
Gaza children are sent back to war zone following medical care after Jordan rejects requests to stay
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When Haitham Abu Daqa's 5-month-old daughter developed a heart problem that could not be addressed near their home in Gaza, the family sought medical help in Jordan, where she underwent successful open-heart surgery.
After the surgery, Daqa's wife, who was with their daughter, pleaded with Jordanian officials to be allowed to stay. She feared that little Nevine's recovery would be at risk in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave that has few functioning medical facilities. But the officials insisted that the family had to go home.
'How can I take care of the girl while I am living in a tent, and at the same time, the bombing doesn't stop,' Daqa said, sobbing. 'How dare they send her back? If there is treatment in Gaza for her case, why did they take her in the first place?'
Daqa's daughter was among 17 Palestinian children who were recently returned to Gaza with their caregivers after receiving medical treatment in Jordan. Rights groups warn that forcing the children to go back to a war zone is a possible violation of international law. It also raises doubts about whether the young patients can regain their health in a place where medical care is scarce and military strikes are an everyday threat.
The children are trapped between Israel intensifying its military operation in Gaza as it threatens to seize the territory and a proposal to permanently resettle much of the population — which experts say could also be a legal violation — and the refusal of Arab countries to take part in any such plan, which they view as forcible expulsion that could create another refugee crisis. Read More Client costs disputes 'likely to increase' after FRC extension
Arab nations have long been reluctant to take in Palestinians, or give them permanent status, out of fear that the refugees might never be allowed to return and that permanent resettlement would undermine the prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Jordan, which is already home to a large Palestinian population, has been hesitant to accept more due to its own demographic balance, weak economy and high unemployment.
For Daqa's family, the dangers of the Israel-Hamas war returned almost immediately. As his wife crossed into Gaza on Tuesday, their bus was rerouted because an Israeli airstrike hit the hospital that was their destination, he said.
The plan was always to return them
The couple's child was in excellent health when she was discharged more than a month ago from the Specialty Hospital in the Jordanian capital of Amman, said Dr. Reyad Al-Sharqawi, the hospital's assistant director general.
Three other children from Gaza were also treated and discharged, he said. The hospital covered the families' rent and other expenses until they left Tuesday, Al-Sharqawi said.
More than two dozen children and their caregivers were evacuated from Gaza in March as part of a Jordanian initiative to provide urgent medical care to 2,000 children. The 17 patients who completed their treatment were returned to Gaza.
Jordan's King Abdullah II, a close U.S. ally, announced the initiative during a meeting with President Donald Trump in February aimed at heading off the American leader's proposal for Gaza to be depopulated and redeveloped as a tourism destination. The Israeli government has embraced Trump's plan.
A Jordanian official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation acknowledged that some Palestinians asked to stay beyond the treatment, but he said the plan was always to return them.
'We are not going to allow the displacement of Palestinians outside Gaza,' he said. Read More Woman wins £30,000 compensation for being compared to Darth Vader
Jordan's government said the children who left made room for others to come. On Wednesday, four cancer patients arrived from Gaza to start care.
Forcing people to return to a place where they could face serious harm would be a violation of international human rights law, according to rights groups. Under the law, all returns must be safe and voluntary, and the evacuating country should ensure that adequate services are available in their place of origin.
The war has gutted Gaza's health system. Israel has blocked all imports, including food, fuel and medicine, for more than two months. Hospitals are running out of supplies, and experts have warned that the territory will likely fall into famine unless Israel lifts the blockade and ends its military campaign. Israel says the blockade aims to pressure Hamas to release the 58 hostages it still holds.
Law cites the rights of wounded children
Human rights experts said Jordanian officials were in a tough position, not wanting to be complicit in what many see as the expulsion of Palestinians while providing aid to those in need. Still, the law comes down to the rights of wounded children, said professor Omer Shatz, a human rights lawyer and lecturer at SciencesPo University in Paris.
'There is an absolute prohibition on returning them to a place where they will be exposed to cruel, degrading or inhuman treatment, let alone a risk to their life,' Shatz said.
Like refugees in other contexts, Palestinians should have the freedom to choose whether to return to their country, said Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. Countries that take in Palestinians from Gaza should seek assurances that they will be allowed to return if and when they choose, he said.
For now, Israel is allowing Palestinians to return to Gaza after medical treatment. But the Palestinians fear that if the larger resettlement policy is enacted, they will be permanently exiled from their homeland, as hundreds of thousands were after the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. Those refugees and their descendants now number some 6 million, concentrated in built-up camps across the region. Read More Listed law firm founder seeks boardroom clearout
Two families who returned to Gaza said the road home included many checkpoints, and Israeli soldiers took their phones and money upon entering.
Israel's defense ministry said that during security checks of residents returning from Jordan to Gaza, some people were found carrying undeclared cash amounts exceeding 'normal limits' and was suspected of being 'intended for terrorist use' in Gaza. It said the money was being held while the circumstances were investigated.
It was unclear whether any aid organizations helped facilitate the children's return.
In March, the World Health Organization worked with the Jordanians to evacuate the sick children from Gaza, according to Jordan's government. The WHO did not respond to requests for comment on whether they were involved in the transfer back to Gaza.
For some families there were no good options.
Arafat Yousef's 12-year-old son, who lost a leg to an Israeli airstrike, waited eight months to get a prosthetic limb in Jordan.
Yousef wants to stay in Jordan so his son can get the necessary follow-up care, but he also feels drawn back to Gaza to take care of his six other children.
'I wanted my son to complete his treatment,' Yousef said. 'But at the same time, I wanted to return to my land. I don't want to leave my children alone amid this bombing.'
___
Magdy reported from Cairo. Mednick reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press reporter Wafaa Shurafa contributed from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip.

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San Francisco Chronicle
19 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Palestinians say Israel and its allies fired on crowd near Gaza aid site. Hospital says 6 killed
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Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
At least four killed by Israeli fire near Gaza food point, officials say
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Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Israeli bombing in Gaza ‘worse than ever': UK doctor after latest mission
On a typical day at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, Victoria Rose, a British surgeon, would wake up before dawn. 'Because the bombing would start at four,' she said, now back in London, having just wrapped up her third humanitarian mission to Gaza since Israel's war began in October 2023. Over almost four weeks in May, she usually operated on 12 or 13 patients per 14-hour shift, unless there was a mass casualty incident overnight, meaning even longer shifts and more patients. By comparison, in London hospitals, she treats a maximum of three patients per day. 'It's operating nonstop in Gaza,' she said. Recalling some of her many patients, she treated 11-year-old Adam al-Najjar, the sole surviving child of Dr Alaa al-Najjar, whose nine other children and husband, Hamdi, also a doctor, were killed in an attack in Khan Younis last month. She vividly remembers two brothers with lower limb injuries, Yakoob and Mohammed, who were the sole survivors of their family, and an eight-year-old girl named Aziza who was orphaned. 'She had a burn on her face and her shoulder, and somebody found her walking the streets and brought her in,' said Rose, who specialises in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Rose and a team of medics also worked tirelessly to save the leg of a seven-year-old girl who, after an explosion, 'was missing her knee … it was like looking at the back of her leg without the bone in'. Having cleaned the area, removed dead skin and muscle, and dressed the wound, the girl returned three more times for further treatment, but ultimately, her limb was amputated. Al Jazeera spoke with Dr Rose about the growing intensity of Israeli bombardment, the impact of malnutrition which has been exacerbated by a three-month aid blockade, deaths and gunshot wounds she saw among those who desperately tried to get rations via a new mechanism backed by the United States and Israel, and her sense of frustration that as the death toll rises and the scale of injuries is well documented, disbelief in Palestinian suffering prevails. Al Jazeera: How did you feel entering Gaza this time around? Victoria Rose: Definitely once we got in, the bombing was far worse than it's ever been, and it was far, far louder, closer, more constant than it's ever been. The drones – it was as if they were on me. They were constantly there and really loud to the point that it was difficult to have a conversation if you were outside. Al Jazeera: What do the types of injuries you saw reveal about the current intensity of the bombing? Rose: This time, the injuries seemed to be from the heart of an explosion. People had been blown up, and bits of them had been blown off. Last summer, it was far more shrapnel wounds – a bomb had gone off in the vicinity, and something had been whipped up and then it ejected at them in a missile-type fashion and hit them and done some damage to their bodies. Much more survivable, reconstructable-type injuries, whereas these appeared to be far more direct hits on people. Al Jazeera: You have volunteered three times during the genocide, including in March and August last year. The death toll, now at about 55,000, continues to rise at haste. Was this the most challenging trip? Rose: This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst. The volume of patients is more and the kids are more. The number of kids has gone up exponentially. They've doubled since the March (2024) trip – the number of children that I've seen. During the first trip (in March 2024), I thought I was seeing loads of children, but this trip surpassed that. Al Jazeera: How would you describe Nasser Hospital? Rose: It's a very similar scenario, very similar vibe to being in a hospital anywhere, but it's just so packed. It's everybody; it's like the whole population is in there. (Doctors are usually) very selective with the people that we hospitalise. They're normally older, or got cancer, or complications from diabetes or heart attacks – that's normally who gets hospital beds in the UK. But there, it could be everybody on your road. It's just normal people that have been blown up. Healthy people that are otherwise really fit and well, and now have been blown up. It's quite bizarre to hospitalise somebody that was fit yesterday and, well, now is missing an arm or part of an arm. Al Jazeera: You were in Gaza when people desperately trying to secure food aid through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new mechanism backed by Israel and the US, were attacked. Many were killed. You did some media interviews at the time. What did you witness and experience? Rose: The bulk of the victims had gunshot wounds. They were shot in the stomach, shot in the leg, shot in the arm. After the GHF shooting, when (the victims) all came in, immediately the next journalist (I spoke to) was saying to me that 'Israel has denied that they've shot anyone and you know, they're saying that it's the Palestinians shooting each other'. And then they sort of said, 'Nobody's been killed', and I was standing in the emergency department with 30 body bags, thinking, you can't lie like this. You just can't. Al Jazeera: Many in Gaza are vulnerable to starvation, and thousands of children are suffering from acute malnutrition, according to the United Nations. How does this affect patients and hospital staff? Rose: Everybody's lost weight. They will tell you, 'I am now five or 10 kg lower in weight.' My medical students I was there with in August, the girls are just so thin now. They're all in their 20s, and all of them looked really as if they'd lost significant amounts of weight. But the children are really small. They're really skinny. Sixty children have died at Nasser Hospital of malnutrition. It is mainly the children that are lactose intolerant or have some other disease as well, because none of the only formula milk that's getting in is suitable for children with lactose intolerance. Then you have children that have other diseases on top of that, which stop them from being able to take normal milk. That was quite shocking. The trauma patients, which is who I was seeing, were also really small. No fat on them at all, quite a bit of muscle wasting. And they didn't really heal very well. It seemed to take a lot longer this time than it did in August for wounds to heal. There were lots of infections, a huge number of infections; with malnutrition, you get a dampening of the immune system. It's one of the areas that's affected the most. You can't mount a good immune response. On top of that, all the wounds were dirty anyway because everyone's living in a tent and there's no sanitation, no clean water. You're starting in a really difficult position, and then you've run out of antibiotics. We only had three types of antibiotics that we could use, and none of them would have been the first-line choice if we'd have been in the UK. Al Jazeera: How would you describe the morale among the doctors you worked with? Rose: Really bad now. So many of them said to me, 'I'd rather die than carry on.' So many of them want a ceasefire, and I think would be prepared to do whatever it takes to get a ceasefire now. They are at their lowest. They've all moved 15 times. They've all lost significant members of the family – these guys have lost kids. Their houses are completely destroyed. It's really, really difficult times for them. Al Jazeera: What are your fears for Gaza? Rose: It's a man-made humanitarian crisis, so it could be man-stopped, and that's what needs to happen. This could be turned off immediately if people put enough pressure on the right governments, the right leaders. I think, if we don't turn it off soon, there won't be a Gaza and there certainly won't be Palestinians in Gaza. It's very difficult to have any conversations with Palestinians about the future because they can't really see it. Note: This interview was lightly edited for clarity and brevity.