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First Case of Polio Confirmed in a 10-month-old Child in Gaza

FILE - Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk next a dark streak of sewage flowing into the streets of the southern town of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Health authorities and aid agencies are racing to avert an outbreak of polio in the Gaza Strip after the virus was detected in the territory's wastewater and three cases with a suspected polio symptom have been reported. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)
FILE - Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk next a dark streak of sewage flowing into the streets of the southern town of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Health authorities and aid agencies are racing to avert an outbreak of polio in the Gaza Strip after the virus was detected in the territory's wastewater and three cases with a suspected polio symptom have been reported. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)
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First Case of Polio Confirmed in a 10-month-old Child in Gaza

FILE - Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk next a dark streak of sewage flowing into the streets of the southern town of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Health authorities and aid agencies are racing to avert an outbreak of polio in the Gaza Strip after the virus was detected in the territory's wastewater and three cases with a suspected polio symptom have been reported. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)
FILE - Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk next a dark streak of sewage flowing into the streets of the southern town of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Health authorities and aid agencies are racing to avert an outbreak of polio in the Gaza Strip after the virus was detected in the territory's wastewater and three cases with a suspected polio symptom have been reported. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)

Palestinian health officials on Friday reported the first case of polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old child in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, the first case in years in the coastal enclave that has been engulfed in the Israel-Hamas war since Oct. 7, The Associated Press reported.

After discovering the child's symptoms, tests were conducted in Jordan’s capital of Amman and the case was confirmed to be polio, the health officials said.

The potentially fatal, paralyzing disease mostly strikes children under the age of 5 and typically spreads through contaminated water. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where the spread of polio has never been stopped.

The World Health Organization did not immediately respond to requests to confirm the case. However, UN health and children’s agencies have called for seven-day pauses in the fighting, starting at the end of August, to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children against polio.

They said the polio virus had been discovered in wastewater in two major cities last month in Gaza, which has been polio-free for the last 25 years, according to the United Nations.

The humanitarian community has warned of the re-emergence of polio since the latest war erupted when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza in the 10-month-long conflict and created a dire humanitarian situation, which health officials say has created a public health emergency.

In July, WHO said a variant of type 2 was discovered in wastewater samples from southern Khan Younis and central Deir al-Balah, linked to a variant of the polio virus last detected in Egypt last year.

While WHO did not confirm the polio case, it said earlier on Friday that three children in Gaza were found with acute flaccid paralysis — the onset of weakness or paralysis with reduced muscle tone, a common symptom of polio.

The children's stool samples have been sent for testing to the Jordan National Polio Laboratory, the agency said.

More than 1.6 million doses of the polio vaccine are expected to arrive in Gaza by the end of August, WHO said, in time for the vaccination campaigns which would have to be conducted in two rounds. Children under 10 will be given two drops of the oral vaccine against type 2 of the polio virus.

Health officials in Gaza warned they would not be able to stop the spread of polio and treat people without an urgent ceasefire in place. The stark warning came as international mediators expressed hope that a ceasefire deal is within reach.

Two days of talks had wrapped up in Qatar on Friday, the mediators said, adding that they plan to reconvene in Cairo next week to seal an agreement to stop the fighting.

The mediators have spent months trying to hammer out a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release the hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

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As War Halts Israel Permits, Palestinians Return to Farming

The Norwegian Refugee Council also says that Israel had denied Palestinians access to 99 percent of the land in Area C of the West Bank, which is solely under Israeli control - AFP
The Norwegian Refugee Council also says that Israel had denied Palestinians access to 99 percent of the land in Area C of the West Bank, which is solely under Israeli control - AFP
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As War Halts Israel Permits, Palestinians Return to Farming

The Norwegian Refugee Council also says that Israel had denied Palestinians access to 99 percent of the land in Area C of the West Bank, which is solely under Israeli control - AFP
The Norwegian Refugee Council also says that Israel had denied Palestinians access to 99 percent of the land in Area C of the West Bank, which is solely under Israeli control - AFP

Hussein Jamil held a permit to work in Israel for 22 years until the war in Gaza broke out. Now, after setting up a greenhouse in a West Bank village, he swears he'll never go back.

Harvesting his tomatoes in the occupied West Bank, the 46-year-old says his former Israeli boss has already called several times to ask him to return.

"But I told him that I would never go back to work there," he says in Bayt Dajan near Nablus, the northern West Bank's commercial center.

There, dozens of men have returned to the traditional pursuit of tilling the land, rather than board buses to queue at the heavily guarded checkpoints that lead into Israel.

"It's a very useful job and above all safer" than working in Israel, says Jamil, as he tends to his plants with his sons, AFP reported.

Israel stopped issuing work permits for Palestinians after October 7.

Israeli war in Gaza have so far left 39,790 dead, according to the health ministry in the strip.

Jamil was one of 200,000 Palestinians from the West Bank who were working in Israel legally or illegally, according to the Palestinian General Confederation of Labour, and who lost their livelihoods overnight.

Salaries in Israel are more than double what Palestinians can make in the occupied territories, according to the World Bank.

Many of those workers are now busy in the greenhouses that have sprouted up in recent months on the hillsides where, Palestinian elders say, their ancestors once grew wheat.

Working this way, "we are independent and peaceful," says Jamil, adding: "It's much better than working in Israel. Here we work on our land."

Economic prospects have dived since the war, with West Bank unemployment leaping from 12.9 percent to 32 percent in the final three months of 2023.

Some 144,000 jobs have been lost in the territory, many because of rising violence that has prompted the army to block roads, strangling economic activity.

Since October 7, at least 617 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army or settlers, according to an AFP count based on official Palestinian data.

At least 18 Israelis, including soldiers, have died in Palestinian attacks in the same period, according to official Israeli data.

Every day, around $22 million in income is lost in the West Bank, according to International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates.

In Bayt Dajan alone, 300-350 men worked in Israel out of a population of 5,000.

Mazen Abu Jaish, 43, who spent 10 years working in Israel, took his time before deciding to pick up his shovel and rake and set up a tomato greenhouse.

"We waited, thinking that we would get our jobs back again after the war," he told AFP.

But unlike previous wars in Gaza, which never lasted more than a few weeks, the current conflict is fast approaching its first anniversary.

"So we ended up getting together with 35 other people from the village and we decided to start farming rather than keep waiting," says Jaish.

Since October 7, 15 hectares of Bayt Dajan have been covered by greenhouses with tomatoes and cucumbers, grown by people who used to work in Israel, municipal officials say.

Mohammad Ridwan, a member of the municipal council, sees other advantages as well, as the greenhouses are in Area C -- the West Bank land controlled solely by Israel, and vulnerable to being used for illegal Israeli settlements.

Area C makes up 59 percent of the West Bank, and 63 percent of its agricultural land.

The Norwegian Refugee Council also says that Israel had denied Palestinians access to 99 percent of the land in Area C, in many cases preventing them from growing their own fields there.

"Local unemployed people have found work and above all, we are preserving land in Area C," said Ridwan.