Desperation Drives Gazans Over a Fence and Into Israeli Prisons
By JODI RUDOREN and MAJD AL WAHEIDIFEB. 17, 2015
EL BUREIJ, Gaza Strip — It was not much of an escape.
Moments after Ibrahim al-Awawda climbed over the nine-foot fence separating the Bureij refugee camp on Gaza’s eastern edge from Israel, he was surrounded by six Israeli soldiers. They arrested him, interrogated him and, after he had spent a month in two Israeli prisons, sent him back to the poverty, death and destruction in Gaza that had led him to flee.
“I knew they would capture me,” said Ibrahim, 15, whose father was killed in an Israeli strike in 2002 and who has since lived through three wars between Israel and Gaza militants, including last summer’s bloody 50-day battle. “The war shook me,” he added. “I told myself I may find a better life. They served me good food, but later, they threw me back to Gaza.”
Ibrahim is one of an increasing number of young Palestinians from Gaza who have been caught trying to cross into Israel in the nearly six months since the latest conflagration subsided. Though he carried nothing with him, others were armed with knives or grenades.
The crossings have shaken residents on Israel’s side of the fence who are still psychologically scarred from the series of tunnel invasions by Palestinian militants that marked last summer’s conflict. But military officials and others see the growing phenomenon as less about terrorism than desperation.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/world/middleeast/desperation-drives-gazans-over-a-fence-and-into-israeli-prisons.html?_r=0
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