Anas Al Borno was lying on a flimsy mattress with his wife and children in a Rafah refugee camp in January when a family member sent him a text message with rare good news. For the first time since October 7, Al Borno and his family were eligible to cross into Egypt.
The main travel agency that organizes these crossings changed its rules, allowing Palestinians without a foreign passport to cross the land border. But there was a catch: the price of leaving Al Borno and his family was at least $18,000, much more than he could afford.
“I had no money,” said Al Borno, 36, whose livelihood was destroyed after his small industrial business was bombed at the start of the war. “I had no options; How could I live? How could I eat? How could I travel, me and my family?”
His lifeline came in the form of a stranger 8,000 miles away – a Jewish graphic designer from California who launched a crowdfunding campaign that ended up raising most of the money needed for Al Borno’s wife and children to cross the border one day. month later.
“This is my only hope in life: to get out of this war,” said Al Borno, who stayed behind and continued to raise money for himself and other family members to escape. He now spends much of his day communicating with hundreds of people who have donated.
“I feel like they’re my closest friends,” he said.
After more than six months of Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, which health authorities say has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and destroyed the vast majority of their buildings, many Gazans, like Al Borno, are desperate to to escape. Thousands of people have turned to crowdfunding platforms to raise money to enter Egypt – often the only way out – supported by a growing group of foreigners abroad who help them overcome financial obstacles.
On GoFundMe alone, the most popular platform, more than 12,000 active campaigns for Palestinians in Gaza, mainly for evacuation, have been launched since October 7th. They raised more than $75 million, according to a company spokesperson.
Even for families who have benefited from crowdfunding campaigns, leaving Gaza is anything but a straight shot.
‘Calculated risk’
At the southern end of the Gaza Strip, the Rafah border is the only land crossing in the enclave that does not go to Israel, opening onto a militarized zone of the Sinai desert in Egypt. After Israel imposed a blockade on the territory in 2007, it became Gazans’ main access to the outside world. Crossings controlled by Israel were much more difficult to cross or were closed.
But entering Egypt was never simple. Before the war, human rights groups documented bureaucratic hurdles such as long delays in crucial visa documentation and inexplicable refusals that left Palestinians waiting months or years for crossing permits. Sporadic border closures and mistreatment by border officials were a regular part of the experience.
A network of travel agencies and black market intermediaries have long acted as brokers in a process known as “tanseeq,” the Arabic word for coordination. For a fee, they use connections with Egyptian authorities to speed up bureaucratic processes and place Palestinians’ names on the approved traveler list used by border officials.
Their prices soared after October 7, when Egypt further restricted who could cross. While there are no official figures on what coordinators charge, more than a dozen locals familiar with the process reported that prewar prices were typically $500 to $1,000 per person. Since the start of the war, many families fleeing have reported paying around $7,000 per person – more than double the average annual income of a family in Gaza.
As the war dragged on, the number of Palestinians desperate to flee increased and the population of Rafah quadrupled. The cramped border town has been designated a “safe zone” by the Israeli military since December, but has been hit repeatedly by airstrikes in recent months.
To raise funds to cross the border, many in Gaza turned to crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe. Until the end of January, travel agencies, considered the most reputable coordinators, provided services only to Palestinians who had immediate family members with foreign passports. This left most Gazans with the black market as their only option. Stories of fleeing families scammed out of thousands of people have circulated widely, eight people told NBC News, leaving many hesitant to use the black market.
Travel agencies opened registrations to all Palestinians at the end of January. Shortly afterwards, Israel announced that it was planning a ground offensive on Rafah, prompting people like Al Borno to begin raising money to pay the rising taxes. But this was no easy task. Most travel agencies and intermediaries require payment in US dollars in cash. And fundraising platform rules often require a US or European bank account to launch a campaign.
GoFundMe requires a bank account from one of the 19 supported countries, which do not include Egypt, Israel or the Palestinian territories. Many Palestinians who were unable to launch their own campaigns turned to social media, such as Instagram and TikTok, posting their experiences and asking for help.
Despite irregular Internet access throughout the territory, his messages were disseminated. Many were shared widely, triggering a wave of online organizing from people around the world to help them raise money.
People in the US, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, the UK and other countries began sponsoring campaigns on behalf of families they had never met who were stranded in Rafah. Among them was Caroline Kuspa, a 35-year-old graphic designer from Santa Cruz, California, who connected with Al Borno on Instagram after he started posting videos seeking help.
Al Borno sent her an Instagram DM after she liked one of his stories in February. She responded and the pair began exchanging messages. Several weeks later, Kuspa offered to launch a GoFundMe after meeting his family on video calls and reviewing relevant documentation.
Launching the campaign was a “calculated risk,” Kuspa said. “I had the chance to make a transformative difference in the lives of individuals who were part of a group of people I have thought about and worried about every day for months.”
That risk paid off. She and Al Borno raised more than $46,000 and, with the help of relatives abroad, evacuated five members of her family, including her elderly mother and her 3-year-old daughter, who has a serious health condition.
NBC News found that GoFundMe saw a significant increase in campaigns launched after travel agencies expanded eligibility for their services.
While many of those who raised funds remain in Rafah, some venture further into the war zone in search of cellphone service. Abdullah Alqatrawi, 24, traveled up to 45 kilometers to more dangerous areas in the Palestinian enclave, avoiding airstrikes by hitching a ride on trucks, to check his GoFundMe and post more videos.
“My way of raising donations is to make films and share them on Instagram, explaining my suffering,” he said.
Alqatrawi, a recent graduate, received a significant boost in donations last month after one of his Instagram videos was watched more than 85,000 times. He raised more than $15,000 through a campaign run by people in Belgium and managed to evacuate his mother and four younger siblings to Egypt last week. He stayed behind with his father and a brother.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
