Israel and Egypt agreed to allow at least 19 sick children, mostly cancer patients, to leave Gaza for medical treatment on Thursday, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, in the first major evacuation of seriously ill Gazans since the Rafah border crossing was closed in early May.
The Israeli military said the operation was carried out in coordination with the US, Egypt and the international community. In total, 68 people – sick and wounded patients and their escorts – were allowed to leave, the military said.
Tania Hary, who directs Gisha, an Israeli non-profit that supports the Palestinian freedom movement, said she was relieved that the children could “have a chance to live and finally receive the care they deserve.” But she stressed that many sick and injured people remained trapped in Gaza without any clear mechanism for how to evacuate them.
“It is a drop in the ocean of suffering as thousands of others wait to reach medical facilities outside the strip,” she said. “It serves as another reminder that Gaza’s most vulnerable residents – children, the sick and the elderly – are paying the highest price.”
More than 10,000 sick and injured people in Gaza need urgent care only available outside the zone, World Health Organization speak This week, they include people injured in airstrikes, as well as cancer patients, children with serious illnesses and elderly people needing open-heart surgery.
Even before the war, many Gazans were forced to go abroad for life-saving treatments, such as chemotherapy, which were virtually unavailable in the Gaza Strip. This land’s health sector has struggled for more than 15 years under a brutal Israeli-Egyptian blockade aimed at containing Hamas.
But the main route for Gazans to leave—the Rafah crossing with Egypt—was closed after Israeli forces captured the border in a military offensive in May. Egypt closed its side of the gate in protest, and the Gaza side was later destroyed in a fire, according to the Israeli military, seemingly dashing hopes that it would reopen in the near future.
At least two sick Gazans scheduled to leave in early May have died, family members said.
With the Rafah border crossing closed, the group of children evacuated on Thursday were brought into Israel through another border point, Kerem Shalom, before being taken to Egypt. The move does not appear to immediately signal a new fixed route for seriously ill people to safely leave Gaza.
One of the children who crossed the sea on Thursday was a 10-month-old girl named Sadeel Hamdan.
For months, her family watched Sadeel’s condition worsen. Her abdomen swelled like a balloon from severe liver failure and she desperately needed a liver transplant, her father, Tamer Hamdan, said.
On Thursday morning – after weeks of waiting – Mr Hamdan and Sadeel were finally allowed to leave the area. After entering Israel, they were taken with other patients to Nitzana, an Israeli border crossing, where they entered Egyptian territory, he said.
“Thank God,” said Hamdan, who was reached by phone from a bus on the Egyptian side of the checkpoint. “We are happy to have brought Sadeel out safely. Now we just need to finish her treatment.”
However, their departure from Gaza was bittersweet.
Mr. Hamdan went with his daughter so he could donate part of his liver, but his wife and three other children were not allowed to go. He said he feared for their fate in Gaza.
“We are all moving into the unknown,” he said.
For every patient who dies, many more are left behind. Muna Abu Holi, a university professor in central Gaza, survived the blast that killed one of her daughters and seriously injured two others.
Both of her surviving daughters were approved to cross the Rafah border crossing on May 7 for medical treatment, according to documents from the Gaza Health Ministry. But the Israeli offensive led to the border being closed.
“We are grasping at every possible hope,” Ms. Abu Holi said. “We cling to every piece of news we hear.”
