The Right to Have Rights: the burden of immobility in the Gaza Strip
Por Bianca Pinheiro
Since the beginning of March, a new wave of darkness has cast its shadow over the families of Gaza, with the Israeli government blocking all aid to the narrow strip of stateless land by the Mediterranean Sea. With the end to the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the two-month siege and sustained airstrikes across multiple Gazan cities underscore Prime Minister Netanyahu’s unwillingness to engage in lasting peace negotiations, which was made even clearer with the Security Cabinet’s plans towards full occupation of Palestine (Gritten, 2025).
Under this long war-like scenario, it becomes easy to overlook matters of mobility rights. However, the constant violations of international law on the themes of migration and refuge have direct effect on other human rights. With restrictions on emigration, and consequently on asylum claims in other countries, Palestinians are unable to leave the daily human rights violations in the Gaza Strip, where living is close to becoming a curse, amidst forced displacement, famine, disease, and violence.
Thus, this analysis will explore how the (im)mobility faced by Palestinians is taking place after the October 6th deadly attack and the following military operations by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). With an overview of the international migration regime and of the breakdown of the ceasefire, it will be possible to establish that the statelessness of Palestinians is not the only barrier to their “right to have rights,” like Hannah Arendt explored in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). In this case, their immobility, promoted by Israeli authorities, have greater implications than just restrictions on movement, as it becomes one of the mechanisms of the genocide.
Mobility in International Law
According to Articles XIII and XIV of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, every person has two guaranteed mobility rights: the right to leave their country and to seek asylum from persecution in a country that is not their own. In other words, only the right to emigrate and the right to become a refugee are protected under international migration law. When it comes to the right to immigrate, that is, the right to enter a new country, there is no international guarantee due to the principle of domaine réservé, which holds that certain affairs lie solely within a state’s domestic jurisdiction (De Wenden, 2013).
In spite of this legal gap, in which an individual can leave their country but not necessarily enter a new one, the right to emigrate is, by itself, essential to uphold basic rights, to secure core freedoms, and to promote social equality, as argued by Daniel Sharp (2023). First, emigration can function as a “safety outlet” to moments when a state no longer fulfills its responsibility to protect its people from harm. Second, the right to emigrate is directly linked to the freedom of movement, whether for leisure, work, or personal reasons. Third, emigrating allows one to leave a situation of social or political inequality in search of better conditions.
Unfortunately, the international guarantee of the right to emigrate is yet fragile. As Catherine Wihtol De Wenden exposes in Le droit d'émigrer (2013), mobility is getting more and more dictated by the most powerful countries — who instrumentalize their sovereignty to bend migration realities to their will. While emigrating becomes more accessible for the elites from the developed world, restrictions become more visible once movement originates from the Global South (De Wenden, 2013). Some borders are more artificial than others; for Palestinians, borders are rock solid.
In the case of Gaza, the rights to mobility in the region, as pronounced in the Universal Human Rights Declaration, have historically been threatened. The Palestinian Authority is unable to provide residents of Gaza and the West Bank with passports, only an Israeli-approved travel document with no indication of citizenship (PCHR, 2022). Therefore, the population in the enclave is barred from the “escape valve” of emigration. Now, Israel abuses of its sovereign powers not only to forcibly displaced millions of non-Israeli nationals, but to trap them inside a ticking bomb of its own creation.
The situation is worsened by the lack of Palestinian statehood. To Arendt (1951), nationality means more than sovereignty over the territory, because it links one to the protection of a formal state. Only a recognized national authority can, for example, provide an identification card and public services, such as healthcare and education. To her, human rights are not as universal as they are proclaimed to be, since they indirectly require one to have a legal bond to a sovereign nation. Without the creation of the State of Palestine, the Palestinian people cannot claim their land nor enjoy their entitled rights established by the Universal Declaration. However, for Gazans, their statelessness is aggravated by their imposed immobility because, under present circumstances, that has been subjecting them to a genocide.
Gaza since October: internal displacement, external impediment
As a response to the attacks orchestrated by Hamas in 2023, Israel launched military operations in Gaza that long have surpassed the excuse of self-defense. Due to the bombardments and destruction of homes and critical infrastructure, about 90% of the people from Gaza — more than 2 million individuals — have been forcibly displaced since the onset of the crisis (UN Women, 2025). It is estimated that, on average, families in Gaza have suffered from displacement more than three times over the last 20 months, with some cases reaching the tens (ACAPS, 2025). Therefore, internally, the forced movement of Palestinians constitutes a clear violation of their mobility rights, as they are effectively denied the choice to remain safely in their homes. Likewise, the option to leave Gaza is equally unattainable.
From the start of the conflict until today, it is estimated only 100 thousand Palestinians were able to exit the Strip, mainly through the Rafah crossing to Egypt (Al Jazeera, 2025a). Once military operations began, the North-African neighbor quickly restricted access through the passage; however, it still allowed entrance for aid deliveries, medical evacuations, non-Palestinian passport holders, and for those able to afford (Mhawish, 2024). Until May 2024, when Israel took control over the passage, some Palestinians were able to escape by paying up to $5 thousand per person to Egyptian brokers (Mhawish, 2024), with some sources reporting values as high as $10 thousand (Goldman, 2024). For Gazans, the only possibility to exercise their right to emigrate and seek asylum has a price most cannot pay.
The other two Israel-bordered crossings, Beit Hanoun and Karem Abu Salem, have been even more restricted, open in designated occasions for humanitarian aid trucks or urgent medical cases (Al Jazeera Staff, 2024). By enforcing blockades at Gaza's only border crossings, Israel invokes its domaine réservé to control immigration into its territory, but it does so in a manner that violates the fundamental rights of the people of Gaza. Israel went as far as disrespecting another state’s sovereignty, when the conduction of the Rafah offensive led to circumvention of Egypt’s authority over its border crossing.
Forced to flee home yet unable to escape the enclave, Palestinians are denied the opportunity to seek asylum in other countries, where they would qualify for refugee status, given their unquestioned persecution by Netanyahu’s government. This enforced immobility, while violating international law, also exposes Gazans to unchecked aggression and leads to multiple human rights violations. Unable to stay safely in their land and powerless to escape, the people of Palestine are further prevented from having any rights at all.
The failure of the cease-fire and the tragedy of the siege
When the long-awaited ceasefire between Israel and Hamas finally began to be implemented in January, the expectations of future peace negotiations were high, including among Palestinians. During the execution of Phase 1, with the exchange of hostages and prisoners, displaced families in South Gaza started their journeys home, even if it meant returning to rubble and debris (United Nations, 2025). Additionally, for the first time since the outbreak of conflict, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was able to deliver aid resources and food assistance on a larger scale (UNRWA, 2025). For a while, it seemed the crisis was coming to an end, as the prospects for Phase 2 and 3 of the agreement included the complete withdrawal of troops and the reconstruction of Gaza (Hassenstab, 2025).
Unfortunately, hostilities resumed a few weeks later when Israeli strikes killed hundreds across Gaza in March, under allegations of new plans for Hamas attacks (Krauss, 2025). Following the collapse of the ceasefire, as described in the lastest edition of UNRWA Situation Report, almost 665 thousand Palestinians have been displaced so far, marking yet another wave of internal displacement. Furthermore, Gaza was under a complete siege for two months, in which no medical supply, food, or water entered the enclave, until some flexibility was allowed at the end of May. Yet, the provisions that have entered since then have been insufficient (OCHA, 2025). According to the World Food Programme, the risk of famine is imminent, with all Palestinians in the Strip already facing food insecurity and tens of thousands suffering from starvation and acute malnutrition, including children. Humanitarian operations are in a state of near-collapse, as hospital missile strikes continue and supplies run dangerously low (ICRC, 2025).
Therefore, the displacement caused by bombardments and the impossibility of emigration has severe implications for other human rights. By being trapped inside a besieged territory, a stage to a coordinated genocide, Palestinians are victims of homelessness, hunger, sickness, and violence, all imposed upon them by a foreign authority, who has no sovereignty over the Gaza Strip. As the blockage continues and Netanyahu’s Cabinet start to implement the new occupation plan, Israel advances on the invaded territory by issuing evacuation orders and expanding the “no-go zones”, leaving even less shelter options for Gazans, who can now access only 30% of their land (Al Jazeera Staff, 2025). In this context, the cruel convergence of statelessness and lack of freedom of movement renders Palestinians rightless in the most fundamental sense: excluded from the international order as people without dignity, agency, and legal recognition that international human rights law is meant to guarantee.
Closing remarks
For longer than 21 months now, the two million people who survive the genocide in the Gaza Strip face countless human rights violations. The impossibility to escape and seek asylum elsewhere confines Palestinians to the epicenter of a humanitarian catastrophe. The profound consequences of the Israeli retaliation against Hamas to the livelihood in Gaza are signs of long-standing infringements of international migration law in Palestine. Forced displacement and restrictions at border-crossings worsened the toll of inhumane suffering, considering there were no routes to safety — nor the chance to safely stay. By being stateless, Palestinians already lack the legal bond which entitles them to their land and citizenship rights, but by being trapped, they are subjected to Israel’s cruel unpredictability. Without a minimal degree of mobility autonomy, the people of Gaza lose even more grasp on their right to have rights.
In the unlikely event that a new ceasefire agreement is reached, what remains for Palestinians is a legacy of trauma and open wounds, from a period marked by the denial of freedom of mobility and, with it, the absence of any real possibility for change. This period will be remembered not only for its military aggression, but for how it reinforced an authoritarian regime, where borders became instruments of oppression rather than protection, and where the international community failed to stop a massacre. As time passes, the Two-State solution moves further into a remote — perhaps unachievable — future.
Observação
Esta análise foi escrita em maio de 2025, com a última atualização realizada em 14 junho de 2025. Dessa forma, eventos e declarações posteriores não foram considerados pela autora.
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