Israel has all but ended medical evacuations from Gaza

The UN estimates that some 14,000 patients, including 2,500 children, are currently in urgent need of medical evacuation. But over the past six months—since the Israeli military invaded Rafah and seized control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing on May 7—only 237 patients have been medically evacuated out of Gaza, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization told Drop Site News, 127 of them children. At that rate, it would take over 29 years for everyone seeking treatment abroad to be allowed out.

From the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza in October 2023 through May 7, 2024, a total of 4,843 patients were medically evacuated, according to WHO, a rate equivalent to around 690 patients a month, an inadequate number even then. Since the closure of the Rafah border crossing, the rate has dropped to the equivalent of around just 40 a month.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the branch of the Israeli military that oversees the West Bank and Gaza, has been denying patients in need of medical treatment abroad permission to evacuate on spurious security grounds. “The current obstacle is the security screening approval rate, which is currently less than 1 percent of submitted patients,” the WHO spokesperson said.

Despite the fact that the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, the European Union, and, to a lesser degree, Jordan, are all open to receiving sick and wounded Palestinians from Gaza for treatment, “COGAT has been finding every single reason to deny these cases or delay the process,” an aid worker with a grassroots initiative that works on the ground in Gaza told Drop Site.

Israel’s refusal to grant permissions for medical evacuations also extends to children. “Children in Gaza are dying—not just from the bombs, bullets and shells that strike them—but because, even when ‘miracles happen,’ even when the bombs go off and the homes collapse and the casualties mount, but the children survive, they are then prevented from leaving Gaza to receive the urgent care that would save their lives,” James Elder, the spokesperson for UNICEF said at a press conference last week. “This is not a logistical problem—we have the ability to safely transport these children out of Gaza. It is not a capacity problem—indeed, we were evacuating children at higher numbers just months ago. It is simply a problem that is being completely disregarded.”

From January 1 through May 7, an average of 296 children were being medically evacuated each month. Since the closing of the Rafah crossing, the number of children medically evacuated has decreased over tenfold — to just 22 per month. “That is, just 127 children — many suffering from head trauma, amputations, burns, cancer, and severe malnutrition — have been allowed to leave since Rafah closed,” Elder said. “When a patient is denied, there is nothing that can be done.”

Because of this evacuation bottleneck, “we see many, many children dying,” said Mila, founder of Save Gaza’s Children, an NGO working on the ground to support the evacuation process and provide aid to people in Gaza. (Mila goes by her first name only for security reasons.) She recounted the case of a 13-year-old boy named Kareem Thabet whom the group was working to evacuate and who died on Oct. 10 while waiting for permission to travel for treatment to an explosive injury that resulted in 25 percent of his body being burned and both of his legs being amputated. “His house was bombed with white phosphorus. His father died immediately, and his pregnant mother was working to get Kareem evacuated. He died of sepsis,” Mila said, citing various other examples of children who have died waiting for evacuation permissions or are on the cusp of death.

Over the past year, the health care system in Gaza has come under a direct and sustained assault by the Israeli military, with multiple hospitals being bombed, besieged, and invaded by Israeli forces; doctors arrested and killed; and severe restrictions on medicine and medical supplies allowed into Gaza. Over 101,000 people have been injured, with thousands more suffering from hunger, malnutrition and infectious disease as a result of Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid and destruction of civilian infrastructure. This week, an independent investigation by a UN Commission of Inquiry found that Israel is carrying out a “concerted policy” to destroy Gaza’s health system.