The doctor Khadra Salami knows that, under the rubble in Loop, there are lives that were not meant to be lived and she saved. “It’s something inhuman, truly inhuman,” she laments. first pediatric oncologist of Palestine. “These families have given everything so that their children can access the treatment to cure cancer and, after all this suffering, they have been cured only to end up dying in a war caused by man,” he denounces from his clinic in the Augusta Victoria Hospital of East Jerusalem, situated in an old German-style castle with its own church and bell tower on the Mount of Olives. At one of the main medical centers that receives patients from Gaza, there are still some sick children and adults. Maybe stay caught up between these neat walls since October 7 saved them life.
Magnet and his daughter Amira arrived in this room more than two months ago. After being diagnosed with brain tumor In Gaza, the 11-year-old girl was able to travel with her mother to be treated at the only hospital in all of Palestine that offers radiation. “We have permission from Israel for only one day, which is the day we enter Jerusalem, and we can not go out from the hospital grounds,” explains Iman from the narrow bed in which she sleeps. It is located just the right distance to shake hands with Amira overnight. “We thought that we would finish the treatment quickly, and that we could return home, to Raman, with my husband and my other six-year-old daughter,” she recalls for this newspaper. But then the October 7 Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and the Israeli Army waged its fiercest battle against the enclave.
“Now we can’t go back, because is not safe: our entire city [en el centro de la Franja] is destroyed, my family has moved to tents in the south and, as there is no connection“We haven’t been able to talk to them for a week,” she laments. Every time the phone rings, she jumps out of bed until she sees the name on the screen and hangs up disappointed. “You know what it’s like. heart of a mother“I am constantly worried about my other daughter,” she confesses, worried, from this hospital located in a castle built in 1907 as a center for the German Protestant community in Ottoman Palestine. The story of Iman and Amira is that of many others trapped in East Jerusalem hospitals that receive patients from Gaza. “With the blocking For the past 17 years, Israel has prevented the entry of many medical equipment and components and has prevented Gaza medical professionals from traveling to form; That’s why many Palestinians from the enclave have to go to Jerusalem for treatment,” he explains. Aseel Baidounspokesperson in the West Bank for the organization Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP, for its acronym in English), to this newspaper.
Hospital arrests
Some of these patients never get permission to leave Gaza. In 2021, MAP recorded that the 36% of permits of the patients were rejected or postponed. “Before the war, we saw cases where a child’s brain tumor was operated on at Al Shifa Hospital, but then all the security checks they postponed their arrival to the center of Jerusalem and, when he managed to arrive, two months later, the tumor had returnedand we had to start from the beginning,” laments Dr. Salami to EL PERIÓDICO. Since October 7, it is estimated that some 200 Gazan patients They are trapped in hospitals in East Jerusalem. Almost all of them have a companion.
At the beginning of November, there was a incursion of the Israeli security forces in the Al Makassed Hospital to arrest several patients for remain “illegally” in Israel, after the expiration of their medical permits. When EL PERIÓDICO was in the vicinity of this medical center located in East Jerusalem, the hospital staff reported that there were no patients left from Gaza in its facilities. Many had allegedly been transferred against their will to hospitals in the occupied West Bank, without further news of them. Hospital sources who prefer to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation They have reported that these people will probably be sent back to Gaza.
“Talking for hours”
On the pediatric oncology floor at Augusta Victoria Hospital, there are five families from Gaza. In times of uncertainty and heartbreak, they have been each other’s main support, his second salvation. “We didn’t know each other before,” Iman admits, “but sitting for hours and talking about the situation in our land has made it much easier, we never get bored“. On his young face, the relief of meeting his peers in such difficult moments appears. As the darkness falls rain On the other side of the window, this young mother thanks God as she thinks of Gaza. “The children are there so happy of rain because they can fill bottles and buckets with water to drink,” he celebrates.
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When Dr. Salami makes her rounds around the floor, she stops a while longer in the rooms of these five patients. “I always remind them that here we are a familythat we are here for anything you need, to talk and let out everything you need in this frustrating situation,” he says. sweetness typical of those who speak honestly. Native of Ramallah, confesses that every morning when he crosses the checkpoint to go to work with his car with a Palestinian license plate he feels fear and insecurity. “I’m depressed, I’m afraid of the future But the first thing is that this genocidal war ends in 2023,” defends Dr. Salami.
This mother of two children does not share these fears with the mothers and grandmothers who have come from afar to save the lives of their children and, unknowingly, their own. Connected at every moment to what happens in homeWithout already having one, the return seems distant. “We would love to returnbut only if there is peace and calm“, Iman confesses. “It will take a long time to rebuild the hospitals and houses, there is no place to live, where would we go if we came back?“he asks into the air. In this white room, enlivened by colorful blankets and a couple of Amira stuffed animals, the war is far away. In her body, she reappears when the screen of her phone lights up waiting for news from her other girl.