Children among cancer patients who are afraid of being sent back to Gaza by Israel
Cancer patients from Gaza, including children, are living in a precarious state in an east Jerusalem hospital after Israeli authorities threatened to send them back.
The Guardian was given access to Augusta Victoria Hospital, where at least 22 Gaza patients in urgent need of advanced cancer treatment live in fear of deportation. Like many others, they were allowed to receive medical care outside the Gaza Strip prior to Hamas’s attack on October 7, due to the inadequate facilities in Gaza.
After the outbreak of war, Cogat, the Israeli Defense Ministry body responsible for overseeing civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, urged hospital officials to provide a list of patients deemed suitable for discharge. be sent back to Gaza.
“I arrived here in Jerusalem on September 27 last year with my son Hamza,” said Qamar Abu Zoar, 22, originally from Jabalia. “Hamza, four and a half years old, has a brain tumor and needs treatment that he could not get in Gaza. While we were here, war broke out. And since then we have been stranded in this hospital, while my other two younger children are with my husband in northern Gaza.”
Two of her brothers and her father were killed during Israeli airstrikes on Gaza between December and January. Abu Zoar, who has been using a chair to sleep next to her son since last September, said that while she would like to return to Gaza to hug her other children, she knew Hamza could not get the radiation therapy he needed there. with hospitals in the area in serious crisis.
“Gaza hospitals are overwhelmed with hundreds of injured people as a result of the conflict,” she said. “Here I know that Hamza can get the care he needs.”
She said that although Hamza cannot speak due to his illness, he has improved since his transfer but remains in critical condition.
At the end of the hallway of the pediatric oncology department stands Ali, an eight-year-old who arrived at the hospital with his mother in September from Rimal, a neighborhood on the coast of Gaza City.
“Ali has leukemia,” says his mother, who prefers not to be named. “In Gaza they had made a wrong diagnosis. When we arrived, we were only going to stay for a month… but then the conflict broke out.”
Adult patients, many of whom are elderly, are instead stranded in a hotel next to the hospital, visiting the facility for chemotherapy cycles. Some come from towns in the strip that Israel razed. If they are sent back, they risk ending up in the north, where the threat of famine is greatest.
According to the United Nations, less than a third of hospitals in Gaza are even partially functioning. The Minister of Health of the Palestinian Authority, Mai al-Kaila, has told Al Jazeera that the more than 2,000 cancer patients in Gaza were living in “catastrophic health conditions as a result of continued Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and mass displacement.”
Some patients have asked to join their families at schools designated as shelters to die among them because they know hospitals in Gaza will not be able to treat them, Subhi Sukeyk, the director of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, told reporters. to Al Jazeera. The strip’s only cancer treatment hospital went out of service on Nov. 1 after running out of fuel. health officials said.
Last week, just hours before Cogat prepared to return about 10 patients to Gaza, Israel’s Supreme Court said stopped the authorities’ order, in response to a plea from the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights. A court decision is imminent, although the exact time frame remains uncertain. The government has until April 21 to present its case.
Doctors for Human Rights said in a statement: “Returning residents to Gaza during a military conflict and humanitarian crisis violates international law and poses a deliberate risk to innocent lives. Even more so when it concerns patients who may risk a death sentence due to unsanitary conditions and hunger, combined with the unlikely availability of medical care. The fact that the security officials refuse to convey such a directive in writing indicates that they are aware that it is clearly illegal and are evading their responsibility.
“The hospitals and medical staff must strongly oppose the release of the patients from their custody unless a guarantee is given that they will not be sent back to Gaza where their lives are in danger.”
The Israeli government has argued that the returned patients have completed their medical treatment and that their return will be coordinated with international agencies. “In cases where further medical treatment is required, Cogat will arrange their stay in hospitals to protect their health,” the agency told CNN.
While waiting for the court’s ruling, Ali had nothing to do but wait and dream. Before he was diagnosed with leukemia, he was captain of a soccer team in Rimal and couldn’t wait, his mother said, to get back on the field with his teammates.
Exhausted from the drugs administered to him just hours earlier, Ali raised his hand to say that, in addition to his return to football, he had an even more pressing desire.
“I want this war to end,” he said in a weak voice.