As I traveled back to Gaza through Egypt for the first visit in 15 years, and complained about the endless humiliations, other Palestinians insinuated that I had lost my Palestinian stamina! As if you qualify as a true Palestinian only if you’re crushed at every corner. But it didn’t take me long after the Suez canal to switch back to the Palestinian mindset: a high level of fight-or-flight that I thought no longer existed. Disturbingly, it was comforting to know ‘you still had it.’

Travel restrictions are among the most incapacitating consequences of Israel’s military occupation — so extreme that the very idea of travelling has become a phobia for many. And if you’ve spent days in lockdown trying to get in and out of Gaza, as Emad Moussa has, you know how these fears prey on all Gazans.