GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Many young Gazans have been trying to emigrate for years. Al-Monitor interviewed three would-be emigrants, all on condition of anonymity, the first of whom said that he has been defrauded twice by travel agencies in the Gaza Strip, submitting to two separate offices requests to emigrate from Palestine. The 27-year-old tried a third time with the same result. Over two years, he has lost $2,000.
He told Al-Monitor that his attempts to emigrate began in his last year of college, about six years ago. Despite being subjected to fraud by illegal travel agencies working under the radar of the Gaza government, he insisted on trying again and again.
“The poor economic conditions in the Gaza Strip for more than eight years made me want to leave. I kept wasting my money until I had to borrow from friends. I was young and the travel offices that I visited took my money for 'initial costs.' After a while, they would tell me that the attempt hadn’t succeeded and that the money was nonrefundable because it paid for the cost of communicating with the embassies,” he said.
He said that the travel agencies he dealt with were less fraudulent than their peers, because he lost little money compared to other people who used other agencies. According to him, some other agencies went as far as dumping some of their young clients at sea near European shores.
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