5 days ago
Opinion: Is Britain finally realising that Palestinian children are human?
After nearly two years of genocide, the UK government is gearing up to accept a contingent of critically ill and injured children from Gaza. But much more is needed, says Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan
am a British Egyptian paediatrician who has worked in the National Health Service (NHS) for more than 15 years. During annual trips to Gaza, I have worked alongside local doctors and witnessed first-hand the impact of Israel's blockade and bombardment on children's health.
I know what it means to see children die of preventable causes. But never in my life have I witnessed this level of calculated cruelty, nor such cold complicity from those who claim to care about international law and children's rights.
On 30 July, I flew with a 15-year-old Palestinian boy from Gaza named Majd Alshagnobi, his mother and two siblings from Cairo to London for specialist treatment at the Great Ormond Street children's hospital. Two of his other siblings and their father remain trapped in northern Gaza.
I joined the flight as a friend and supporter of Project Pure Hope, working alongside Kinder Relief, both of which played a vital role in arranging Majd's care in Egypt and helping secure his transfer to the UK. Their work is a testament to what small networks of determined people can achieve when governments fail to act.
Majd's mandible had been shattered by a bomb blast. An obvious scar across his neck marks the site of a tracheostomy performed in a hospital in Gaza under siege. His survival is a testament not just to urgent evacuation, but to the relentless efforts of Gaza's doctors and his family, who fought to keep him alive under impossible conditions.
It should never take a teenager with a broken face and a scarred airway to remind Britain that Palestinian children are human beings. But that is where we are.
A medical worker checks the pulse of a prematurely born baby lying in an infant incubator in Khan Younis, Gaza, 13 January 2025 (Bashar Taleb/AFP)
