By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA, Dec 2 (Reuters) - For many reasons, I had hopes the Israeli army would let me cross Israel to the West Bank. But my dreams of leaving Gaza for the other half of the Palestinian territories were disappointed.

I wanted to meet colleagues -- Israelis, foreigners and my fellow Palestinians -- whom I speak to daily but have not seen in years.

I also hoped I could travel on to Jordan for a few days off abroad, also for the first time in years.

It was not to be. Why?

"Security reasons" was the only explanation the army gave for rejecting a request from Reuters for a permit to let me leave the Gaza Strip last month through the only open exit, the Erez Crossing into Israel, in order to attend a training course our news agency ran for staff in the West Bank city of Jericho.

The same two words have for years prevented most of the 1.5 million people in the coastal enclave from visiting relatives and businesses in the West Bank, 35 km (20 miles) away across Israel.

Last year, I received my first permit since 2000, the year a Palestinian uprising prompted tighter Israeli security.

But since June, when Hamas Islamists routed the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Gazans are even more isolated in a strip of land that Israel, which fears attacks by Palestinians, branded an "enemy entity" after daily rocket fire from Gaza.

Because Israel shuns Hamas, most traffic is at a halt, including a once busy route into Egypt which Israel supervises. Air and sea traffic is also blockaded by the Jewish state.

Unusually, my wife did not object to me going away alone. With Gaza under embargo, she instead wrote me a long list of things to buy abroad -- especially clothes, shoes and cosmetics.

But by the eve of the course, we were still awaiting a response to our permit requests. Midnight came and finally a call. My colleague's face reddened and his voice dropped as he took it -- only he could pass, the rest of us must stay in Gaza.

It was a terrible blow. My wife complains I've been flailing in my sleep since then.

"Why me?" I want to ask.

But then I know that many are in the same position, including my young colleague, Mohammed Salem. He was shot in the leg by an Israeli soldier while he took photographs of a crowd near the Erez Crossing in October. Reuters has been trying to send him abroad for treatment. But he has no permit.

As for the training, well, we did receive it, when foreign colleagues came to visit. It was good. But the location was a hallway in our 13th floor Gaza office, rather drab, with a lift that often stops due to power cuts.

Unlike our Palestinian and Israeli colleagues in Jericho, there was no hotel, no party, no pool, no "team-building" fun.

Afterwards, I went to Erez Crossing again, dropping off our colleagues. I told myself: "I've had enough greetings and farewells at Erez. I want to get to the other world myself."

The "Other World" is now how Palestinians in the Gaza Strip refer to any place outside Gaza.

I have lived in Gaza all my 35 years and life here has never seemed worse. People are being hit by unprecedented economic hardships and political conflict that has divided families.

Even the dead are affected -- lack of cement means new graves are being covered with sand or clay for the time being.

Among the living, the young find it hardest to understand. What my daughter and son, aged 11 and 6, do know, however, as children act out games of war between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah, is that life is better outside, in the "Other World".

"Why don't you want to take us to Egypt or Dubai?" my daughter asked the other day.

Why? I can't tell her "security reasons". I wish I had an answer. (You can read more Reuters Witness stories by clicking on the URL http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/reutersWitnesses or by typing it into the address bar of your browser) (Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Sean Maguire)

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