‘We are buying our family members’ lives’: How a Calgary man rescued his family from Gaza

Tamer Jarada says he couldn't believe it when he first heard his sister-in-law and her son had made it safely out of Gaza.

Tamer Jarada says he couldn’t believe it when he first heard his sister-in-law and her son had made it safely out of Gaza.

“Once they left it was a joyful moment for my wife and for me and even our kids because they really miss their cousin,” Jarada said.

Aasma Almasri, 27, and her five-year-old son Yousef arrived in Cairo on March 28. They were the first of 17 family members that Jarada, a Palestinian Canadian living in Calgary, is trying to bring to Canada under Ottawa’s special temporary visa program.

On April 4, Jarada’s sister Ashjan AbuRabee and her four children, ages two months to 14 years, made it safely out of Gaza as well. Her first phone call from Egypt with her brother was emotional.

“It was full of screams, laughs and we also cried a lot because we just remembered our late family members who are not around anymore,” Jarada recalled.

In late October, Jarada and AbuRabee lost their parents, two sisters and 13 other family members in an Israeli air strike. Since then, Jarada has been trying to bring his surviving family members to Canada. In January, the Canadian government opened a pathway for Canadian citizens and permanent residents to obtain visas for extended family members in Gaza but the process soon stalled.

Last month, the minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship called the program a failure.

“This is a program we knew from the get-go could be a failure, up to now it is a failure and it’s something we need to recognize,” Marc Miller told Global News on March 20.