Reporting
Jerusalem: at Augusta Victoria Hospital, Gazan patients threatened with expulsion
In the midst of the war in Gaza, several patients from the enclave have been treated for months in hospitals in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian sector of the city occupied by Israel. Suffering from cancer, some of them risk being sent back to the war zone in Gaza because the Israeli authorities believe that they are in remission. Seized, the Israeli Supreme Court suspended this decision for one month. But in the meantime, these sick children are living on borrowed time.
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The entrance to Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, here in 2018. © AFP
By: Sami Boukhelifa Follow
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From our correspondent in Jerusalem,
In the pediatric oncology department of Augusta Victoria Hospital in East
Jerusalem
, several children come from
Gaza
like Amira, 12 years old. Suffering from a brain tumor,
she was half paralyzed
. After months of treatment, radiotherapy and rehabilitation, the little girl is walking again.
“
I don’t want to go back to Gaza. I wish that my father and my sister, who are still there, could leave Gaza. And we will go elsewhere... They are in danger there. Our house was bombed. Gaza is my whole life, but I still need care here. I can't go and live in a tent. I still take treatment so that I can walk and my hand functions properly. I implore you
: stop this war
!
»
50 Gazan patients treated in hospital
Next to Amira, her mother Imane Sabbagh admits her helplessness: “
My grief and my pain are immense. Sometimes Amira tells me that she wants to stay here, and sometimes she tells me that she misses her father and sister so much that she is ready to return to Gaza and die alongside them. I have to stay strong for my daughter, but I have no strength left. In Gaza, I wouldn't even find him a doliprane to soothe his pain. And at the same time, I have my other daughter who calls me and says
: 'I want my mom'
.
On the floor above, the hospital director, Dr. Fadi Al Atrach, is fighting so that these children, who are part of a group of 50 Gazan patients, can stay in Jerusalem: “I cannot
send them back in Gaza, that would be signing their death warrant. It's a war zone. Even healthy people can't live there, so imagine for cancer patients…
”
Also read: In Gaza, gangs proliferate amid the chaos of war
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