Video: Gaza is being strangled and its people are suffocating

“I feel so depressed, I feel detained and humiliated and violated because I’m denied one of the most basic rights, the right to have an education, the right to travel,” says Shahd Abusalama in this video report from Gaza by The Real News Network’s Yousef Al-Helou.

Abusalama, who blogs regularly for The Electronic Intifada, is one of thousands of Palestinians trapped in Gaza, unable to travel due to Egypt’s closure of the Rafah crossing.

The Rafah crossing is the only connection to the outside world for the vast majority of Gaza’s almost 1.7 million residents, since Israel imposed its tightened siege beginning in 2006.

Among the stranded are hundreds of students, like Abusalama, hoping to take up university places or scholarships abroad, as well as many medical patients.

Egypt has closed the border completely for the past week, citing the “security” situation in its Sinai peninsula, where it is engaged in military operations against what it calls Islamist militants. more

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