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Setting off on a rescue mission: The United Arab Emirates want to treat around 1,000 patients from Gaza in their clinics. Journalists are allowed to accompany an evacuation flight; SPIEGEL reporter Thore Schröder is on board. On the way, the team of helpers discusses the operation. After five hours and a stopover in Cairo, the plane lands in northern Egypt on the border with the Gaza Strip.
Thore Schröder, DER SPIEGEL: »In the next few hours we will be looking at a desalination plant for drinking water for Gaza with a team from the Foreign Ministry of the United Arab Emirates, a large warehouse and also a hospital. And above all, we will see how patients and seriously injured children are loaded onto this plane. And then we will fly back to Abu Dhabi with these patients.
The Egyptians have secured the Rafah crossing with additional concrete walls in recent weeks. From here the reporters drive west, directly along the barrier fence. Behind: people on house roofs and parts of a tent camp. Around 1.5 million people are crowding into the south of Gaza, and heavy fighting is raging nearby. The Rafah region in Gaza is also repeatedly shelled and the humanitarian situation is catastrophic.
A few weeks ago, the Emirates built a desalination plant a few hundred meters from the border. 4.5 million liters of fresh water are to be pumped from here into the Gaza Strip every day. Back to al-Arish airport: mainly injured children and young people from Gaza are brought on board and flown out. In total there are 65 patients and 100 accompanying persons. Doctors and paramedics checked whether some of the seriously injured people were fit to be transported. The young patients on board suffer from burns, gunshot and shrapnel injuries, and some have recently undergone amputations. Some are dependent on wheelchairs, others can only be transported lying down.
The next morning, shortly before four in the morning, the plane lands back in Abu Dhabi. The journalists were not allowed to see the hospital or the warehouse. But our reporter was able to talk to evacuated people on the flight.
Thore Schröder, DER SPIEGEL: »I personally spoke to Lina, a 26-year-old Palestinian, one of six siblings who really lost everything in Gaza, including their mother. And just now on the flight, when I was talking to her and asking her what it was like to fly for the very first time, was she maybe a little happy? Then she said: no, she wouldn't be happy at all. She’s just afraid of the future.”
In the coming weeks, doctors in Abu Dhabi will look after Lina and other patients from Gaza - and try to give them some hope again.