GAZA (Reuters) – Months ago, Talal Al-Shaer bid his two sons protected travels as they set off from the Gaza Strip on a tortuous route that they prayed would bring them recent lives in Europe, freed from poverty and war.
However the boat taking them across the Mediterranean Sea from Libya sank soon after leaving. One son drowned, his body recovered. The opposite was lost.
Reasonably than regaling friends about their successful migration, Al-Shaer received condolences on Sunday.
“A complete generation is lost, suffering, blockade, scarce jobs, bad mental health. That’s what pushes them to migrate,” he told Reuters ahead of the funeral for his son Mohammad, whose body was returned together with those of seven other Palestinians.
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Three others, amongst them his son Maher, remain missing.
Gaza’s 2.3 million persons are no strangers to hardship, after many years of war with Israel, economic clampdowns aided by neighbouring Egypt that starve the economy and splits between Palestinian factions. Based on the World Bank, unemployment in Gaza runs at about 50% and greater than half its population lives in poverty.
But among the many hundreds attending the migrants’ funerals, there was added outrage and despair on the October shipwreck.
While dangerous migrations to Europe have picked up pace lately from across the Middle East, Palestinians feel especially driven to hazard them – and vulnerable to smugglers.
“Human-trafficking gangs are behind these illegal migration trips and so they exploit these youths, charging as much as $10,000 per person,” Palestinian Foreign Ministry official Ahmad al-Deek told Reuters. “These are death trips.”
He said the whole variety of Palestinian migrants was unknown. The young men who were buried on Sunday crossed Egypt before flying to Libya where they waited months to set sail. Deek said smugglers sometimes sank boats themselves in the event that they felt threatened and deceived people in regards to the risks.
Al-Shaer recalled sending off Mohammed with the words: “Go. May you discover a greater life – a dignified life.”
(Writing by Nidal Almughrabi; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Copyright 2022 Thomson Reuters.
