As the sun sets over El-Arich International Airport on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, a dozen ambulances and a few buses are parked side by side. This Tuesday, February 20, in the hangar of the air base, some two hundred Palestinians, evacuated from Gaza, complete administrative procedures before boarding a Boeing 777 of the Emirati airline Etihad, bound for Abu Dhabi. Among them: injured children, accompanied by at least one loved one, cancer patients and residents of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Since mid-November 2023, around five hundred Palestinians from Gaza have been welcomed and cared for in the Gulf petromonarchy. A drop in an ocean of needs, while according to the health authorities of the enclave, the war has left nearly 30,000 dead and 70,000 injured on the Palestinian side. As of mid-February, only eleven of the thirty-six hospitals in the Gaza Strip were still in operation.
There are growing reports of families struggling to feed their children and a growing risk of deaths from hunger, particularly in northern Gaza, almost out of reach of supply convoys. “Hunger and disease are a deadly combination”warned Mike Ryan, executive director of the health emergencies program of the World Health Organization (WHO), on February 19.
The flight on February 20 between El-Arich and Abu Dhabi is the twelfth chartered by the Emirates since the start of the war, on October 7, 2023. Among the passengers, there is Faten Abdelkarim Aziz, 11 years old, left eye bandaged, his face disfigured, but who smiles despite everything. A resident of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, the young girl was injured in a bombing at the end of December, when she went out into the street to buy food with her two little brothers. Mohamed, 7 years old, was killed on the spot. To the rescuers dispatched to the scene, Faten gave the number of his mother, Sahar Akram. When she arrived at the hospital, she learned of her son’s death. “I had difficulty realizing his death, I looked at my other son, Ahmed, 9 years old, to whom the doctors were giving electroshocks, says the mother, dressed in black. I feared he would die too and that’s what happened. My life is gone with them, but I have to stay strong for my daughter. »
“Joining your brothers in paradise”
As the plane takes off, Faten, sitting next to her mother, reports that her blind eye is hurting. The doctors lay him down on a stretcher, installed on the folded seats, and administer an infusion of sedative. “Since the death of his two brothers, Faten has spoken very little. Before, she was very cute. If I showed you old photos of her, you wouldn’t recognize her.”, confides Sahar. His youngest son, Yazan, 5, runs through the corridors of the plane. He was very close to his two brothers who were killed. Since their death, ” he is angryexplains his mother. He keeps asking me to take him to the doctors so he can join his brothers in heaven. »
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