Appearing on a screen from his home in Spain, 30-year-old Ezzadeen Shehab looked like any ordinary young European studying for a master’s degree in writing.

Clutching a pen, with a piece of artwork propped next to a cabinet behind him, Shehab appeared ensconced in domestic tranquility. The comfortable scene, though, belied the struggles and suffering of a young man who had spent the last three years on an odyssey to leave the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre and the war that erupted in its wake.

Shehab was born and raised in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. After finishing school, he left for Egypt to pursue higher education, eventually moving to Isfahan, Iran, to study medicine.

Throughout his nine years of studies in Iran, he did not return to Gaza once. His first trip home, to celebrate completing his studies, came on October 4, 2023. He planned to stay for a few days and then leave for a medical internship in Germany.

Nearly three years later, at the end of July 2026, Shehab finally left Gaza, going to Spain instead of Germany after receiving a scholarship for a master’s degree in writing.

He won the scholarship after his writings on the war, initially published on social media, were turned into a book, “Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes From the Genocide in Gaza,” published earlier this year by Scribe UK.

Israel’s government says it wants Gazans to leave the territory, and many Palestinians are eager to escape the rubble-strewn and poverty-stricken enclave.

But nearly a year after the ceasefire that began in October 2025, Gazans still face immense difficulties when trying to leave the Strip.

The main obstacle is finding a country willing to accept them. But even for those who do have somewhere to go, bureaucratic hurdles stemming from the situation inside Gaza can make the process of leaving lengthy and uncertain.

A slight rise in departures

Exclusive data obtained by The Times of Israel from authorities overseeing the crossings illustrates the scale of the bottleneck.

Since the ceasefire began, some 10,500 people have left Gaza — more than 6,000 through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt and some 4,500 through the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Israel.

The figure is only slightly higher than during a comparable period of the war: Between June 2024 and July 2025, some 8,000 Gaza residents left the Strip, indicating that the complicated mechanism governing departures has remained largely unchanged since the ceasefire.

That is despite the Defense Ministry announcing the establishment of a directorate for the “voluntary departure” of Gaza residents in early 2025, saying it was meant to help hundreds of thousands of Palestinians get to third countries.

The Israeli move came after US President Donald Trump unveiled an initiative that envisioned relocating some 2 million Gaza residents outside the Strip as part of a broader proposal for ending the war.

But the 20-point plan Trump presented in September 2025 took a markedly different approach.

“No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza,” the plan stated — an apparent reversal from his initial proposal to relocate Gaza’s entire population.

Nonetheless, Defense Minister Israel Katz said earlier this month that the initial plan was still under discussion between Israel and the US, though the White House denies this. Katz claimed surveys showed that around 80 percent of Gazans sought to leave but had nowhere to go.

“There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” Katz said at a conference on September 2. “Hamas isn’t allowing them [to leave], and there are no countries in the world taking them in. President Trump put the issue on the agenda. Now every country needs to take people in — and that’s the big issue.”

Should other countries be open to taking in Gazans, Katz said the Israeli government “is organized and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible.”

Members of the international community have repeatedly accused Israel of attempting to facilitate the mass transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population, a charge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denies.

Netanyahu’s office declined to comment.

However, right-wing politicians, including figures in his government, have repeatedly called for efforts to encourage Gazan emigration.

In recent weeks, as Israel heads toward elections, several political parties — including the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and a party headed by controversial former IDF general Ofer Winter have stressed that they would promote “voluntary migration” from Gaza as part of the next government.

Thanks to disastrous living conditions, many Gazans seem willing to take Israel up on the offer, though some experts note that there is nothing voluntary about migration under such circumstances, accusing Israel of pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing. For now, those trying to leave contend that their efforts are being stymied rather than facilitated.

No contact between Gazans and Israel

When the war broke out on October 7, Israel completely sealed off its border with the Strip, though the Rafah Crossing into Egypt remained open for those wishing to leave.

The Egyptian company Hala facilitated the departure of anyone able to pay — around $5,000 per person — regardless of whether they had ties to a third country or required medical treatment, subject only to security approval by both Israel and Egypt.

Shehab’s plans to leave for Germany were stymied by the suddenly steep price of exiting, as well as the difficulty of reaching Rafah, at the Strip’s far southern edge, from his family home in Jabalia, on the other end of the suddenly war-sundered enclave.

The IDF’s capture of the Gaza-Egypt border in May 2024 led to Rafah being closed for several months, making it impossible to leave the Strip.

Beginning in July 2024, Israel started allowing a limited number of medical evacuations from Gaza to third countries through the Kerem Shalom Crossing into southern Israel. From there, evacuees would either travel to Ramon Airport near Eilat for a flight to........

© The Times of Israel