Though her husband and three children are Palestinian, 31-year-old Rasha has Egyptian citizenship, which she hoped would help her family cross the tightly controlled Rafah border, Gaza’s only outlet since Israel laid siege to the coastal strip in October. But she has not heard back about her repatriation request, which the family submitted through an online portal launched by Egyptian authorities in early December. “We are dying in silence,” Rasha, who is struggling to feed and clothe her children in central Gaza, said through tears over the phone. “It is very cold in our nylon tent. We have no food … we live in constant fear and horror.” There is a faster way to get through the Rafah border crossing. But that option is only available to those with thousands of dollars to spare. For years, a network of Egypt and Gaza-based travel agents and fixers have offered fast-tracked passage through Rafah for a price, ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending in part on how frequently the border has been open for crossing. The deeper the desperation to leave, the better the business. More than 100 days into the conflict, during which Gaza’s other Israeli-controlled exit has been shut, rates are soaring. While the prices fluctuate wildly, some brokers are now charging Palestinians between $4,500 and $10,000 to secure a crossing permit, according to more than a dozen interviews conducted by OCCRP and the Cairo-based SaheehMasr media platform. The rate for those with Egyptian nationality is lower, at around $650 to $1,200 per person. Reporters spoke to 15 Palestinians and Egyptians who had reached out to brokers to ask about leaving. Two had successfully left the enclave by paying $4,500 each in fees, while three said they had been scammed by the agents and lost their cash. Others were desperately trying to raise money by selling their gold and other personal belongings, borrowing from friends and relatives, or through online crowdfunding. Rasha said she was told it would cost a total of $40,000 to get her Palestinian husband and three children out through Rafah.

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Even before the war, the Rafah border could not be traversed freely. Since 2007, it has been managed by Hamas’s Interior Ministry on one side and Egyptian security forces, including the General Intelligence Service, on the other. Israel also monitors the crossing from a nearby military base. Prone to sporadic closures, the border has long been “perceived as random and unpredictable,” said Lorenzo Navone, a sociology lecturer at the University of Strasbourg. “Nobody could foresee when it would be open, who would be allowed to cross and [according to] which rule or criteria or principle.” From Gaza, the formal process required registering a request with the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. Approvals often took between two months in winter and six months in summer, while those traveling for medical purposes might see their applications processed faster, according to interviews with travelers. But even securing a permit was no guarantee — Gazans could be turned back at the border by Egyptian authorities for various unforeseen reasons. That’s where companies like Hala Consulting and Tourism, an Egyptian travel agency, stepped in. In 2019, the company started offering a VIP service referred to as “coordination,” or “tanseeq” in Arabic, to cross the Rafah border quickly and comfortably. For $1,200, the company would provide a permit within 48 hours, and a hassle-free trip from Gaza to Cairo, according to media reports at the time. This was made possible through the use of a separate list of travelers approved by the Egyptian authorities, distinct from the registration process organized by Hamas. This “two list” system explained why some applicants were able to receive approval more quickly than those who had registered months earlier, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA wrote in a 2018 report. According to figures published on Facebook by Hamas’s border authorities, roughly one quarter of travelers in the two years prior to the war crossed the border through Egypt’s “coordination” list.

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While there are a number of travel agencies and independent brokers active in the business, Hala is one of the most prominent. Gazans who posted online asking for services were often directed to the Egyptian firm, which lists offices in Cairo and in Rafah on its website, but also works with at least seven local agents in Gaza, according to its social media posts. The company has powerful backers: it is owned by the prominent Egyptian businessman Ibrahim Al-Organi, who heads the Tarabin tribe in the Sinai desert bordering Israel and has other business partnerships with Egypt’s state. Hala is one of eight companies operating under his Organi Group, which also includes a joint venture, Misr Sinai, with the Defense Ministry’s industrial conglomerate, the National Services Projects Organization (NSPO), Organi said in a 2014 interview with the Egyptian outlet Youm7. In the interview, Organi said the NSPO owned 51 percent of the company’s shares, in partnership with two companies owned by the General Intelligence Service. OCCRP could not confirm whether there have been any changes in ownership in the years since. “As you can see, all state entities are in this company. This gives us an advantage,” Organi said in the interview. In 2016, Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi inaugurated the company’s new seven-factory complex for marble production.