“After the Last Frontiers, After the Last Sky”
Unable to visit friends or family; restricted from tending to sick relatives or celebrating holidays and milestones with children and grandchildren — these limitations that Americans have put up with since last March are only a fraction of what Gazans, indeed, all Palestinians, have endured since 1948.
There are only two ways in and out of Gaza. One, lying between Gaza and Egypt, is the Rafah Border Crossing; the other, separating Gaza and Israel, is known as Erez/Beit Hanoun.
The Rafah Border Crossing was managed by Israeli authorities until 2005, when Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza. After Hamas won the parliamentary election in 2006, the crossing came under Hamas control. Worse, relations between Egypt and Hamas remain unstable, and this in turn affects the opening and closing of that crossing.
In order to leave through Rafah, one needs to have a visa, be a medical patient with referral paperwork, or be a student studying in Egypt.
The other crossing point, Erez, is currently open only for humanitarian reasons — mainly to allow the transport of patients (or corpses) from (or to) Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan, or Israel. When the Palestinian Authority unilaterally ended its security coordination with Israel last June (in protest of Israel’s plans to annex parts of the Palestinian West Bank,) Israel closed the Erez Crossing in the face of Palestinians in Gaza.
In May 2019, I got an offer from Harvard to be a visiting poet and librarian. I applied for permits for myself, my wife, and two children to travel to Jerusalem for our visa interviews at the American Embassy. There is no American Embassy in Gaza or the West Bank. To go to Jerusalem, only 6o miles from Gaza, I needed to apply for an Israeli permit at least a month ahead of the requested departure date. One day before the requested departure date (permit applicants can know whether the request is approved or not only one day before their appointments) my wife and kids received their permits. I, however, did not.
When my wife entered the American Embassy in Jerusalem that day, an employee asked her what kind of visa she was applying for. They told her she couldn’t be interviewed because I, the principal applicant, was not present. My wife left home at 6am and returned at 8pm, empty-handed.
We rescheduled our interviews for August, then reapplied for permits. At this point I developed a Plan B: a visa interview at the American Embassy in Jordan. Again, I paid the not-insubstantial fee for the four of us, $640 (about double the salary of an average Gazan). We also applied and got a permit to enter Jordan for two weeks.
My employer, UNRWA, communicated to the Israelis that they would provide one of their special vehicles to pick us up from Erez and drive us to Jordan once we were granted permits. We received no answer, and so missed the interviews. We rescheduled, continued to wait, missed it again. My wife and two children got the permits for Jerusalem, but didn’t go because of what had happened the last time.
Some American friends, including those affiliated with my Harvard program, contacted their congresspersons and representatives to pressure the Israelis to allow us to travel to Jordan on a shuttle bus. They succeed in getting permission for my wife and two children. I, however, was denied.
I decided to go through Egypt (Plan C), take a plane, and meet my family in Jordan.
At the American Embassy in Jordan we expected to get the visas right away. Both the American Embassy in Jerusalem and Jordan knew about us and how much time it had taken to reach Jordan. My fellowship at Harvard had already started on September 1st. We had our interviews on September 8th. We were put under “Administrative Processing” status, and were unsure whether the visas would be approved or not. We also had to renew our stay in Jordan for an extra two months, just in case. After 40 days of uncertainty, the visas were issued.
You might well ask, “Why didn’t you wait back home in Gaza?”
It would certainly have made sense. But nothing in Gaza makes sense. When my wife left Gaza through Erez, the Israelis had her sign a waiver stating that she and the children “wouldn’t return to Gaza for the coming 6 months.” I couldn’t return through Erez (because I didn’t leave through it) nor through Rafah — that exit had since been closed.
If we’d had our interview in Jerusalem, we would have returned home to Gaza the same day and waited there. I could have continued teaching English at school.
In 2015, the Rafah crossing was open for only 19 days. Moreover, the journey from Gaza to Egypt is not a safe one. There are terrorist groups in the Sinai Peninsula who attack the Egyptian police and army.
Why isn’t there an airport in Gaza? There used to be. It was built and opened in November of 1998. In 2001, Israel destroyed the radar station and control tower. In 2002, the Israeli bulldozers cut the runway apart. In 2006, Israel bombed what remained of the airport.
We arrived in Cambridge, MA, in late October 2019. My fellowship ended in July 2020, and two months later I started a graduate program at Syracuse University. In early December 2020, after the first semester finished, we wanted to go to Gaza and see our families. I asked how I could go to Egypt or Jordan and wait there until the Rafah crossing opens; I didn’t get a clear answer. I sent emails to the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier in September and November, but got no answer. I also called the Jordanian Embassy in DC, and they said I “needed to get a permit again to enter Jordan.” I asked them how I could do that, and the person replied: “The same way you did last time.”
Last time was in Gaza, when I applied for the Jordanian permit, and it took one month. But I’m in the U.S. now. The Jordanian Embassy employee was asking me to contact the Palestinian office to help me with the permit to enter Jordan.
I always feel ashamed when I’m in need of a service. It is not easy for me to ask for help, even from other Arabs. To preface everything with “I’m a Palestinian from Gaza” feels demeaning. Yet what choice do I have?
There is no Palestinian embassy in the US; no office to call, no one to talk to. I called the one Palestinian Embassy in Canada, the closest one to me. They told me I needed to talk to the Borders Office in Palestine. I contacted them and they said the Erez crossing is available only for urgent cases. As for Rafah, I asked a friend to speak with the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo. She was told, “If he has a Green Card, he can apply for a visa and stay for as long as 6 years. But if he doesn’t, he can come and stay up to 45 days after obtaining a permit, or he should stay where he is until the border is open.”
The last time the Rafah crossing opened was November 24th. No one knows when it will next open: not the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo, not the Interior Ministry in Gaza, not the Borders Office in the Palestinian Authority, not the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and not the travel agents.
Am I, as a Gazan, destined to feel imprisoned wherever I go? Now in the US, I cannot go back to my country at will, nor can my family visit us.
I’m sure God’s not responsible for this. Good people can work together to change things. God created fire, but He also created water. He created tunnels, but also light for us to see our way.
Where should we go after the last frontiers?
Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air?
We will write our names with scarlet steam.
We will cut off the head of the song to be finished by our flesh.
We will die here, here in the last passage.
Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree.
- Mahmoud Darwish “The Earth Is Closing On Us”
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, fiction writer, and essayist from Gaza. He is the founder of the Edward Said Public Library, and in 2019-2020 was a visiting poet and scholar at Harvard University. He gave talks and poetry readings at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, the University of Arizona (w/ Noam Chomsky), and the American Library Association conference. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Nation, Solstice, Arrowsmith, Progressive Librarian Guild, among others. Mosab is the author of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza, forthcoming from City Lights Books in April 2022.