When Safaa Hasanat, 40, got married and moved from Saudi Arabia to the Gaza Strip in 1999, she didn’t realize she was putting herself in an open-air prison with almost a life sentence. As Hasanat does not have a Palestinian identity card, she has not been able to leave Gaza since.
According to Riad al-Zeitouniya, the head of Gaza's Civil Affairs Office, Hasanat is only one of up to 35,000 Palestinians who were born in other countries and now reside in Gaza with no identity cards issued by the Israeli-run Palestinian registration. Consequently, these people live in Gaza with few rights, most important of which is the right of movement to any other country, including even the West Bank.
