Sources at Physicians for Human Rights told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the Israeli occupation state has expressed its intention to allow wounded and sick people from the Gaza Strip to leave the Strip and reach Ramon Airport in Eilat, and from there to go to the United Arab Emirates, in order to obtain treatment. This happened after nine months of war and deprivation of their right to treatment, which caused the death or worsened the situation of thousands of Gazans in need of urgent treatment.

While the sources spoke about the possibility of a plane carrying 250 sick and wounded taking off from the Gaza Strip to the Emirates during the next week, they avoided confirming the matter, as Israel had previously delayed or canceled the implementation of commitments of this type in previous experiences. While there is initially talk of a first batch of 250 sick and wounded people, if they are actually allowed to leave, the Director General of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Munir Al-Bersh, confirmed to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that those in need of treatment are at least 100 times this number, noting. There are 25,000 referrals required to travel abroad, indicating that the number of sick and wounded people who have left the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war has reached only 5,000.

Al-Bersh explained that at least 10,000 sick and wounded people need urgent treatment due to their serious health conditions that may threaten their lives, with 15,000 Gazans in moderate condition. He stated that about 500 Gazans have died since the beginning of the current war, because they did not receive appropriate treatments for the cancers they suffered from. He stated, as of the time of writing these lines on Wednesday morning, that he had not been informed of the intention to allow sick and injured people to travel to the Emirates.

Physicians for Human Rights and other human rights organizations submitted a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court last June, demanding that the sick and wounded, who face danger to their lives and are not involved in the war, be allowed to leave the Gaza Strip in order to obtain the necessary treatment.

Why UAE?

In response to an official in the organization to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed’s question about specifically choosing the UAE as a destination for patients, he said that he had no answer, and perhaps the matter was related to the presence of Emirati-Israeli coordination in the first place, adding that the occupation had not allowed the exit of Palestinians for treatment since its control of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, with the exception of 27. A child with cancer, after the intervention of the World Health Organization. Before that, a relatively small number of wounded and sick people from Gaza were allowed to leave the Strip, including those who received treatment in Turkey, Qatar, Egypt and other countries, but before the crossing was taken control of on May 7th.

Physicians for Human Rights was one of the most active actors in the Gaza Strip before the war and for about 17 years, assigning doctors to perform surgeries, training local medical teams, and transporting aid and medicines, “but Israel has begun to restrict us and prevent us from taking any role to provide aid in Gaza, and it now refuses to cooperate with the Red Cross and UNRWA,” according to what an official in the organization says.

The World Health Organization will follow up on patients and classify them according to priorities, the most important of which are their urgent needs, even though all cases are actually emergencies, and coordinate the travel requests of each one of them with the Israeli occupation army, and even finance their transportation from the Gaza Strip to Ramon Airport in Eilat. While urgent requests have been submitted to date to remove 95 sick and injured people from the Gaza Strip, the occupation has so far approved the exit of 78 of them, rejected 10, and is reviewing the details of seven others.