TWENTY-FIVE more Palestinians have returned to Gaza through the Rafah crossing following its long-awaited partial reopening, describing an exhausting journey through humiliating Israeli security measures, while patients in need of urgent medical treatment abroad are being transferred to the border.
This comes as one Palestinian was killed and another injured by Israeli forces on Thursday, as Israeli attacks continue despite a “ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli troops shot and killed a man near the Bani Suhaila roundabout, east of Khan Younis, while in central Khan Younis, near the Abu Hamid roundabout, a 28-year-old woman was injured by Israeli forces’ gunfire inside her tent, sources told Al Jazeera.
The group of 25 Gaza returnees – the third batch to return since the heavily restricted reopening of the Rafah crossing – entered the Strip at 3am local time (01:00 GMT), with buses delivering them to Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis more than 20 hours after they left the Egyptian city of El Arish.
Hours later, a group of seven Palestinian patients, accompanied by 14 family members, were transferred from a hospital towards the crossing for medical treatment abroad.
Some of the returnees, visibly fatigued from their ordeal, told an Al Jazeera team in Gaza that they had been interrogated and insulted by Israeli forces as they passed through security controls.
Footage showed emotional scenes as returning Palestinians embraced loved ones from whom they had long been separated, and registered firsthand the scenes of devastation caused by the war in their homeland.
“The feeling is like being caught between happiness and sadness,” one returnee, Aicha Balaoui, told the Reuters news agency.
“I’m happy to be back and to see my family, my husband and my loved ones, thank God. But I also feel sad for my country after seeing the destruction. I never imagined the devastation would be this severe.”
She said while she had lived in comfort and safety abroad, “I wasn’t at peace because it wasn’t my place.
“My place is here. My place is Gaza,” she said.
The Rafah crossing with Egypt, the sole route in or out of Gaza for nearly all of the territory’s more than two million inhabitants, was closed by Israeli authorities for most of the war, but was partially reopened on Monday.
The reopening of the crossing – to allow the return of Palestinians who have left, and the evacuation of patients requiring medical treatment outside the Strip – is one of the terms of the US-brokered “ceasefire” agreement to end the war in Gaza.
Only Palestinians who left Gaza during the war are being permitted to return, and people travelling in both directions are being subjected to strict security vetting – a process which returnees have described as humiliating and abusive.
Palestinian women who returned earlier this week described to Al Jazeera having their hands bound and eyes covered, being interrogated and subjected to full body searches as part of the security screening.
The International Commission to Support Palestinian People’s Rights (ICSPR) has said the strict Israeli measures have turned the Rafah crossing “into a tool of control and domination rather than a humanitarian passage”.