ABASSAN, Gaza Strip — The university student was desperate to flee Gaza after suffering through years of border closures and three wars.
In early September, a week after the latest war between Gaza’s ruling Hamas and Israel, Mohammed Abu Toaimeh, 22, crossed into Egypt. He handed $2,000 to traffickers and boarded a ship to smuggle him to Europe.
Instead, he and dozens of other Gazans are missing amid reports that smugglers sank their vessel on purpose.
Mohammed’s mother, Ahlam, had helped him scrape together money for the trip. “I had hoped he could begin a new life, better than this life of war and destruction,” she said, sobbing.
In the past two months, more than 1,300 Gazans are thought to have gone to Egypt, some sneaking in through a border tunnel, to embark on illicit sea voyages, said Ramy Abdu, a human rights activist tracking the trafficking.
It’s a new escape route and a measure of growing desperation in the crowded sliver of land where two-thirds of those under 30 are unemployed.
In mid-July, about a week after the outbreak of the war, a gang of Egyptian smugglers and Palestinian middlemen began advertising sea trips to Europe as cheap and safe, said Abdu.
Word of the boat trips quickly spread among the young men of Gaza, including Mohammed, his 26-year-old brother, Firas, and their 19-year-old cousin, Hussein al-Jorf.
Firas stayed in Gaza because his parents couldn’t afford the voyage for both sons.
The International Organization for Migration said the ship sailed from the Egyptian port of Damietta on Sept. 6 with about 500.
After four days at sea, smugglers rammed the vessel southeast of the island of Malta when the migrants refused to switch to a smaller boat they deemed unsafe, the migration organization said, citing survivor testimony.
