Hassan Abd Rabbou underwent emergency surgery at the end of November at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. The 6-year-old Palestinian boy's urinary tract was blocked, a cyst was removed and his bladder was inflamed. Since then, "his little body has been ravaged by pain," described his father, Wissam Abd Rabbou, speaking to Le Monde by telephone from Gaza, where Israel still prohibits access to foreign journalists. His only son suffers from a rare congenital anomaly of the reproductive system; he has already undergone 25 operations. On December 11, Wissam was informed that Israel had approved Hassan's evacuation but his mother was not allowed to accompany him. Desperate, he sent back another request, with his name and that of his own mother, the child's grandmother: "I don't understand how they want him to be evacuated without at least his mother and me by his side."

The decisions never come with an explanation, adding to the pain of waiting families. "I see myself as a failed father because I can't get my son treated. I feel powerless, I resent this unjust and hypocritical world," said Wissam. He and his wife were lawyers, and have no connection with any political movement, he told us. When, in 2023, after 50 days of "murder and destruction," the members of the little family fled their home in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, they were questioned at the Israeli checkpoint, clearly identified and passed through unhindered – proof, for the father, that they represented no danger.

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