A man carries a child on his shoulders as he walks with others along a busy road at a camp housing displaced Palestinians in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 30.-/Getty Images
The federal government says 179 Palestinians have managed to escape Gaza and have been approved to come to Canada, with some of them having already arrived here after crossing to Egypt.
But lawyers working with Palestinians say some of those who have reached Egypt resorted to paying bribes to cross the border from Gaza. They were among 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza who have applied to come to Canada to join family here under a special immigration program set up in January by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
Those without the funds to pay thousands of dollars to cross the border remain in peril in the besieged Gaza Strip, the lawyers say.
The government has submitted a list of names for approval to the Israeli authorities for vetting to allow them to exit but they have not yet been approved.
Instead, those who have escaped from Gaza, which has been subject to intense Israeli bombardment for months, have paid bribes or large fees to cross the border from Rafah to Egypt – including US$5,000 to an Egyptian company to get on an approved list to cross.
None of the 179 Palestinians who have so far exited the strip have done so with help from Canada, but on their own volition, IRCC spokesman Jeffrey MacDonald said in a statement.
A Palestinian child stands in front of a building destroyed by Israeli bombing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 3.-/Getty Images
He said IRCC had heard some Palestinians who have had their applications approved have already joined family members in Canada, but it has no records of how many as they had boarded commercial flights.
Lawyer Pantea Jafari said she understood that several people from Gaza have now arrived in Canada under the family reunification scheme, but that “people have crossed into Egypt through bribes only, hefty ones at that, and that no one from Canada’s list of applicants approved for exit have received authorization to exit.”
Palestinians need to reach Cairo for biometric checks before they are eligible to come to Canada.
Yameena Ansari, a lawyer working with the Gaza Family Reunification Project, a group advising Palestinians with family in Gaza, said on Friday that the family member of a Canadian-Palestinian had that day managed to cross the border from Gaza to Egypt.
But she said the huge payments required to cross was “allowing exploitation of a vulnerable population” and favouring the wealthy over those who could not afford bribes.
“If you are rich you get to live and if you are not you don’t,” she said.
“As far as we know, every Gazan that has crossed into Egypt has done it themselves – not with the support of the Canadian government. This means that they’ve most likely paid $9,000 in bribes to border officials or to ‘firms’ set up to facilitate exit. Our clients have become so desperate to leave Gaza that they’ve started fundraising to pay these bribes,” she added in a statement.
“It’s a sad day when folks have more trust in human traffickers than the Canadian government to help them with a legal border crossing.”
Mr. MacDonald said IRCC empathized with the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and is “reaching out to local authorities at all levels to advocate for the approval of names put forward by the Government of Canada for crossing.”
It said those who had managed to exit Gaza, after applying to join the program, could remain eligible if they complete all the required steps, and would have their applications processed.
Nearly seven months after the attacks on Israel by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad that killed about 1,200 people, Israeli air strikes and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to estimates by the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller has expressed frustration that Canada has so far been unable to find a way to extract Palestinians from the densely populated enclave.
“Movement out of Gaza remains limited and unpredictable. We have put forward names of people who passed preliminary eligibility and admissibility reviews to local authorities for approval, however, Canada does not control who or when someone can exit Gaza,” Mr. MacDonald said.