Palestinian Medical Expertise in Rafah, Gaza: Desperately Seeking Medical Relief after Israel Takes a Lead Role

She said Israeli restrictions have limited the number and effectiveness of medical expertise going into Gaza, where most hospitals have been destroyed or heavily damaged, and where local medical personnel have been killed or wounded.

The 19-person volunteer mission for the Palestinian American Medical Association brought 300 suitcases with their medical supplies, but that all were carefully screened by Israel according to TownsonCocke. Doctors said the supplies were used up in days.

The current team there was forced to cancel an operating day due to the lack of supplies. The cousin needed an amputation and refused care because he wanted to do it without anesthesia.

Abu Sittah, the U.K. Palestinian surgeon, said that teams used to bring things in by hand because of unreliable routes. He would likely not be allowed to return to Gaza to take care of patients.

The new Israeli rules make it much more difficult for medical experts to take part because they need to be in Gaza for a month. The numbers of doctors and nurses going in have dropped dramatically, according to the nonprofit group Rebuilding Alliance and medical personnel who have gone in previously.

The European hospital in Rafah has become even more difficult to treat now that it has Al-Hinti to thank for that.

Last year, Al-Masri graduated from medical school. But with most of the hospital staff displaced, on Monday evening the young doctor was one of the few physicians in the emergency room when wounded patients were brought in from an airstrike. Medical staff were short of kits for blood tests and were having a hard day.

Al-Masri said he resuscitated the child, who was 5 or 6 years old, and said he was still alive on Tuesday. His family was injured as well.

The first evacuation of critically ill Gazans since the Rafah border closed down in May, and Israeli officials will be asked to leave

Everything was going according to plan. And then finally the news came out that they will not allow doctors or health-care workers with Palestinian origins to enter,” Al-Hinti said.

Al-Hinti is Jordanian American, with Palestinian parents. She was the only neurologist and a woman in the hospital. Despite the heartbreaking conditions in Rafah, she signed up for another mission with the Palestinian American Medical Association.

In April, Dr. Ali Elaydi volunteered at the European Gaza Hospital. He said he was able to do more than 20 surgeries, helped by medical supplies he and the rest of the team brought in. He signed up for another mission recently.

Israel and Egypt agreed to allow at least 19 sick children, most of them cancer patients, to leave Gaza for medical treatment on Thursday, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, in the first major evacuation of critically ill Gazans since the Rafah border crossing shut down in early May.

One of the non-governmental groups involved in trying to arrange evacuates said Israeli officials told them not to.

The human rights group’s attorney said that there were no patients left at the crossing since May 7. We submitted the petition to make sure that the children and patients are allowed to go out to get medical care.

The case will be heard by the Supreme Court of Israel next week. Lustigman said the group had deliberately chosen cases like the baby girl, where an argument could not be made that she is a security threat.

The aid organization funding the transplant, Children Not Numbers, said Wednesday that Sadeel had been given clearance by Israeli authorities for evacuation but had not yet been able to leave with her parents. One of the parents is the planned organ donor.

The Israeli Defense of the Rafah Gate and the Gazan-Egypt Crossover after the March 5th Israeli Military Attack

“Israel justifies everything with the general saying of ‘security grounds’ and indeed no one is denying that there is a security issue in our area in every direction you look,” Lustigman said. This argument is not a magic word and you can’t justify just ignoring human disasters.

In Washington D.C., the Rebuilding Alliance has been lobbying congress to increase pressure on Israel to create a regular stream of medical evacuates and to loosen restrictions on medical aid missions.

Nisreen Malley, advocacy manager of the group, said that White House pressure persuaded Israel to allow child cancer patients to leave for treatment after the war in Gaza began.

“This is barely cosmetic,” said Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, a prominent Palestinian British surgeon, of Israel’s limited resumption of medical evacuations.

The Israeli military claimed the operation was coordinated with the United States, Egypt and international community. The military allowed sick and injured patients and their escort to leave.

Over 10,000 sick and wounded people in Gaza require urgent care that is available only outside the enclave, the World Health Organization said this week. They include those wounded in airstrikes, as well as cancer patients, children with life-threatening illnesses and older people who need open-heart surgery.

But the main conduit through which Gazans could leave — the Rafah crossing with Egypt — shut down after Israeli forces captured the border in May during a military offensive. The Egyptian side of the gateway was closed in protest, and the Gazan side was destroyed in a fire, according to the Israeli military.