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UN Coordinator Announces Agreement to Treat Gaza Patients Abroad

A Palestinian man wearing a protective mask in Gaza. (AFP)
A Palestinian man wearing a protective mask in Gaza. (AFP)
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UN Coordinator Announces Agreement to Treat Gaza Patients Abroad

A Palestinian man wearing a protective mask in Gaza. (AFP)
A Palestinian man wearing a protective mask in Gaza. (AFP)

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov announced that a temporary arrangement has been reached to treat Gaza patients abroad.

“A temporary arrangement has been agreed to support Palestinian patients and companions from Gaza to access essential health services outside the Strip,” tweeted the official.

He did not disclose any details about the agreement, but thanked the World Health Organization in the Occupied Territories, UN Development and Humanitarian Coordinator in Palestine Jamie McGoldrick, and the UN Special Coordinator of the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) for their “amazing work with all parties.”

Ynet said Israel would allow Gaza patients to enter its hospitals and hospitals in the West Bank, amid a severe shortage of medical staff and equipment in the coastal enclave.

Qatar recently sponsored a truce agreement in the Strip, which includes ending the escalation in exchange for the entry of funds and a set of facilities into the territories.

Israel canceled the last set of sanctions it imposed on Gaza, reopened the crossings, allowed entry of fuel into the Strip and permitted fishermen to return to the sea, while the parties are working to accelerate the establishment of the US field hospital and entry of 7,000 workers from Gaza to Israel.

Allowing Gaza patients to enter Israel is part of the UN-sponsored agreement after the suspension of transfers from the Strip prompting hundreds of patients to seek help from human rights organizations.

Medical organizations, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and al-Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza warned that the conditions of patients in the Strip is deteriorating, especially as most of them are treated in West Bank and East Jerusalem hospitals.

Many Gazans need to be transferred outside the enclave to receive treatment for serious diseases, including cancer.

PCHR issued a statement regarding the “dangerous decline in treatments provided to cancer patients in the Gaza Strip,” adding that the city suffers from lack of adequate diagnostic services, and doesn't have the necessary chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatments.

The Center fears this would affect the lives of cancer patients, given the weak health system as a result of the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip 14 years ago, which is a real threat to the lives of the patients.

There are at least 8,000 cancer patients suffering severely due to the lack of necessary treatment, in light of the severe restrictions imposed at the crossings in the Strip, after the declaration of the state of emergency and the suspension of coordination between the Palestinian Civil Affairs Authority and the Israeli authorities.

The measures led to an unprecedented decline in the number of patients traveling through the Beit Hanoun crossing during the last five months, which negatively affected the health conditions of cancer patients who did not have a suitable alternative in Gaza.

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Arab World

Israeli Forces Storm Shelters, Detain Men, as North Gaza Raid Deepens

Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024. In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia. (AFP)
Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024. In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia. (AFP)
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Israeli Forces Storm Shelters, Detain Men, as North Gaza Raid Deepens

Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024. In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia. (AFP)
Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024. In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia. (AFP)

Israeli forces blew up homes and besieged schools and shelters for displaced people on Monday as they deepened their operations in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, residents and medics said.

They also rounded up men and ordered women to leave the camp, they said.

Medics at the Indonesian Hospital told Reuters that Israeli troops stormed a school and detained the men before setting the facility ablaze. The fire reached the hospital generators and caused a power outage, they added.

Health officials said they refused orders by the Israeli army, which began a new incursion into the north of the Palestinian territory over two weeks ago, to evacuate the three hospitals in the area or leave the patients unattended.

Troops remained outside the hospital but did not enter, they said. Medics at a second hospital, Kamal Adwan, reported heavy Israeli fire near the hospital at night.

"The army is burning the schools next to the hospital, and no one can enter or leave the hospital," said one nurse at the Indonesian Hospital, who asked not to be named.

Palestinian health officials said 18 people had been killed in Jabalia and eight elsewhere in Gaza in Israeli strikes.

The Israeli military said troops were continuing ground operations across the Gaza Strip. It said in a statement that over the past day, troops had dismantled militant infrastructure and tunnel shafts and killed fighters in the Jabalia area. It did not comment on the immediate situation regarding the hospitals and camps.

Israel has intensified its campaigns both in Gaza and Lebanon days after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar raised hopes of an opening for ceasefire talks to end more than a year of conflict.

Israel has vowed to eradicate the Hamas movement who formerly controlled Gaza, but in doing so has laid waste to much of the territory and killed tens of thousands of people. More than 1.9 million people have been left homeless amid a humanitarian crisis.

RUNNING OUT

Hadeel Obeid, a supervisor nurse at the Indonesian hospital, where 32 patients are currently being treated, said they were running out of medical supplies.

"Sterile gauze is going to finish and there are no medications to give them," she told Reuters via a chat app.

Obeid said the water supply has been cut off and there was food for the fourth consecutive day. She appealed to international organizations to take action to save the wounded.

The United Nations said it had been unable to reach the three hospitals in northern Gaza. It demanded access to allow aid into northern Gaza areas.

The UN Human Rights Office said it was "increasingly concerned that the manner in which the Israeli military is conducting hostilities in North Gaza, along with unlawful interference with humanitarian assistance and orders that are leading to forced displacement, may be causing the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza's northernmost governate through death and displacement".

Israel says it is getting large quantities of humanitarian supplies into Gaza with land deliveries and airdrops. It also says it has facilitated the evacuation of patients from the Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Palestinians say no aid entered northern Gaza areas where the operation is active.

Residents and medics said Israeli forces had tightened their siege on Jabalia, the largest of the enclave's eight historic refugee camps, which it encircled by sending tanks to the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and issuing evacuation orders to residents.

"We are facing death by bombs, by thirst and hunger," said Raed, a resident of Jabalia camp. "Jabalia is being wiped out and there is no witness to the crime, the world is blinding its eyes,"

Israeli officials said evacuation orders were aimed at separating Hamas fighters from civilians and denied there was any systematic plan to clear civilians out of Jabalia or other northern areas. It said forces operating in northern Gaza killed scores of Hamas gunmen and dismantled infrastructure

Hamas accused Israel of carrying out acts of "genocide and ethnic cleansing" against the people of northern Gaza to force them to leave.

The Hamas armed wing said fighters attacked forces there with anti-tank rockets and mortar fire, and detonated already planted bombs against troops inside tanks and stationed in houses.

Elsewhere in the enclave, Israeli strikes killed at least five people in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and four in two separate strikes in Gaza City, medics said.

Sinwar was one of the masterminds of the Oct. 7, 2003, cross-border attack on Israeli communities that killed around 1,200 people, with another 253 taken back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent war has devastated Gaza, killing more than 42,500 Palestinians, with another 10,000 uncounted dead thought to lie under the rubble, Gaza health authorities say.