“I want to go home,” Amira claims over and over again, lying in her bed at the Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem. At 11 years old she has just completed radiotherapy treatment for a brain tumor and, exhausted, she does not understand why she cannot return to her native Gaza.
The mother, Iman al Asheh, does not detach herself from the little girl, who with boredom and anger in her eyes reproaches her for not being able to see her grandparents, her father and her sister. With a hint of a smile, Iman says she takes refuge in “the patience” that God is giving her at this moment and in the certainty of knowing “what is good for my daughter.”
Like Iman and Amira, more than 200 Palestinian companions and patients from Gaza have been blocked in two hospitals in the occupied part of Jerusalem since October 7 – Augusta Victoria and Makassed – after the Israeli authorities suspended their permits. all Gazans who were in Israel and the West Bank.
Thanks to the intervention of hospital heads they now have weekly leave. But Israel controls each renewal, subject to whether their treatments continue (especially for tumors and renal peritonitis) or whether the patients are still alive. In the case of the Augusta Victoria, of the 100 Gazans it had housed since the start of the war, three patients died and their three companions were deported to Gaza, along with a contingent of some 4,000 workers who were in Jericho.
For the 94 Gazans still in the medical center belonging to the Lutheran Church, time has been reduced to rooms, hallways and patios. They eat and sleep there or in hotels in the complex, and only move around with hospital transport. Leaving this circuit exposes them to being arrested by soldiers or police, and even then they are not exempt from being detained, as happened with dozens of Gazans in an Israeli raid inside Makassed, on November 2.
“Jerusalem is a hot spot and we have to take care of the patients,” warns an employee while touring the pediatric oncology unit. From the rooms, children and companions return cordial greetings and some warm gestures, although no one is in the mood to talk. A discomfort that, despite the effort to care for the sick, is shared by the staff.
In the usual greetings, the classic how are you has been replaced by a sad grimace. “Nowadays we don't ask this question because we don't really know how to feel. “We are frustrated, disappointed, helpless,” says Fadi Atrash, director of the Augusta Victoria.
“Patients are in a very, very difficult situation,” he adds. They came to fight the disease. They suffer from cancer, they suffer from being away from their families. And on top of that they have to be worried all the time, every minute, about the lives of their loved ones in Gaza.”
Glued to the news, hoping “that none of my relatives appear” in it, Iman lives “on edge” and “between two fires”: “My daughter is here and she is safe. But on the other hand, the rest of my family and my other daughter are in Gaza. “I feel very tired and mentally I am not stable.”
More than six weeks of anguish are visible on his face, accentuated by the difficulties in speaking with his family. “Every 50 call attempts, they only answer once. We mostly talk through written messages,” she explains.
What he does know is that Israeli bombing devastated his parents' house in Rimal, his neighborhood in Gaza City. They, like her husband and her other daughter, are alive and have fled south to Khan Yunis. But there “the situation is very bad.” Without electricity, gas or food, her family rations the little flour they have left to bake bread.
The contrast demoralizes the stranded Gazans. “Here they have food and there (in Gaza) they don't; Here they have water and electricity, there they don't. It is frustrating for them, it causes depression,” says Atrash. “We try not to let them feel alone and we give them psychosocial support.”
Doctors, nurses and social workers are dedicated to entertaining children, talking to adults or bringing a telephone to facilitate communication with the Strip. “They give us everything we need, they are very good to us,” Iman emphasizes. And thank God, there are other people from Gaza here, so we can chat with each other.”
A contact that the doctors also try to maintain with their patients and their colleagues in Gaza. Atrash is struggling to bring in some 500 cancer patients who had appointments scheduled after October 7. “We have to push to bring them in, we know them. And we also have to make efforts to get the wounded out,” he insists, pointing out that Israel has rejected his requests to receive patients from Gaza or send medicine to the Strip.
In this context, and despite her mixed feelings, Iman is convinced that staying in the hospital is her best option because “here Amira has adequate treatment and follow-up.” “I would return to Gaza only when my daughter is healthy because there are no medical centers there, they have been destroyed. And it will take a long time to rebuild Gaza.”
