Shamikh Badra couldn’t hold the tears back when he got to hold his mother, Fatma, for the first time in 11 years.
Standing in the bustling arrivals hall at Sydney airport last Friday evening, as passengers streamed off a flight from Amman, Jordan via Singapore and were embraced by their families, he bent down to wrap his arms around her and planted a single kiss on her forehead.
Despite praying for the moment to come for weeks, months, years, Shamikh couldn’t let out a single word when it finally came around. “Today, after 11 long years, I finally held my mother in my arms again,” he later wrote on Facebook.
“She arrived as a survivor: a survivor of genocide, of loss, of loneliness.
“May this reunion be a seed of hope in a world drowning in injustice. And may every family separated by war, siege, and borders be reunited soon.”
Since October 2023, Shamikh had desperately tried every avenue to get his elderly mother, who held a valid Australian visa, out of the conflict zone.
The grandmother, now safe in the western Sydney suburb of Bankstown, still thinks of those she left behind.
Fatma is one of about 60 Palestinians who arrived in Australia last weekend. They are the first cohort from Gaza to land in Australia since the increasingly fragile ceasefire began three weeks ago, according to advocates.
Prior to their arrival, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said about 600 to 700 Palestinians stuck in Gaza still held valid Australian visas, with the government unsure how many of those were still alive.
Fatma has lost 10kg since Shamikh, her son and a citizen, first tried to get her safely to Sydney in late 2023.
In that time, Fatma’s access to food, medicine and other supplies in Gaza proved extremely challenging due to Israel’s blockade of aid and the persistent threat of death for anyone leaving shelter.
While she is now safely residing with Shamikh, Fatma’s journey to Australia from Gaza was tiring for the 79-year-old woman. She had to undertake the feat alone after her husband, Khalil, died in December 2023 because he could not access his regular medication.
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It took hours to find a taxi driver to take her to the evacuation point close to Karem Abu Salem near Egypt on the Israeli-Gaza border, because they feared being shot at.
Once there, Fatma was told to leave her bag of clothes behind.
“When I told her [over the phone], we can buy new clothes, she said: ‘But this is my clothes I made. I like them,’” Shamikh says.
Fatma’s journey to Australia was the first time she travelled alone. While Shamikh is relieved, he says his mother still hopes to return to Gaza in a few months because she believes his brother, Ehab, and his family are still alive.
Shamikh’s family have been informally told Ehab and his family were killed in an airstrike during a temporary ceasefire when they returned to check on their apartment earlier in the war. Their bodies remain under the rubble, he says.
Fatma believes Ehab is being held in an Israeli prison and will return one day, Shamikh says.
‘It’s a nightmare to get people out’
Fatma is among a small group of Palestinians eligible for Australian consular assistance because their immediate family members are citizens or permanent residents. But a larger group of visa holders who do not meet those qualifications remain trapped in Gaza due to closed borders.
The ceasefire plan has not yet produced a reopening of the Rafah crossing, the only point of exit from Gaza.
The complicated political and geographic barriers have made it challenging for families and groups in Australia to arrange for evacuations. Rasha Abbas, the co-founder of charity group Palestine Australia Relief and Action, says it is a “nightmare” to get people out of Gaza and requires coordination with multiple countries.
Kassem Chalabi, the chief executive of the Palestinian Australians Welfare Association, says he is frequently contacted by people who did not qualify for consular assistance “begging” him to help them leave Gaza.
Shamikh says it was important to Fatma that she return when there is stability, to rebuild their family home.
“Palestinians prefer to repair their houses, or even live in tents, better than to leave Gaza,” he says.
