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3,500 Palestinians stuck outside Gaza

The author interviews several Gazans stuck in Egypt and other countries, herself included, who are unable to return to the Gaza Strip following the terrorist attack in Sinai and the subsequent closure of the Rafah crossing.
An Egyptian soldier keeps watch at the closed Rafah border crossing, between southern Gaza Strip and Egypt November 6, 2014. At Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip, families are emptying their homes - lugging mattresses and furniture onto waiting vans as soldiers look on from armoured cars. In nine villages along the frontier, 680 houses - homes to 1,165 families - are being razed to seal off smugglers' tunnels and try to crush a militant insurgency in northern Sinai that has intensified since the army overt
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CAIRO — I had planned to travel with my son for two weeks, and got permission to take him out of school. I thought that this trip would make us forget about the last war on Gaza. But we are now facing an even harder reality.

Since Nov. 5, we have been stuck in a Cairo hotel room. We found ourselves unable to board the plane in Paris, as airlines flying to Egypt were instructed not to allow Gazans aboard. When we landed in Istanbul to take the flight to Cairo, we were mistreated. We felt like students being punished in school. We were ordered to stand to the side as the other passengers passed through the gate, looking at us curiously.

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