Gaza Rehabilitation of a 10-year-old Student Youssef Rihani: the hardest thing to do after a brain tumor pressing down on his optic nerve
Rihani says that some tumors have grown so large that they have damage to the children’s organs. With Israel’s strict controls on food and medicine entering Gaza, many of the patients are malnourished.
“We couldn’t find food and wherever we went there were airstrikes,” says Safa Salha, who spent months going from damaged hospital to damaged hospital, seeking treatment for her 16-year-old son Youssef.
Before the war between Israel and Hamas started in October of 2023, Youssef was a 10th grade student and all the schools were shut down.
Last year, he was operated on in Gaza for a brain tumor pressing down on his optic nerve. His mother says the hospital was unable to do MRI scans before the surgery and couldn’t conduct a biopsy. His mother says that the surgeons removed as much of the tumor as they could, and that they had to send him home just because they needed the bed.
“The hardest thing was the decision to do the surgery,” says Salha, a teacher and school activities organizer. It is not known if the doctors were going to finish the surgery, if there is medicine available, or if he is going to die during the surgery.
The Gaza Children’s Hospital: What Has Israel Learned in the Last Two Years of Israel’s War on Gaza and How Has Israel Assisted It?
The hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. Israel claims to have targeted Hamas sites rather than civilian infrastructure.
UNICEF says more than 50,000 children in Gaza have been killed or injured during the war, which began after the militant group Hamas launched a cross-border attack into Israel. Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 55,000 people, many of them women and children, have died. Israel says nearly 1,200 Israelis and foreigners were killed in the initial Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
Israel this spring intensified its attacks and aid agencies said in March that more than 12,000 people require urgent medical evacuation out of Gaza, including at least 4,500 children.
In February, President Trump suggested a plan to take over Gaza, displacing Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt while turning the enclave into a U.S.-controlled zone featuring beach-front property. Many Palestinians in Gaza were already displaced from their homes after the creation of Israel in 1948.
The relocation plan is seen by Jordan as an existential threat to the small kingdom, a death knell for hopes of an eventual Palestinian state and tantamount to complicity in ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Trump was told by King Abdullah of Jordan that it will be able to provide 2,000 cancer patients and other extremely sick children with treatment as soon as possible.
“There have been difficulties imposed by the Israeli authorities that are stopping the way of making this happen smoothly,” said Mohammad al-Momani, Jordan’s government communication minister.
Israel controls the Gaza border and officials from Jordan say it obstructs exit visas for some patients and their families. In Israel, Physicians for Human Rights have been trying to get the Israeli government to allow more patients to leave.
Some of the sickEST children in the country would not be able to receive immediate treatment if they hadn’t been evacuated.
“These patients need intensive care unit support, they need respiratory support and they need a lot of nutrition as well,” she says. It’s difficult to treat the tumor.
The King Hussein Cancer Center is one of the region’s leading cancer hospitals. Rihani has 44 beds for children with cancer, and 24 beds for children with bone marrow transplants, which can be used by other hospitals. Some of the arrivals require treatment outside of the hospital.
Rihani says no cancer patients treated in Jordan since the start of the Gaza war have been sent back to Gaza. Jordan has been criticized though for sending people back during the continuing conflict it says have fully completed treatment for other illnesses.
“We are bringing them by batches,” says Momani, the communications minister. “We will take these children to treat them but then after they finish their treatment they should be going back to their homeland. We don’t want to be in any way helping the displacement of Palestinians.”
Displaced repeatedly by Israeli airstrikes, there was hardly any food, not even bread. According to Astal, the abundance of shawarma has made Ahmad be enamored with it.
The day they were evacuated from Gaza, the Astals had gathered with other patients and guardians near a bus at the Gaza European Hospital to drive to the border when Israel bombed the complex, according to patients and the World Health Organization. Gaza civil defense authorities say at least 28 people, including patients, were killed in the airstrikes.
Source: A cancer center in Jordan treats kids from Gaza, but only a few dozen have arrived
Masked Depression: A Case Study of Suhair Zouroub, 13, a Girl with an Airstrike and Jude’s Tiyara
Leen al-Dabbas, a clinical psychologist at the cancer center, says many of the children are suffering from “masked depression” — not yet able to process what they’ve been through.
One girl, Suhair Zouroub, 13, sits with her mom and brother ahead of her first round of chemo as she has a blue hospital bracelet on her thin wrist.
She was diagnosed two months ago with leukemia. There was no treatment available when she had seizures in Gaza. She describes huddling together with all of the family, hugging each other during the airstrikes. Jude, her brother, has a pronunciation of the Arabic word tiyara.
“I knew it was going to land near us but I couldn’t move,” says Astal. She says the impact threw the boys in the air and rained down so much debris she couldn’t see for 10 minutes.
A lucky few manage to secure some packets of lentils, a jar of Nutella or a bag of flour. Many people are unable to return empty-handed and have to do it again the next day.
Day after day, Palestinians in Gaza risk harrowing journey in desperate search for food – A plethora of Palestinians who run agantlets
Palestinians run agantlets in Gaza in order to get food. They say Israeli troops open fire toward crowds as they cross military zones to get to aid, and knife-wielding thieves wait to ambush those who succeed. Palestinians say lawlessness is growing as they are forced into a competition to feed their families.
Al-Hobi said he was trampled by other people. He managed to grab a bag of rice, a packet of macaroni. Much of the flour he grabbed was ruined in the chaos.
Heba Jouda said she saw a group of men beat up a boy of 12 or 13 years old and take his food as she left one of the Rafah centers. Another time, she said, thieves attacked an older man, who hugged his sack, weeping that his children had no food. They sliced his arm with a knife and ran off with the sack.
He ran after taking off running. There’s only one route in and out of the center. Saqer took the risk of being fired on by Israeli troops, climbing over a berm knowing thieves were waiting outside.
Saqer said that you have to move fast. Some who came too late robbed those leaving after supplies ran out. He swiftly tore open a box and loaded the contents into a sack — juice, chickpeas, lentils, cheese, beans, flour and cooking oil.
Food boxes are on the ground surrounded by fencing and berms at the center of the area. People rush in to grab what they can.
Source: Day after day, Palestinians in Gaza risk harrowing journey in desperate search for food
Palestinians in Gaza risk harrowing journey in desperate search for food, sources tell NR Khaled-Nambu-Fesh
He said he and others inched their way forward under tank fire. Several people were wounded in the legs. One man fell bleeding to the ground, apparently dead, he said.
Everyone broke into a crazed run, he said. He saw wounded people on the ground. A man who had bloodied his abdomen reached out to ask for help. No one stopped.
Saqer said it was similar to the TV series, in which contestants risk their lives to win a prize. He said raising your head might mean death.
The father of three who risked his life many times, said that when he visited last week, tanks fired over the heads of the crowds as drone announcements said to move back.
Thousands of people must walk miles to reach the GHF centers, three of which are in the far south outside the city of Rafah. Palestinians said the danger begins when the crowds enter the Israeli military zone encompassing Rafah.
Israel began allowing food into Gaza this past month after cutting it off completely for 10 weeks, though United Nations officials say it is not enough to stave off starvation. Most of the supplies go to GHF, which operates four food distribution points inside Israeli military zones. Aid goes to the UN and humanitarian groups.
No shootings has taken place near GHF’s hubs. The spokesman said that “incidents take place before sites open during times when aid-seekers are prohibited and trying to take a short cut.” They said GHF is trying to improve safety, in part by changing opening times to daylight hours.
Source: Day after day, Palestinians in Gaza risk harrowing journey in desperate search for food
Israeli soldiers say they’re doing their job: a case study of gaza residents in Gaza based on the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office
Asked how its soldiers control movement, the military told The Associated Press its “operational conduct … is accompanied by systematic learning processes.” It said it was looking into safety measures like fences and road signs.
Most of the United Nations’ truck convoys have their supplies taken away by hungry crowd in the past weeks. According to the ministry, more than 50 people were killed on Tuesday when Israeli soldiers opened fire at crowds waiting for trucks near military zones. The Israeli military says it is investigating.
It’s already apocalyptic, and I don’t see how it can get any worse. But somehow it does get worse,” said Olga Cherevko, spokesperson for the U.N. humanitarian affairs office.
Source: Day after day, Palestinians in Gaza risk harrowing journey in desperate search for food
Jamil Atili, 52, a Gazan Private Contractor, Emerges Without a Single Piece of the Food for his 13 Families
“This isn’t aid. It’s a lot of humiliation. It’s death,” said Jamil Atili, his face shining with sweat as he made his way back last week from a food center run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed private contractor. He had suffered a knife cut across his cheek amid the scramble for food and said a contractor guard pepper-sprayed him in the face. Still, he emerged with nothing for his 13 family members.