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Gaza Cancer Patients Miss Treatment as Israel Border Shut amid Fighting

Palestinian firefighters try to extinguish the fire inside an apartment that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Friday, May 12, 2023. (AP)
Palestinian firefighters try to extinguish the fire inside an apartment that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Friday, May 12, 2023. (AP)
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Gaza Cancer Patients Miss Treatment as Israel Border Shut amid Fighting

Palestinian firefighters try to extinguish the fire inside an apartment that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Friday, May 12, 2023. (AP)
Palestinian firefighters try to extinguish the fire inside an apartment that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Friday, May 12, 2023. (AP)

Gaza resident Dina El-Dhani was due to meet her oncologist this week at a hospital in Jerusalem, but she has been unable to cross into Israel since the border was closed amid heavy fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants.

Dhani is one of 432 cancer patients who have not been able to receive treatment since Tuesday, when Israel launched attacks on the Islamic Jihad militant group, setting off a surge in cross-border violence.

Her appointment with a doctor at Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem was meant to determine which radiation treatment she will receive.

"They told me it is delayed. Do I have to wait another two months to get a new appointment?" said 40-year-old Dhani. "The crossing is life, because as patients our treatment doesn't exist here. (The border crossing) either enhances my treatment or enhances my departure."

The four days of fighting with intense Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli air strikes has disrupted the lives of millions of people.

Israel and Egypt, citing security concerns, maintain a blockade on Gaza, which is ruled by the Hamas movement.

The crossings this week have been under the constant threat of Palestinian rocket fire and remained shut, said a spokesperson for Israel's military-run liaison with the Palestinians.

Due to shortages of medical equipment and medicine, Gaza’s hospitals are unable to provide proper care for cancer patients. So most travel to Israel, the occupied West Bank, or other countries for treatment. Palestinian health officials blame the 16-year-old blockade for undermining the development of the health sector.

"Unfortunately, we live in between two crossings and are besieged from both directions (Israel and Egypt)," said Aya Kolab, 30, who was due for a genetic test at a hospital near Tel Aviv to help her treatment.

"All my dreams stopped because the war stopped me from going, as Erez crossing is closed," she wrote on social media, referring to the main passage to Israel.

Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qidra said the border closure has prevented 432 cancer patients from visiting hospitals in Israel, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, 27 who are listed as "life-saving" referrals.

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'We Don't Want to Die Here': Sierra Leone Migrants Trapped in Lebanon

Sierra Leone is working to establish how many of its citizens are currently in Lebanon -AFP
Sierra Leone is working to establish how many of its citizens are currently in Lebanon -AFP
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'We Don't Want to Die Here': Sierra Leone Migrants Trapped in Lebanon

Sierra Leone is working to establish how many of its citizens are currently in Lebanon -AFP
Sierra Leone is working to establish how many of its citizens are currently in Lebanon -AFP

When an Israeli airstrike killed her employer and destroyed nearly everything she owned in southern Lebanon, it also crushed Fatima Samuella Tholley's hopes of returning home to Sierra Leone to escape the war.

With a change of clothes stuffed into a plastic bag, the 27-year-old housekeeper told AFP that she and her cousin made their way to the capital Beirut in an ambulance.

Bewildered and terrified, the pair were thrust into the chaos of the bombarded city -- unfamiliar to them apart from the airport where they had arrived months before.

"We don't know today if we will live or not, only God knows," Fatima told AFP via video call, breaking down in tears.
"I have nothing... no passport, no documents," she said.

The cousins have spent days sheltering in the cramped storage room of an empty apartment, which they said was offered to them by a man they had met on their journey.

With no access to TV news and unable to communicate in French or Arabic, they could only watch from their window as the city was pounded by strikes.

The Israeli war on Lebanon since mid-September has killed more than 1,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands more to flee their homes, amid Israeli bombards around the country.

The situation for the country's migrant workers is particularly precarious, as their legal status is often tied to their employer under the "kafala" sponsorship system governing foreign labor.

"When we came here, our madams received our passports, they seized everything until we finished our contract" said 29-year-old Mariatu Musa Tholley, who also works as a housekeeper.

"Now [the bombing] burned everything, even our madams... only we survived".

- 'They left me' -

Sierra Leone is working to establish how many of its citizens are currently in Lebanon, with the aim of providing emergency travel certificates to those without passports, Kai S. Brima from the foreign affairs ministry told AFP.

The poor west African country has a significant Lebanese community dating back over a century, which is heavily involved in business and trade.

Scores of migrants travel to Lebanon every year, with the aim of paying remittances to support families back home.

"We don't know anything, any information", Mariatu said.

"[Our neighbours] don't open the door for us because they know we are black", she wept.

"We don't want to die here".

Fatima and Mariatu said they had each earned $150 per month, working from 6:00 am until midnight seven days a week.

They said they were rarely allowed out of the house.

AFP contacted four other Sierra Leonean domestic workers by phone, all of whom recounted similar situations of helplessness in Beirut.

Patricia Antwin, 27, came to Lebanon as a housekeeper to support her family in December 2021.

She said she fled her first employer after suffering sexual harassment, leaving her passport behind.

When an airstrike hit the home of her second employer in a southern village, Patricia was left stranded.

"The people I work for, they left me, they left me and went away," she told AFP.

Patricia said a passing driver saw her crying in the street and offered to take her to Beirut.

Like Fatima and Mariatu, she has no money or formal documentation.

"I only came with two clothes in my plastic bag", she said.

- Sleeping on the streets -

Patricia initially slept on the floor of a friend's apartment, but moved to Beirut's waterfront after strikes in the area intensified.

She later found shelter at a Christian school in Jounieh, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the capital.

"We are seeing people moving from one place to another", she said.

"I don't want to lose my life here," she added, explaining she had a child back in Sierra Leone.

Housekeeper Kadij Koroma said she had been sleeping on the streets for almost a week after fleeing to Beirut when she was separated from her employer.

"We don't have a place to sleep, we don't have food, we don't have water," she said, adding that she relied on passers by to provide bread or small change for sustenance.

Kadij said she wasn't sure if her employer was still alive, or if her friends who had also travelled from Sierra Leone to work in Lebanon had survived the bombardment.

"You don't know where to go," she said, "everywhere you go, bomb, everywhere you go, bomb".