Palestinian family reunites briefly at Israel-Gaza crossing after war splits them

Mais al-Gharam stood outside Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing hoping to catch sight of her surviving brothers before a brief reunion brought a family split between Gaza and Israel back together on July 22. The 23-year-old had last seen her seven siblings in Gaza two months before the war, then left Gaza to live in Israel. Soon after, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the family home, killing her parents and younger brother.

The meeting this month capped a two-year effort by al-Gharam to bring her brothers and sisters to Israel. Their separation was shaped not only by the fighting itself, but by the machinery that controls Palestinian movement: checkpoints, border permits, security screenings and crossings that open and close on military and political timelines rather than family need.

Kerem Shalom has become one of the conflict’s most sensitive choke points. On March 13, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said all humanitarian movements to the crossing had been denied in the previous 24 hours except one, which allowed fuel collection but no other supplies. On March 3, UNRWA said COGAT had announced the crossing would reopen for the gradual entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. A briefing from the UK Parliament Commons Library covering humanitarian access from October 2023 to January 2025 shows how central such routes have been to food, fuel and survival.

For Palestinian families, that system has become part of the loss itself. War has killed relatives, flattened neighborhoods and scattered survivors across Gaza, Israel and beyond, leaving even the most ordinary reunion dependent on fragile permissions and the brief opening of a gate. Al-Gharam’s moment with her siblings was short, but it reflected a longer rupture that has made family life across Gaza and Israel difficult to sustain.