GAZA, (PIC)
The Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs in the Gaza Strip said on Thursday that more than 10,000 Palestinians from the Strip were deprived of performing the Hajj pilgrimage during three years of the Israeli war of genocide.
It mentioned that among these, 71 died while waiting to travel, amid the continued closure of crossings and the war on the Strip.
This came during a press conference held by the Director of Public Relations at the Ministry, Amir Abu al-Amrain, in Deir al-Balah city in central Gaza Strip, addressing the repercussions of the continued deprivation of Palestinians in the Strip from performing Hajj rituals due to the war of genocide and the closure of crossings.
Abu al-Amrain said, “The number of Palestinians who were deprived of performing Hajj during the past three years exceeded 10,000 citizens, while the annual quota for the Gaza Strip is about 2,508 pilgrims.”
Abu al-Amrain stressed that the Hajj represents a fundamental religious and human right, which Muslims wait for with great longing, but Gaza pilgrims are deprived of it for the third year running due to the war, the siege, and the closure of crossings.
He pointed out that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza completed Hajj procedures years ago, and paid the required fees, but they remain unable to travel.
Abu al-Amrain stressed that depriving Palestinians in Gaza of Hajj “represents a violation of international conventions that guarantee freedom of worship, movement, and access to holy sites.”
He called on the international community, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt to “intervene urgently” to ensure that Gaza pilgrims are enabled to travel, and to work on opening the crossings “for humanitarian and religious purposes.”
He also demanded expanding the “grant of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, to include the largest possible number of families of Palestinian martyrs in Gaza.”
For his part, the owner of a Hajj and Umrah company, Saleh Jabr, said during the conference, that thousands of Palestinians were deprived of their “natural and inherent right to perform the Hajj pillar” in light of humanitarian conditions he described as catastrophic.
He added that dozens of pilgrims died during the years of waiting, calling for “finding exceptional and urgent mechanisms that ensure the travel of pilgrims and not losing their historical opportunity to perform the fifth pillar of Islam.”
For the third consecutive year, the deprivation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip from performing the Hajj continues, in light of Israel’s continued closure of the Strip’s crossings, and the deterioration of humanitarian and security conditions due to the Israeli war of genocide on the Strip.
The Ministry of Awqaf in Ramallah had announced on March 3, the transfer of the remaining quota of Gaza Strip pilgrims to the West Bank governorates and Jerusalem, as an exceptional and temporary measure for the current year.
The Ministry said then that the decision came “due to the narrowness of the time specified according to the Hajj protocol signed with the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah in Saudi Arabia”, which set March 20, 2026, as a final deadline for issuing Hajj visas.
Palestinians in Gaza live in extremely difficult humanitarian and living conditions in light of the repercussions of the Israeli genocide along with the restrictions imposed on the movement of transport and travel for years.
The suffering of the Palestinians of the Strip worsened with the continuation of the siege, the widespread destruction, and the lack of food, medicine, and fuel, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in conditions of repeated displacement inside crowded areas lacking basic services.
Israel closed the Rafah crossing, the only outlet for Palestinians in the Strip, after its forces seized control of it in May 2024, but it reopened it on February 2, 2026, for the sick and wounded in a very limited manner, while imposing strict restrictions on the entry and exit movement.
