Five and a half hours after beginning her attempt to cross the border to Jordan, Amani Khandaqji returns to Jericho after being denied permission to leave the country.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
Amani Khandaqji rose at 3:30 a.m. Thursday, waking to the dark predawn skies with new hope, even if it was faint.
She knew that the hours ahead of her would be long and uncertain: crossing checkpoints, paying an exit tax, boarding buses, waiting in lines, submitting her passport to Israeli authorities who might, or might not, let her leave Palestinian territory to reunite with her brother, released this week from a prison in Israel.
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She had already failed twice.
But she could remember few weeks as happy as this one, and she was determined to try again. Her brother was among the nearly 2,000 Palestinians set free by Israel, as Hamas liberated the 20 last living Israeli hostages.
For the region, the exchange marked the opening of an unsteady ceasefire that has, for now, largely stilled the violence of a punishing two-year war. Exuberant global leaders have raised the prospect of a peace not known in decades, perhaps centuries.
Ms. Khandaqji boards a bus at the border crossing to Jordan on Thursday. She has tried several times to leave the West Bank and travel to Egypt to see her brother, without success.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
For Ms. Khandaqji and other Palestinian families, however, there has been no sign of new bridges across the region’s deep fissures. If anything, war has deepened those divides.
“Where,” she asked, “is the peace?”
In 2004, her brother, Bassem Khandaqji, was sentenced to life in prison, found guilty of organizing a suicide bombing that killed three in a Tel Aviv market.
Since then, Mr. Khandaqji has become an accomplished author whose jailhouse novels have been celebrated across the Arab-speaking world. In an interview with The Globe and Mail Wednesday, he said leaving prison had given him entry to “a new dawn.”
He also lamented that freedom had not brought with it the ability to embrace his own family. Israel deported 154 of the released prisoners, rather than allowing them to return home. Mr. Khandaqji was sent to Egypt.
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When his family heard that he was to be set free, they quickly left home in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, determined to travel to Cairo. With no direct flights from Israel, they planned to go first to Jordan, crossing the King Hussein Bridge before flying from Amman.
Ms. Khandaqji made her first attempt on Sunday, travelling with her mother. Israeli border officials, however, told her she was not permitted to leave. She tried again Wednesday with her brother and was once again turned back.
On Thursday, she came again alone. She invited The Globe to accompany her.
“I want to keep trying,” she said.
Nablus is only a 100-kilometre drive from the border crossing, but the route passes several checkpoints that can slow travel. Ms. Khandaqji did not arrive at the border crossing until just before 8:30 a.m. Still, she came with optimism.
“I hoped for 21 years that he would be released – so I will keep trying, because hope has become a way of being for me,” she said.
She was travelling light, with a purse and backpack. Inside, she had tucked gifts for her brother: coffee and clothes along with soap and nuts from Nablus. She also packed Palestinian flag pins and prayer beads.
Ms. Khandaqji holds some of the gifts she had packed for her brother.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
It was enough to bring to her mind a line from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: “We have on this land that which makes this life worth living.”
Leaving Palestinian territory has never been simple. At the King Hussein crossing, Palestinians first enter a departure hall, where they pay a $75 exit fee and $11 for a short bus ride to Israeli border control. There, they must queue, waiting for authorization to leave. Only then can they attempt to enter Jordan. Authorities on both sides turn back Palestinians.
But it is Israel that has turned back most family members of released Palestinians, said Basel, a Palestinian criminal-intelligence agent who works at the border. The Globe is not using his surname because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
“I have been on duty here at the bridge for the last three days and more than 120 people were rejected,” he said.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel, roughly three in 10 Palestinians have been barred from leaving, Basel said.
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Years ago, a liaison office allowed Palestinians to advocate for people in need of travel. But that co-operation has diminished during the war.
The Israeli government did not respond to requests for comment.
Often, there is no discernible reason for their rejection, although Basel says there does tend to be one rule: “If a relative of yours has killed an Israeli, you are immediately rejected,” he said.
Ms. Khandaqji fit that description. While her family thinks of Mr. Khandaqji as a political prisoner – he was previously a journalist and has amassed a body of poetry and literature written from behind bars – the Israeli justice system has found him guilty of crimes associated with murder and terror.
Still, Ms. Khandaqji had good reason to think she could cross. In her passport are visas for both Turkey and Egypt. She was in Istanbul earlier this year.
Ms. Khandaqji waits in line at the departure hall in Jericho, at the border crossing to Jordan.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
At 8:49 a.m., her bus left the Jericho departure hall. Israeli officials then took her passport for processing. As she waited, she chatted with others there. Several were, like her, travelling to see released loved ones. One was a mother hoping to see her son. Another woman was on the way to see her husband. A man wanted to see his son. All of them were rejected.
At noon, an agent returned Ms. Khandaqji’s passport, telling her she, too, could not leave, for security reasons.
She tried to argue, asking if she could at least receive a written reason for rejection – but to no avail.
Five and a half hours after she left the departure hall, she was back, her face sullen with frustration. Her brother has described what he calls the colonial attitude of Israeli authorities: “They are there to fight us in the small details. They are fighting our happiness. They are fighting our normal life.”
Ms. Khandaqji wasn’t sure what to say. “I have no feelings. I am dead inside,” she said as she prepared to return home – although not for long.
“I will try again on Sunday. And my mother and brother will try again tomorrow,” she said. “We are a strong people, as Arafat said.”