48% of Gaza residents want to emigrate, compared with 22% in the West Bank. Egypt still caps the number of daily travelers at 300. A waiting list runs to more than 10,000 people.
2019-08-02 00:00:00
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