Far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to prevent about 150 sick and wounded Palestinian children from leaving the UAE due to the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip to receive treatment following the horrific attack on Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights, Kan public broadcasting service reported Sunday evening, July 28.
According to the report, Netanyahu decided to prevent the children from traveling to the UAE, which was supposed to take place Monsay via Ramon Airport in the Negev, near Eilat.
A wounded girl from Deir El-Balah, Sunday, July 28, 2024 (Photo: WAFA)
Physicians for Human Rights had indicated that Israel had previously delayed or cancelled the implementation of obligations of this kind in previous experiences, while informed sources spoke of the possibility of a plane carrying 250 sick and wounded people taking off from the Strip to the UAE during the current week.
Sources in Gaza confirmed that those in need of treatment are at least 100 times this number, noting that there are 25,000 patients who need transfers and are required to travel abroad, indicating that the number of sick and wounded people who have left the Strip since the beginning of the aggression has reached only 5,000.
Physicians for Human Rights and other human rights organizations had filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court last June, demanding that patients and wounded people facing life-threatening danger be allowed to leave the Strip to receive the necessary treatment. According to Gisha, “It is reprehensible that the prime minister prioritizes his own popularity over the lives of children and their right to medical treatment, which had been coordinated in advance. The children and their companions were set to travel on the same day of Netanyahu’s decision.”
“Israel has no right to deny children medical treatment, certainly not in such an arbitrary manner or as a means of retaliation. The state has an obligation to allow these patients, and others in need of medical evacuation, to exit the Strip for treatment immediately. Israel controls all of Gaza’s borders and crossing points, and it is clearer than ever that it has an obligation to facilitate movement of goods and people and ensure the welfare of the civilian population.”
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, between October 7, 2023, and July 29, 2024, at least 39,363 Palestinians were killed and 90,923 were injured. In addition, afforts continue to avert the spread of polio after six circulating variant poliovirus type 2 strains were detected in environmental samples from Deir al Balah and Khan Younis in late June.
The WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has announced that the organization will be sending to Gaza more than one million polio vaccines. Gaza had a vaccination coverage of 99 per cent prior to the war, a rate that has now dropped to 86 per cent due to the “decimation of the health system, lack of security, destruction of infrastructure, mass displacement and shortage of medical supplies,” explained the WHO Director-General.
“While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected,” he added, stressing that children under the age of five are at risk, “especially infants under two because many have not been vaccinated over the nine months of conflict.”
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