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 this 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.
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 travel abroad for life-saving treatments, such as chemotherapy, which were largely unavailable in the Gaza Strip. The region’s health sector has struggled for more than 15 years under a crippling 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 seized the border in a military offensive in May. Egypt closed one side of the crossing in protest, and the Gaza side was later destroyed in a fire, apparently dashing hopes that the area would be reopened in the near future, according to the Israeli military.
At least two sick Gazans scheduled to leave in early May have died, their relatives 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.
Over the months, her family grew increasingly fearful as Sadeel’s condition worsened. Her father, Tamer Hamdan, said her abdomen was swollen like a balloon from severe liver failure and she desperately needed a transplant.
On Thursday morning — after weeks of waiting — Hamdan and Sadeel were finally allowed to leave the area. After entering Israel, they were taken with other patients to Nitzana, an Israeli village, where they crossed into Egypt, he said.
“Thank God,” said Mr. Hamdan, who was reached by phone from a bus on the Egyptian side of the checkpoint. “We are happy that we got Sadeel out safely. Now we just need to finish her treatment.”
However, their departure from Gaza was bittersweet.
Mr Hamdan traveled with his daughter to donate part of her liver but his wife and three other children were not allowed to join them. He said he feared for their fate in Gaza.
“We are all moving into the unknown,” he said.
