Mideast Conflict

FILE - In this Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009 file photo, a Palestinian in a wheel chair waits inside a newly built passageway on the Palestinian side of the Erez crossing, northern Gaza Strip. A healthy man in blockaded Gaza faked cancer, hoping the deadly disease would be his ticket out of the territory that has become an open-air prison for its 1.4 million residents. His ploy failed, but several thousand others succeeded in fleeing this shabby sliver of land this year using bribes and fake medical reports, a sign of Gazans' desperation over growing poverty and misery under the strict border closure enforced by Egypt and Israel since Hamas militants overran Gaza in June 2007.