Is Israel relenting after the challenge by medical groups?
Gaza Strip healthcare system struggles under the new Israeli-Egyptian bans on medical mission supplies and equipment despite Israel’s restrictions on medical missions
When Israel resumed the medical missions in June, it also banned medical missions from bringing in any medical supplies or equipment apart from personal medications being carried in, doctors said.
Townson Cocke, the medical advocacy coordinator for Rebuilding Alliance, said the 19-person volunteer mission sponsored by the Palestinian American Medical Association in May brought in 300 suitcases, most filled with medical supplies and said that all of them were carefully screened by Israel. Doctors said supplies were used up a lot.
“I know the current team there had to cancel an [operating] day just due to the lack of supplies,” said Elaydi. The cousin who needed an amputation refused to have anesthesia because he wanted to do it without it.
“With the evolution of a lot of very small portable pieces of machinery like oxygen monitors and portable ECG machines and portable ultrasound, a lot of the teams were bringing these things in by hand because other routes are unreliable,” said Abu Sittah, the U.K. Palestinian surgeon. Under Israel’s new rules, he would likely be barred from returning to Gaza to treat patients.
Even before the war, many Gazans were forced to travel abroad for lifesaving treatments, like chemotherapy, which were almost nonexistent in the Gaza Strip. The enclave’s health sector has struggled for over 15 years under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade intended to contain Hamas.
It has made treating patients even more difficult at the European hospital in Rafah, said Dr. Alaa Al-Masri, a Gaza physician who said he had learned how to diagnose Parkinson’s and other diseases from Al-Hinti while she was there.
Al-Masri graduated from medical school just last year. But with most of the hospital staff displaced, on Monday evening the young doctor was one of the few physicians in the emergency room when wounded patients were brought in from an airstrike. Medical staff ran out of blood tests and were having a hard day.
Al-Masri said he resuscitated the child, who was 5 or 6 years old, and said he was still alive on Tuesday. The rest of his family had also been injured.
The children of Gaza have not left, and their parents are not allowed to enter. Dr. Al-Hinti, an American neuroradiologist, and a woman, had been volunteering at the European Gaza Hospital
“Everything was going fine. They will not allow doctors or health care workers with Palestinian origins to enter according to Al-Hinti.
Palestinian parents are associated with Al-Hinti. The only neurologist, a fluent Arabic speaker, and a woman, she was invaluable to the hospital. Despite the terrible conditions in Rafah, she signed up for another mission with the Palestinian American Medical Association.
Dr. Ali Elaydi volunteered at the European Gaza Hospital in April. He said he was able to do more than 20 surgeries, thanks to the medical supplies he and the other team brought in. He signed up for another mission recently.
Israeli and Palestinian officials say Israel and Egypt will allow at least 19 sick children, most of them cancer patients, to leave Gaza for medical treatment on Thursday.
On Wednesday, one of the nongovernmental groups that is involved in trying to evacuate people from the area said it had not been done yet.
“Since May 7, the Rafah crossing was closed and no patients could go out,” said Adi Lustigman, an attorney with the human rights group. “We submitted the petition asking for immediate intervention to let the children and other patients, not only children, go out to get medical care.”
The Supreme Court in Israel is due to take up the case next week. Lustigman said that the group chose cases like the baby girl where arguments could not be made that she is a security threat.
The aid organization funding the transplant, Children Not Numbers, said Wednesday that Sadeel had been given clearance by Israeli authorities for evacuation but had not yet been able to leave with her parents. One of the parents is the planned organ donor.
Israel and Gaza: The War in Gaza After the Hamas-Nucleus Collisions, a New Look at the Past, Present and Future
“Israel justifies everything with the general saying of ‘security grounds’ and indeed no one is denying that there is a security issue in our area in every direction you look,” Lustigman said. This argument is not a magic word and it can’t be used to ignore disasters that are happening.
In Washington, D.C., Rebuilding Alliance, a California-based aid group, has been lobbying members of Congress to pressure Israel to create a steady pipeline of medical evacuations and to lift restrictions on medical aid missions.
After the war in Gaza began with the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack against Israel, Nisreen Malley, the group’s advocacy manager, said it was White House intervention that persuaded Israel to allow child cancer patients to leave for treatment and that pressure is needed again.
The Palestinian British surgeon spoke of the limited restart of medical transfers from Israel.
The Israeli military said the operation had been carried out in coordination with the United States, Egypt and the international community. In total, 68 people — sick and injured patients and their escorts — were allowed to leave, the military said.
The World Health Organization said this week that there are over 10,000 sick and wounded people in Gaza, and they need urgent care only outside the enclave. They include those wounded in airstrikes, as well as cancer patients, children with life-threatening illnesses and older people who need open-heart surgery.
But the main conduit through which Gazans could leave — the Rafah crossing with Egypt — shut down after Israeli forces captured the border in May during a military offensive. The gateway was closed in protest by Egypt and the Gazan portion was destroyed in a fire, according to the Israel military, which seems to rule out reopening it in the near future.
