In search of protection : irregular mobility among Palestinian youth in Gaza

Abstract

Mousa, a twenty-one-year-old young man from the north of Gaza, died while attempting to swim across a fast-running river in Bosnia in the late summer of 2019. The first his family knew of his death was through a series of screenshots of Facebook stories and live videos. Friends Mousa had made in Turkey before traveling on along the Balkan route had photographed his corpse, tagging other friends from Gaza they had met along the way in the hope that through a long process of sharing and tagging, they might find someone who could reach his family with the news. A long back-and-forth of comments between Mousa’s brother and the men who had been with him when he died ensued, in the public space of Mousa’s Facebook wall, trying to work out whether there was a way to return his body to Gaza. I had met Mousa in the spring of 2019 as he was preparing to leave in an effort to get to Europe. “It really doesn’t matter where I end up, I’ll go anywhere. But I can’t stay here in Gaza, waiting to die. I’d rather die trying to make something of my life than waiting here for a missile to hit my house,” he explained. The tragedy that ended Mousa’s life is a painfully familiar story among Palestinians from Gaza who risk their lives to journey to Europe in search of protection.