Last week the BBC News website published two articles relating to the opening of the Rafah crossing following the recovery of the remains of the last hostage held in the Gaza Strip.
The first of those reports was originally published on the morning of February 2nd under the headline “Gaza’s key Rafah border crossing with Egypt reopens”, with credit given to Hafsa Khalil. Around two hours later, the report’s headline was amended to read “Gaza: Israel reopens key Rafah border crossing with Egypt”. At some point, Yolande Knell was added to the credits and amendments continued to be made.
On the evening of February 3rd the BBC News website published a report headlined “Gazans returning through Rafah crossing describe checks by Palestinian militia” which is credited to Lucy Williamson in Jerusalem and Rushdi Abualouf in Istanbul.
That report begins by telling readers that: [emphasis added]
“Two Gazan women who passed through the newly reopened Rafah crossing with Egypt on Monday have told the BBC that a local Palestinian militia linked to Israel carried out checks at an Israeli military checkpoint inside the Gaza Strip.
Lamia Rabia, who was travelling with her children, said they were escorted by Israeli forces from the border to a nearby checkpoint where members of the Abu Shabab militia, also known as the Popular Forces, searched them and their belongings.
“There was a woman from the Abu Shabab group who conducted the searches on the women,” she told the BBC. […]
Asked how they could be sure the checks were carried out by Abu Shabab, one of the women the BBC spoke to said they had introduced themselves.”
The second woman quoted by Williamson and Abualouf is presented anonymously:
“One of the women, who the BBC is not naming in order to protect her identity, said that the [Abu Shabab] group told her they would help her travel to Europe if she co-operated.
She also said she was mistreated by the militia, alleging that she was beaten and strip-searched along with three other women, and that they had been handcuffed and verbally abused.
Rabia said her experience of the process had been easy with no negative effects. […]
Both the women the BBC spoke to also said that EU officials working with Palestinians inside the Rafah crossing had confiscated a wide variety of their belongings.
“They took perfumes, accessories, make-up, cigarettes, headphones – everything, they didn’t leave anything with us,” one woman told the BBC.
“The Europeans took from us anything that was liquid, like a cough syrup,” said Rabia. “They also took from us perfumes, and make-up, as well as phones and power banks. Any toy with a remote-control was taken.”
Rabia said there was also a limit on the amount of money each person could carry into Gaza, set at $600 (£438).”
A similar account appeared in a report published by AP on February 4th:
“Three women who entered Gaza on the first day of the reopening told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Israeli troops blindfolded and handcuffed them, then interrogated and threatened them, holding them for several hours and inflicting what they said was humiliating treatment until they were released. […]
The three women said the abuse took place at a screening station on the edge of the area of Gaza under Israeli military control that all returnees were required to pass through after crossing Rafah.
The 12 returnees were brought by bus through the crossing, then drove until they reached the Israeli military zone, said one of the returnees, Rotana al-Regeb, who was coming back with her mother, Huda Abu Abed. The two had left Gaza in March last year for the mother to get medical treatment abroad.
At the screening station, they were ordered out of the bus and members of an Israeli-backed Palestinian armed group, Abu Shabab, including one woman, searched their bags and bodies, she said.”
The name Huda Abu Abed also appeared in a February 3rd report from Reuters:
“Palestinian women among the few people let back into Gaza after Israel’s delayed reopening of the Rafah crossing under last year’s ceasefire have described being blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated by Israeli forces as they tried to get home.
Their journey from Egypt on Monday through the frontier post and across the “yellow line” zone controlled by Israel and an allied Palestinian militia group, involved lengthy delays and the confiscation of gifts including toys, one of the women said.
“It was a journey of horror, humiliation and oppression,” said 56-year-old Huda Abu Abed by phone from the tent her family is living in at Khan Younis in southern Gaza. […]
Abu Abed said the returnees, who were restricted to a single suitcase each, first encountered problems at the crossing where European border monitors confiscated toys they were taking home as gifts, she said. […]
A second woman, Sabah al-Raqeb, 41, said the bus, escorted by two four-wheel-drive vehicles, was stopped at a checkpoint manned by Israel-backed Palestinian gunmen who identified themselves as belonging to the Popular Forces, commonly known as the Abu Shabab militia.”
Abu Abed also gave an interview to Al Jazeera on February 3rd.
As we see, the allegations reported by Reuters and AP are remarkably similar to those made by the interviewee with whom the BBC spoke but refrained from naming “in order to protect her identity”.
On February 8th the Center for Peace Communications reported the following:
“A war of words erupted last week after three women returning to Gaza through Rafah alleged degrading treatment by almost every major actor at the crossing: the Palestinian Authority, EU monitors, Israeli troops, and the largest anti-Hamas militia. But after their remarks were widely amplified – above all by Qatar’s Al Jazeera television – Jusoor News International revealed that all three had close family ties to the one party not allowed to help administer the border station: Hamas.”
Jusoor News International’s report states:
“Huda Abu Abed, a 56-year-old grandmother, became the face of the allegations, holding a 20-minute interview with Al Jazeera Arabic on Wednesday and giving quotes to Reuters. But Gazans in contact with Jusoor noted that her son Abdullah was a Hamas militant assassinated by Israel in December 2024, and that his Facebook profile picture shows his father – Huda’s husband – sporting an assault rifle.
Gazan activist Fadi Aldaghma, with nearly 100,000 followers, posted that Huda’s daughter Rotana al-Raqeb, also quoted by both media outlets, is herself married to a Hamas operative. The third woman quoted in the outlets, Sabah al-Raqeb, is also a member of the same Hamas-linked family.”
Perhaps Lucy Williamson and Rushdi Abualouf would like to tell the BBC’s funding public whether or not the anonymous and obviously unverified account that they chose to amplify worldwide did in fact come from one of those three Hamas-linked women who gave interviews to several media outlets and who were among the “nine women and three children”, according to the BBC’s report, to cross the border on that day. BBC audiences would most likely also be interested to know why in the case of that particular interviewee it was considered necessary to “protect her identity”.
