From Gaza | Translation

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The following English translation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.

[Daniel Alarcón]: A warning before we begin: this episode contains descriptions of violence. Listener discretion is advised.

This is Radio Ambulante. I’m Daniel Alarcón.

As a child, Refaat Alathamna had two ways to entertain himself. One was playing soccer.

[Refaat Alathamna]: They knew me as the best goalkeeper.

We lived in a neighborhood near the mountains; we’d go play on the fields, in the mountains.

[Daniel A.]: And the other was going to the beach. There really weren’t many other options.

[Refaat A.]: It’s not like a normal city with parks and places to have fun. It was the only place we wanted to go sometimes, when we wanted to have a good time — go to the beach with the guys and play soccer.

[Daniel A.]: Refaat lived in Gaza. He was born there in 1977, in that extremely narrow strip of land on the Mediterranean coast. You can drive from north to south in just an hour and a half. And from east to west in less than 30 minutes. Yet it is extremely densely populated: more than two million people live there — nearly as many as in Medellín or Quito. One end of the border meets Egypt. The rest borders Israel. When Refaat was young, Israel actually exercised control over Gaza from within.

[Refaat A.]: Even to go to the beach, there were checkpoints we had to pass through, where Israeli soldiers would sometimes mistreat us, sometimes hit us… And when things got bad, there were weeks of curfew where people couldn’t go outside.

[Daniel A.]: That’s why, when Refaat finished school in the late 1990s and had to choose what to study, he chose a degree that universities in Gaza didn’t yet offer at the time.

[Refaat A.]: I wanted to get to know more countries, I wanted to live in freedom.

[Daniel A.]: He decided he would become a doctor.

[Refaat A.]: Medicine was the first choice. Medicine, because that profession in Palestine is something beautiful — everyone appreciates and values it — and it also benefits you greatly in terms of income.

[Daniel A.]: That way, he would get out of there. And, on top of that, he could help his family, which was large: he is the second of 13 siblings.

[Refaat A.]: The family always hopes that their children, when they grow up, will have a good profession, a good financial situation, so they can help the family.

[Daniel A.]: By that point, going abroad to study wasn’t unheard of. There were even agencies that handled the paperwork for students who wanted to leave Palestine: they translated diplomas, helped with the entire visa process, with getting tickets, and with enrollment at certain universities.

To promote their services, they handed out flyers at schools and mosques. It was common to go to Turkey, Ukraine, or Germany. But Refaat ruled out those options. In Turkey, there was an entrance exam and he didn’t feel confident he’d pass it. Ukraine, at the time, had a bad reputation: people said students paid to pass their courses. And Germany seemed too expensive for Refaat. But then a fourth option appeared.

[Refaat A.]: A travel agency that had recruited some students to travel to Bolivia.

[Daniel A.]: Bolivia. Refaat had never heard of the place.

[Refaat A.]: I honestly didn’t know it. So I looked it up on a map to see where it was.

[Daniel A.]: He was drawn to it because the flyers advertised a university that wasn’t too expensive, and after looking into it a bit, he found out that living there was affordable. That convinced him.

Refaat, barely 20 years old, couldn’t afford it on his own, of course. But his father, like so many other Gazans, was working in Israel at the time and earning well. He committed to helping him. It was something of an investment: betting on his most studious son so that he could later help the family get ahead.

[Refaat A.]: Studying abroad was a luxury, because going abroad means someone has to support you and send you money every month. And not everyone had that privilege.

[Daniel A.]: With the money secured, Refaat hired an agency. And a couple of months later, in 1998, without ever having imagined it, he landed in Bolivia. What he didn’t suspect then was the unexpected role that country — and what he was about to learn there — would have in his life.

Our producer Sara Selva tells us the story.

[Sara Selva]: When Refaat arrived in Bolivia, he was a young man eager to discover what the world looked like outside of Gaza. He quickly started making friends. Immersing himself in this new culture. He was happy.

[Refaat A.]: I wish I could live my whole life like that period, because it was the time when I had the fewest problems, the fewest worries. I was studying medicine, but I went out, traveled, went out with my friends, to parties.

[Sara S.]: He adapted without much difficulty.

[Refaat A.]: It’s not that complicated to learn Spanish when you’re living in the country, being young, having to face life. You’re alone, without family.

[Sara S.]: He watched Mexican soap operas, learning vocabulary while trying to figure out what Latin Americans were like. And he listened to romantic music, trying to understand what the songs were saying.

[Refaat A.]: To really feel the songs, to live through the soap operas — that took me a bit longer. Maybe a year.

[Sara S.]: And within two years he was fully integrated.

[Refaat A.]: Many people close to me were Bolivians who told me, ‘You’re Latino, nothing like a Palestinian. Your attitude, your accent — everything is Latino.’ So they called me the Palestinian, the Camba Palestinian.

[Sara S.]: Camba is what people in Bolivia call those from the Santa Cruz region.

Refaat was so comfortable there that time passed and he ended up staying: 12 years. He had time to move to Santa Cruz, finish his degree, fall in love, even get married. And, along the way, obtain Bolivian citizenship. But the marriage didn’t last long. She, as he tells it, broke his heart. And they ended up divorcing.

Shortly after, Refaat went to work in Salta, a border province in Argentina. But, with the change of country, he began to feel lonely. To miss his family, to miss Palestine… He even felt like he was forgetting Arabic, his mother tongue.

[Refaat A.]: I barely spoke Arabic anymore… My communication with my family got less and less, because they had their things and I had mine.

He felt like he was drifting away, forgetting things that were his own that he didn’t want to lose.

[Sara S.]: So he decided to go back. His plan was to spend a few months at home and then return to Salta.

[Refaat A.]: Go to Gaza, update myself, speak more Arabic again. It’s like recharging, you know? And then come back and carry on as before.

[Sara S.]: Returning to Gaza was overwhelming. It was 2010. Refaat had spent more than a decade without seeing his neighborhood in the city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Strip. The first thing that surprised him was the noise. At that time, Israel had bombed the only power plant in the Strip and there were only four or five hours of electricity per day. So almost all his neighbors had generators that made a tremendous amount of noise.

[Refaat A.]: And the smell in the streets too. Imagine how many engines when you’re walking — the noise, the smell of the motors.

[Sara S.]: Everything was overwhelming. Refaat spent the first few days with his family. He remembers all his siblings gathered at his parents’ house, listening to their mother tell stories from when they were children.

[Refaat A.]: She’s like the storehouse of memories. When she sits with us, she starts talking… ‘Do you remember such and such? Do you remember when you were one year old?’ She remembers jokes we played, stories, and so many things. Those memories are very beautiful for us.

[Sara S.]: There, he became even more aware of everything he had missed.

[Refaat A.]: There are things that can’t be recovered. A sister of mine that I left when she was two or three years old. I didn’t see her at five or six, or seven, or ten, or twelve. No. I missed all that time.

Many nephews who are new, whom I had never seen — they were born while I was away. My brothers’ wives whom I didn’t know. So I had to meet everyone, visit everyone.

[Sara S.]: When someone returned to the Strip after so many years abroad, it was customary to spend a few days receiving neighbors, friends, and school acquaintances. Spending time together. Catching up. But that time, almost no one came to visit Refaat.

[Refaat A.]: I wasn’t able to see friends who had been my classmates, with whom I had so many memories. I’d see them in the street — I don’t know — they wouldn’t greet me, either because they didn’t see me, or out of embarrassment, or because they just hadn’t come around…

[Sara S.]: Sometimes, he barely recognized them.

[Refaat A.]: When I went back I was around 32, but when I looked at my classmates, who are the same age, I’d put them at 40 or 45 — with whiter hair, bald heads, worn-out bodies, stressed faces.

And when I asked them: ‘Hey, what happened to so-and-so, who was our friend, who used to play soccer with us, who was my classmate, who we always went out with? Why hasn’t he come to visit me?’

And they said, ‘I don’t know, people have suffered a lot here. Many people have lost family members. They’ve lost their jobs. Some people have lost their minds.’

[Sara S.]: Nothing was the same anymore. The situation in the Strip had changed enormously in those 12 years Refaat had been away.

The history of Gaza — how it became what it is — is a story of decades that can’t be fully told in a single episode. There are years of displacement, pain, and crimes against humanity. What is clear is that the Gaza Refaat returned to was very different from the one he had left in 1998 when he went to Bolivia. At that time, it was a territory that Israel controlled militarily, socially, and economically. When he came back in 2010, that was no longer the case. Control was in the hands of Hamas.

Hamas means different things to different people. For some countries, like the United States, Argentina, Canada, and the United Kingdom, it is a terrorist organization. For others, like Iran and Turkey, it is a legitimate resistance group. It was born as an Islamist political movement and a militia with a clear principle: armed resistance against the Israeli occupation. It won elections in 2006, though it ended up expelling its Palestinian opponents — Fatah — through armed conflict. Since then, no elections have been held. Israel’s response was to impose a blockade that began in 2007, continues to this day, and has steadily isolated and strangled the Strip.

Israel controls everything that enters and everything that leaves. And decides when things go in and when they don’t. It controls the border crossings. The airspace. The sea. Everything… except the Rafah crossing, through which Refaat left for Bolivia. There, in theory, control belongs to Egypt. But Israel still has enormous influence. Moreover, it is not uncommon for the crossing to remain closed for long stretches. In some years it has only been open for 30, 40, or 50 days.

The blockade pushed Gaza into economic collapse. Refaat’s father lost his job in Israel. He worked at a metal recycling plant, sorting scrap, but he could no longer cross the borders easily and working outside became impossible. He had to look for work inside Gaza. Whatever he could find: mechanic, carpenter, driver. He went from earning around 2,000 dollars a month to earning around 200. With this new reality, his father could no longer continue supporting Refaat’s studies.

Enormous numbers of people ended up unemployed. Factories closed: they couldn’t receive materials from outside or export anything. Farmers couldn’t cultivate because they couldn’t access their land. Fishermen couldn’t fish at sea. If they tried, they risked being shot by an Israeli soldier. Gaza began to run short of work. Food. Electricity. Medicine. Everything started running out.

And on top of that, war came. Or rather, the wars. Between 2008 and 2009, Israel spent 22 days bombing the Strip. More than 1,400 people were killed.

That was the Gaza Refaat arrived two years later.

[Refaat A.]: Some people’s attitudes had changed. Before, they were more fun, more playful; now they were more serious. And the stress of life in Gaza had also affected many.

[Sara S.]: From Bolivia, Refaat had talked with his family. And they told him, of course. That they were suffering. That the blockade made life impossible. That a relative had died in a bombing. Refaat was always keeping up with the news coming from there.

[Refaat A.]: I was never able to abandon the news because it’s my people, who have always suffered… But watching the news is different from living it there.

[Sara S.]: What he saw in those first weeks back changed his plans.

[Refaat A.]: My intention wasn’t to stay in Gaza, but I stayed because… because I was compelled to be there.

[Sara S.]: He noticed his parents were older. More dependent. And he felt a sense of duty. It was his turn to support them.

[Refaat A.]: I wanted to give them some joy. I didn’t want to abandon them. They wanted me close to them. They saw in me a strength, a support that I could offer.

[Sara S.]: His mother, moreover, kept insisting: stay and get married here. Start a family. Then you can go wherever you like. Refaat agreed. He would stay for a year and then return to Argentina.

He had his degree recognized. He started working as a doctor. He met Noha, a Gazan woman, also from Khan Yunis, about 14 years younger than him. They married. And he began to build a family, just as his mother had asked. His first daughter was born in 2013, shortly after Israel bombed the Strip again — that time, for eight consecutive days, killing more than 160 people.

Refaat’s plans to leave Gaza began to falter. To do so he needed money to pay the Egyptian authorities. And saving, under those circumstances, was extremely difficult. He couldn’t help his parents as he had promised himself, nor could he gather enough money to get his family out. 

[Refaat A.]: Because of the crisis and the blockade, they didn’t pay us — they’d sometimes pay us 20%, 30%.

[Sara S.]: The rest of the government kept owing them, in theory committing to pay when circumstances improved. But in Gaza things never improved. On the contrary. In 2014, another war. 50 days of bombings in Gaza. More than 2,000 people were killed. 

[Refaat A.]: That kept us always broke. You can’t save anything, you can’t escape. So I was like a prisoner. 

[Sara S.]: But the idea of leaving was always present. Although there was always something that prevented him from going. The pandemic. New wars: in 2021, in 2022. And his family kept growing: leaving was becoming increasingly costly.

In 2023, Refaat already had five children. The eldest, Meera, was 10 years old. And the youngest, Ayham, was two. And then…

[Journalist]: The militant group Hamas launches a surprise incursion against Israel from Gaza and unleashes the largest escalation of violence in the region in years.

[Journalist]: Hamas has struck from the Gaza Strip by land, sea, and air. It has launched thousands of rockets. 

[Journalist]: It is the deadliest escalation in 50 years…

[Sara S.]: October 7th had arrived.

[Refaat A.]: That’s when I said there’s no turning back. One way or another, I have to get out. With money or without money, I have to get out. 

[Daniel A.]: We’ll be right back. 

[Daniel A.]: We’re back on Radio Ambulante. Sara continues the story.

[Sara S.]: On the morning of October 7th, Refaat had just finished a shift at the hospital. He arrived home exhausted. Desperate to sleep. But just before getting into bed…

[Refaat A.]: I started hearing a huge amount of missiles going out, the noise. You’d look at the sky and one would come out here, another over there, ten over there — launching all at once.

[Sara S.]: He had never seen anything like it. 

[Refaat A.]: We started watching the news, turning on the TV to see what was happening. We didn’t know if it was an Israeli attack, an incursion. We didn’t know anything.

[Sara S.]: Refaat found out what had happened: Hamas fighters and other militias had launched thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip toward Israel. And almost simultaneously, they managed to breach Israeli controls — supposedly impenetrable — and cross the border. Once inside, they stormed military bases and attacked kibbutzim, those civilian communities near the border. Hamas members shot at those trying to escape, threw grenades, and set fire to houses. Some people were taken hostage; most were killed. 

[Refaat A.]: They started broadcasting images of the resistance groups roaming the settlements, climbing Israeli tanks, burning tanks.

[Sara S.]: Hours later, they also reached the Nova music festival, where they killed approximately 380 people and dozens were taken hostage. 

[Journalist]: They were at a party when Hamas militants descended by paraglider and started shooting.

[Journalist]: Screams and explosions took over the scene…

[Journalist]: At least 260 bodies have been recovered from this site.

[Sara S.]: In total, they killed more than 1,200 people and returned to Gaza with 250 hostages — civilians and soldiers.

[Journalist]: Israel’s response has been brutal.

[Refaat A.]: They started attacking apartments and buildings in my neighborhood.

[Journalist]: Israel’s security cabinet formally declared a state of war following the worst attack inflicted on the country in 50 years since the Yom Kippur War…

[Refaat A.]: They started attacking everything that gave us life. There was no more electricity. No more schools, no more work — everything was blocked.

[Sara S.]: No water came in, no food. Nothing. It was no longer a blockade. It was a stranglehold.

It wasn’t the first time Israel had attacked and suffocated the Strip in this way. But Refaat knew this time was different. More brutal. He could see it in his daily life, at the hospital.

[Refaat A.]: Gaza has been a place to test weaponry, and we saw that in the wounds that came to us at the hospital.

[Sara S.]: Refaat was working at the European Hospital, one of the main hospitals in the south of the Strip. When the bombings began, he was about to complete a new specialization in anesthesia and intensive care. But his daily life changed completely. The hospital never stopped receiving patients. In the morning, in the afternoon, at night. And he had to do everything.

[Refaat A.]: There are bombs that, if they fall close to you, vaporize you — they make the body disappear. All kinds of wounds: severe burns, extensive amputations. Children of one and two years old, screaming, searching for their mothers, and unfortunately their father or mother or both had been killed.

[Sara S.]: Because there was barely any fuel, the hospitals started sending buses to pick up their staff and take them to their posts. There, at the hospital, two months into the bombings, Refaat received one of the worst pieces of news. He was on duty and it was a shift with his best friend.

[Refaat A.]: And he doesn’t show up. I tell my supervisor: My colleague — I have a heavy workload and he hasn’t appeared. I don’t know if something’s wrong. ‘Okay, we’ll call him.’ But then exactly two hours later, I heard the news that he had been attacked along with his family — that in that attack he died, along with his two parents, his brother, and his two children. Only one daughter of his survived, with severe injuries, and she is now alive, having recovered.

And he was a friend, like a brother. I lost him and kept working with that — with that rage, with that pain.

[Sara S.]: Receiving that kind of news became routine. Nurses were killed. Doctors. Uncles. Cousins. But he felt he had to keep going…

[Refaat A.]: My duty was to go to the hospital and attend to the patients, who were so many.

[Sara S.]: The horror came from everywhere: from what he saw at the hospital but also from the constant dread of daily life. He was always on edge, phone in hand. Suffering over being separated from his family. From Noha, and from his five children.

[Refaat A.]: I thought about that every day. What do I do if I lose a child? What will they do if something happens to me?

Many times the attacks were close to them and I had to call — and the greatest fear was that the calls wouldn’t connect. Then you don’t know if they’re not answering because they’ve been hit or if they’re not answering because there’s no signal, and you have to stay on edge the whole time until you manage to talk to them and know they’re okay.

[Sara S.]: And even though he thought of them constantly, he had no time to dwell on that uncertainty: patients kept coming in without pause.

[Refaat A.]: It was total overload for the entire medical team. During that time, instead of working normally, you had to work twice as hard — sometimes three times as hard.

[Sara S.]: And without a salary. If even under normal conditions he didn’t receive it in full, now it was much less. He says they were barely given 100 dollars every two months.

[Refaat A.]: Everyone is working under the same conditions and trying to endure it. And they couldn’t abandon the hospital. They have to do their duty because everyone who’s been attacked is also our people. It could be your cousin, it could be your mother. And we have to serve everyone and hold on, thinking that it’s going to end soon — but it never ends.

[Sara S.]: It was pure horror. Perpetual horror. Refaat knew there was only one option to escape it: get out of Gaza. And that became his mission.

A few months later, when Refaat saw that Israel had no intention of stopping its attacks, he got in touch with the Bolivian Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. As mentioned, Refaat had a Bolivian passport — he had become a citizen while studying there, when he got married. He thought that, as a Bolivian national, that the government might be able to help him evacuate along with his family. But shortly before, at the end of October, in response to what was happening in the Strip, Bolivia had severed its diplomatic relations with Israel. So, under those circumstances, that process was even more complicated. Even so, they told him they would try. That he should be patient.

As the months passed, the situation in Gaza only worsened.

In January 2024, Israel launched an offensive against Khan Yunis, the city where Refaat lived. Sometimes Israel gave warning before an attack.

[Refaat A.]: Through various means. First, flyers. 

[Sara S.]: Flyers dropped from the sky, informing people of the ‘red zones’ — those that were going to be attacked — and the ones that were, in theory, safe zones.

[Refaat A.]: Second: they have pages that make announcements, which we follow to know where to go and what to do. And third, some incursions were surprises. And there are tanks at the edges of the neighborhood. And they call through drones with microphones — they have microphones — saying that we have to evacuate. That you have one hour to get out. 

[Sara S.]: Every time that happened, they had to find somewhere to go. To a relative’s house or an acquaintance’s. The first time, they managed to move within Khan Yunis. But Israel kept advancing and they had no choice but to leave for Rafah, further south, a few kilometers from the border with Egypt.

The family had to split up. There were too many of them to stay in the same place. Refaat and his son Amir, eight years old, went to a relative’s house. And Noha, and the rest of the children, to another. They were in the same city but about three kilometers apart.

Refaat would leave Amir at the house with his cousins and uncles, and go to work. Or to look for food, gas, water. Everything essential was scarce. And it had to be found day by day. He spent hours and hours in lines to receive humanitarian aid.

[Refaat A.]: You go every two days or so, you have to wait in line for three or four hours to receive scraps. They give you a roll of toilet paper, a small bar of soap, a can of beans, a can of cheese — something like that. If you bring that home, it barely covers breakfast. And what do I do for lunch? And what do I do the next day? What do I do for dinner?

[Sara S.]: Water was extremely precious — it had to be rationed. 

[Refaat A.]: And we spent five months living with many people sharing a single bathroom. We lined up for the bathroom. You can’t flush every time; you have to save water. 

[Sara S.]: The situation was growing ever more desperate. His house was destroyed. His car, too. He had lost everything. He needed money. And he had nowhere to get it from.

The Bolivian Embassy in Cairo wasn’t offering him a solution, so Refaat began thinking about other alternatives. There was really only one: leaving through the Rafah crossing by paying an Egyptian company that handled obtaining the permits. Before October 7th, that process could cost 300 or 400 dollars per person. But with the war, prices had skyrocketed — it was one more opportunity to profit. They were asking up to 7,000 dollars per person. To get his whole family out, Refaat needed around 30,000.

[Refaat A.]: Before, when a crisis occurred, you could find a brother, a cousin, someone in Gaza you could borrow from, ask for help, something like that. But the situation reached a point where Gaza was completely destroyed and everyone inside needed the same kind of help you needed. So you had to step outside that box and look for it elsewhere. 

That’s when I started looking for a solution outside of Gaza.

[Daniel A.]: A short break, and we’ll be right back.

[Daniel A.]: We’re back on Radio Ambulante. Sara continues the story. 

[Sara S.]: Refaat began reconnecting with the friends he had made in Latin America. Writing to them on social media. Seeing if they could help him. They gave him two pieces of advice: to create a fundraising campaign to receive donations. And to start recording and posting videos telling the story of his daily life.

[Refaat A.]: I saw that I had a weapon in my hands.

[Sara S.]: That was when he remembered that he had a tool he hadn’t used in years. Something he had almost forgotten. And that almost no one around him had.

[Refaat A.]: It was a weapon that served me and my family. 

[Sara S.]: Refaat knew Spanish. And he was finally going to be able to use it.

[Refaat A.]: I am Dr. Refaat Alathamna. I’m speaking to you from here, from Rafah. Today is February 29th… Here I show you where I’m sheltering with my son… 

[Sara S.]: He started recording and posting videos on Instagram. They were the kind of ‘a day in my life’ videos… there are thousands on social media. Usually they feature people going to work, showing their homes, their cars… But Refaat’s showed life in the middle of a genocide. The most atrocious events we have seen on our screens in recent years.

[Refaat A.]: Hello, friends. How are you? How is everyone?

[Sara S.]: He recorded practically every day.

[Refaat A.]: Here I am leaving the European Hospital — as you can see, it looks like a neighborhood, there are many refugees…

[Sara S.]: He wasn’t a social media person. He had only a handful of followers. But he soon started reaching more and more people. 

[Refaat A.]: I went out to buy something… Everything is dark here… You already know that Israel’s attacks put an end to every source of electricity…

[Sara S.]: He showed how they got water, food. 

[Refaat A.]: I went to the refugee center to receive some things… Here are some crackers, a roll of toilet paper… a can of beans, something like that.

[Sara S.]: And how they lived through the attacks.

[Refaat A.]: Hello, friends. I don’t know if you can hear that loud sound — they’re the planes in the sky. There are many planes over Rafah…

[Sara S.]: In this video, Refaat is with his five children in the courtyard of the house where he lives, in the middle of the night. They’re sitting around an improvised bonfire. The smallest of all, Ayham, three years old, fans the flames with a piece of paper.

[Refaat A.]: I’m distracting myself with them a little, making a bonfire, I’m going to make them some tea now. And well, as always, friends, I still need your support…

[Sara S.]: Refaat appears calm in the videos. He doesn’t speak rushed or in tears. It’s almost hard to understand how he can maintain his composure amid so much terror…

[Refaat A.]: ‘Hey, why don’t you cry?’ they’d ask me. I said: I don’t cry, you know? It’s hard for me to cry in spite of everything we’re going through.

I don’t want to put on that show. I’m living through a crisis and I’m showing it for what it is. This is not the time to cry. This is the time to work. And when the moment comes to be safe, I’ll allow myself to cry on a beach, in a bed, wherever I feel like crying. That’s how I saw it.

I didn’t sleep many nights talking with a lot of people.

I kept my phone in my hand every day, trying to talk to people, to open more doors, to try to reach more people.

There were people who supported me psychologically. People who called me every day to find out if we had eaten, if we were okay, if we had made it through the night.

[Sara S.]: People wrote to him from Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Spain. People he had never seen, but who had connected with his story through social media. Soon, Refaat’s Instagram account reached more than 100,000 followers.

[Refaat A.]: Those people give you encouragement, they give you hope, and you think the world isn’t all that bad. Unfortunately there is a lot of evil, but in return there are many people who do want to help and who have good hearts.

[Sara S.]: In April, three months after starting the campaign, Refaat had already raised more than 10,000 dollars. It was a lot of money, though not enough to pay for his exit. For that he needed another 20,000.

But shortly after, that option — paying to leave through the border — was no longer available.

[Refaat A.]: As you can see, as you can hear. A very heavy night tonight. So many planes. They won’t leave the skies over Rafah. There have been more than five attacks in the last few hours. And I don’t know — it seems like Rafah’s hour has come… 

[Sara S.]: On May 6, 2024, Israel invaded Rafah and bombed the border crossing. No one could leave through there anymore. Refaat was then at the epicenter of the news. And the media saw an opportunity in him. 

[Journalist]: What we’re going to do is go to Rafah, because that’s where Dr. Refaat is. Hello, good morning, Doctor.

[Refaat]: Hello, good morning.

[Sara S.]: He was a witness to what was happening in Rafah. And he could recount it in Spanish.

[Refaat]: They’ve issued announcements for us to evacuate again to other areas near Khan Yunis. We’re being forced to go to an area that is completely destroyed. We’re going to go on top of rubble — I don’t know how we’re going to manage there. 

[Sara S.]: It wasn’t just the nights responding to his followers anymore. Also to journalists writing to him from various parts of the world, requesting an interview. Refaat became a kind of correspondent for Spanish-language media.

[Journalist]: First of all… how are you?

[Refaat A.]: Here, still alive — but okay.

[Sara S.]: In those first days of May, he had to return to Khan Yunis, which by then was completely destroyed. 

[Refaat A.]: Here, in Khan Yunis, among the rubble, trying to find a life here. Many people are arriving from Rafah, fleeing… Before, they fled from here to Rafah. Now they’re fleeing from Rafah to here.

[Sara S.]: The money he was raising could no longer be used to leave Gaza. But he could use it for day-to-day survival. To be able to pay rent for an apartment when almost no one could. When barely a few buildings were still standing.

Very few people could afford a solar panel. Or pay 15 dollars for an onion. Or buy flour at 50 euros a kilo.

[Refaat A.]: Sometimes I had money and there was nothing to buy, you know?

[Sara S.]: Withdrawing cash in Gaza was complicated. You had to be resourceful — using cryptocurrency, for example. And the fees were enormous: up to 50%.

But the money was enough to survive. To help his family, even. His parents. His brothers. And for small victories: moments of celebration amid so much horror. A shower. A haircut. A good meal.

[Refaat A.]: Well, here’s another day in Gaza with my kids. Well, they’re happy because we managed to find something. We got five eggs… So, well, they’re all laughing. Happy about the eggs…

[Sara S.]: They had gone months without getting eggs. They felt like a luxury.

[Refaat A.]: So when we got to see them, to eat them, it was like a party in the house, and I tried to do things to bring us closer to normalcy with my children.

[Sara S.]: To celebrate birthdays, for example.

[Refaat A.]: During that time of war, no one celebrated birthdays, but I had to celebrate with them. At the same time, I couldn’t show it to others, because imagine — you can’t show too much joy when there are people suffering right next door. So I wanted to create that happiness on a small scale, in a private space, to comfort my children, but without hurting other people.

[Sara S.]: Refaat was convinced that sooner or later they would achieve their goal: getting out of Gaza. And that’s what he kept telling his children. He showed them photos of Jordan or Spain. Of cities with no destruction. No scarcity. He promised them that someday they would live there, safe. That they would go to the park to play. That they would go back to school.

The doubt that tormented him was whether they would all manage to do so alive.

[Refaat A.]: There comes a moment when you start thinking about when your turn will come.

You say: okay, everyone has left, only I’m left — when is it my turn… Because there was nowhere to hide. They attack underground, they attack hospitals, they can attack you on the road. You’re walking and they can hit a car moving right next to you.

[Sara S.]: One day, while on duty at the hospital…

[Refaat A.]: I slipped out for a few minutes to smoke a cigarette and happened to open the back door of the intensive care unit. I sat down in the doorway and just as I lit my cigarette with my coffee, sounds of many bombs started going off all around.

[Sara S.]: A missile had hit about 10 meters from where he was. Refaat threw himself to the ground.

[Refaat A.]: It’s a moment when you don’t understand what’s happening — you still don’t know what they’re targeting, whether the attack is over or not.

[Refaat A.]: And I wanted to escape. To open the door of the intensive care emergency unit and go inside. I couldn’t because of everything that was coming down. It was filled with smoke and rocks, everything. And I don’t know — at that moment, I didn’t know if I was going to make it out of there or if I was going to become a victim. I didn’t know.

[Sara S.]: That day, May 13, 2025, Israel dropped six bombs on the hospital and its surroundings. In the footage, you can see the enormous craters the explosions left. Twenty-eight people were killed. Refaat doesn’t know how he survived.

Refaat had been trying to leave for more than a year. And everything kept getting worse.

On the bus to the hospital, fewer and fewer colleagues were getting on each day. And along the route, all you could see was destruction.

[Refaat A.]: [Refaat A.]: Every day I sit on the bus and look to the right, to the left — the whole three-kilometer trip to the hospital, I can’t find a single building still standing, not a single house still standing. Everything is fucked up. And I keep looking… It’s like staring at an endless mountain of rubble all the way to the hospital. And that caused me a lot of pain. I mean, every time I looked, fuck… when is this going to end, when will it be over?

And the powerlessness was killing me, because I had achieved things, but those things still hadn’t gotten me out of Gaza.

[Sara S.]: He had raised money. Attracted attention. Mobilized many people. But nothing was enough. His children began to doubt his word. To ask him for explanations.

[Refaat A.]: They started asking me when it was going to happen, because it had gone on so long — two years of promising the same thing. So I started feeling uncomfortable, bad, because I was making promises I couldn’t keep — promises that, deep down, I knew I couldn’t guarantee: that they would still be alive the next day.

[Sara S.]: And Bolivia still wasn’t offering him a solution. They kept telling him the same thing over and over: they were trying. But that Israel was refusing. And that any exit required Israel’s authorization.

After months without any news, in August 2025, Refaat had had enough.

[Refaat A.]: I started pushing the embassy hard with videos…

[Refaat A.]: We are not managing to get out of Gaza and we remain trapped. We can no longer have patience waiting for the Bolivian government to do something. I am begging for answers and they tell me to be patient. How can you be patient?

[Sara S.]: In October, with nearly 70,000 people dead and 90% of the Strip’s buildings destroyed, Israel agreed to a ceasefire. Two years had passed since the bombings began.

[Refaat A.]: Ceasefire from Gaza. They have just announced — ceasefire…

[Sara S.]: And then the negotiations accelerated.

[Refaat A.]: I received a call from inside Palestine and the person said: I’m from the Mexican Embassy office, calling you from the West Bank.

[Sara S.]: Since Bolivia had no relations with Israel, they had arranged for Mexico to act as an intermediary.

[Refaat A.]: We’re calling you because we’re working with Bolivia to get you out — we can possibly confirm your departure in a few days.

[Sara S.]: On October 22, 2025, at 4 in the morning, they were expected at a humanitarian organization’s center to be brought out of Gaza.

[Refaat A.]: That’s it.

I never thought the moment would come when they’d call us to leave. I couldn’t even believe it.

[Sara S.]: Refaat spent his last day visiting his brothers and his parents. After so many displacements, they were all scattered across different areas of the Strip.

It wasn’t the first time Refaat had said goodbye to his family. But this time it was very different.

[Refaat A.]: It’s not a matter of going away to study for five years and coming back. This is a way of starting life over somewhere else — and we don’t know when or if we’ll see each other again.

That’s what hurts.

Before, I traveled knowing I’d be away for a while and would come back. I’d find my parents a little older… But now, if I go back in a few years, I might not find one or both of them.

[Sara S.]: Now, moreover, he was leaving with barely any good memories to take with him. His mother was left crying. And his father…

[Refaat A.]: He said to me: ‘But son, are you going to leave us?’ I told him: Dad, I’m not leaving you. I’m looking for a way to support you. I’m here and I’m not helping you. I’m one more victim alongside you.

[Sara S.]: That night, his wife Noha’s family came to say goodbye. For her, it was the first goodbye. The first time she was leaving Gaza.

[Refaat A.]: For her it was a tremendous experience. She wants to leave but she doesn’t want to leave.

[Sara S.]: Her mother had died a few years earlier. And her father was very old. They all had dinner together one last time.

Afterward, Noha and the children slept for a few hours. But Refaat didn’t. He was too anxious.

At 3 in the morning, a car picked them up at their home. They brought no suitcases. They could only take their mobile phone and documents. They left with only what they were wearing. Mexico and Bolivia handled the arrangements, though Refaat’s final destination was Spain. But first, they had to cross the Gaza Strip along a route approved by Israel. The driver received orders from the army: turn left, keep going, wait. It was a journey of barely 30 minutes that took them several hours.

[Refaat A.]: We passed through areas we hadn’t seen in a long time, areas under Israeli control, and areas that had been completely obliterated. We’re not talking about rubble — we’re talking about rubble that has already been pushed beneath the ground.

You can’t distinguish anything. Absolutely nothing.

[Sara S.]: At the Israeli border crossing, the ambassadors of Mexico and Bolivia received them with an entire bus for his family and another woman with her two daughters.

[Refaat A.]: In that bus we passed through territory we hadn’t seen in a long time — occupied territory. It is magnificent. It is magnificent. That part is in the West Bank, near Jordan. It has mountains, greenery — it’s our land, which was stolen. They stole it from us and threw us into Gaza.

[Sara S.]: Refaat’s eyes were growing heavy as he watched the landscape. At last, his family was safe. He could rest.

He had been waiting two years for that moment. And it was a relief, of course. But he couldn’t help feeling, also, an enormous sense of guilt.

[Refaat A.]: And in part I feel like I’m doing something wrong… abandoning Gaza.

Many people said to me: ‘But how are you going to abandon Gaza if you’re a doctor? Palestine needs you. It needs you.’ Yes, but there are other things. My children need me. If I save lives but leave my children on the street, without schools, without anything, without a salary — how am I supposed to live?

You have to split yourself in two. Leave half of yourself there and half of yourself here. And that’s impossible. You have to be here or there. You can’t divide yourself.

[Sara S.]: Refaat and his family spent a month in Jordan before flying to Spain. It took them time to get used to the calm. They went to get ice cream. To play in the park. To shopping centers. The children then understood that the promises their father had repeated for months were real. He hadn’t been lying to them.

The family landed in Spain at the end of November. And a few days later, Refaat spoke with some media.

[Refaat A.]: First of all, thank you all for welcoming us here, for being with us — and above all, I thank all the people who have accompanied us through the media…

There were newspapers, journalists, and all of that… and when they asked me questions, I started to cry. I started to cry.

[Sara S.]: He was no longer in survival mode.

[Refaat A.]: And you feel that relief — that you’re already safe, that you’ve already reached your goal — the tears start falling because you’re finally saying: that’s it. Okay. Now you can let go.

[Sara S.]: Little by little, the children began to recover their routine. They had gotten used to not going to school, to staying up late. And now it was time to put their lives back in order.

When Refaat sees them coming out of school, he feels an enormous joy. A sense of mission accomplished. But his father’s question still echoes in his head. How can you leave us here?

[Refaat A.]: I think many times: what would I be doing right now in Gaza if I hadn’t left? Nothing. I would just be one more person begging for help to survive alongside my children.

[Sara S.]: Now, his family places all their hopes in him. He is the brother who managed to get out — the one who has to help them.

[Refaat A.]: And what I do is promise them I’ll find some way to help them. Sometimes I want to talk to them and sometimes I avoid talking to them. Because I want to talk to them to know they’re okay. But unfortunately, every time I talk to them, they only tell me things that hurt.

[Sara S.]: Sometimes, like he used to do in Gaza, he stays up all night. Thinking. Trying to find a way to help them. 

[Refaat A.]: So even being here, I’m not truly at peace either — but what can make me feel at peace is what I’ll be able to accomplish.

[Sara S.]: Having a job. A stable life. Friends. Being able to send money to his family. Visiting them. Getting them out of Gaza. Or, who knows, one day having a dignified life there again.

For now, he makes sure to always have eggs in the fridge.

[Daniel A.]: Refaat Alathamna and his family have applied for asylum in Spain and are still awaiting the decision. They must wait six months to be able to work legally. Refaat is having his credentials recognized so he can practice as a doctor. His children are doing well at school. They’re making new friends. And learning Spanish. 

Sara Selva Ortiz is a producer at Radio Ambulante and lives in Madrid. This story was edited by Camila Segura, Luis Fernando Vargas, and by me. Bruno Scelza fact-checked the story. Sound design is by Andrés Azpiri with music by Ana Tuirán, Rémy Lozano, and Andrés.

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Adriana Bernal, Aneris Casassus, Diego Corzo, Emilia Erbetta, Camilo Jiménez Santofimio, Germán Montoya, Samantha Proaño, Natalia Ramírez, Juan Pablo Santos, David Trujillo, Elsa Liliana Ulloa, Franklin Villavicencio and Mariana Zúñiga.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO.

Radio Ambulante is a podcast by Radio Ambulante Estudios, produced and mixed in the Hindenburg PRO program.

If you enjoyed this episode and want us to keep making independent journalism about Latin America, support us through Deambulantes, our membership program. Visit radioambulante.org/donar and help us keep telling the region’s stories.

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thank you for listening.