As the sun set over El Arish International Airport in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday, February 20, a dozen ambulances and a few buses were parked side by side. In the hangar, some 200 Palestinians, evacuees from Gaza, were completing administrative formalities before boarding a Boeing 777 belonging to the Emirati airline Etihad, bound for Abu Dhabi. Among them were injured children accompanied by at least one relative, cancer patients and residents of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Since mid-November 2023, around 500 Palestinians from Gaza have been welcomed and cared for in this Gulf oil monarchy. This is but a drop in an ocean of need. According to Gazan health authorities, the war has killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians and wounded 70,000 others. By mid-February, only 11 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were still operating.
There are more and more reports of families struggling to feed their children and of a growing risk of death from hunger, particularly in northern Gaza, which is virtually out of reach of supply convoys. "Hunger and disease are a deadly combination," warned Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme, on February 19.
The February 20 flight from El Arish to Abu Dhabi was the 12th flight chartered by the UAE since the start of the war on October 7, 2023. Among the passengers was Faten Abdelkarim Aziz, 11 years old, her left eye bandaged, her face disfigured, but smiling all the same. A resident of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, this young girl had been wounded in a bombing at the end of December when she went out into the street to buy food with her two little brothers. Mohamed, aged 7, was killed instantly. Faten gave the telephone number of her mother, Sahar Akram, to the rescue workers who came to the scene. Upon her arrival at the hospital, Akram was informed of her son's death. "I had a hard time understanding his death. I was looking at my other son, Ahmed, 9 years old, to whom the doctors were giving electric shocks," said the mother, dressed in black. "I was afraid that he would die too, and that's what happened. My life went with them, but I have to stay strong for my daughter."
'Join his brothers in paradise'
As the plane took off, Faten, seated next to her mother, reported that her blinded eye was hurting. The doctors laid her on a stretcher that was set up on the backs of folded seats and gave her an infusion of tranquilizers. "Since the death of her two brothers, Faten speaks very little. She used to be very cute. If I showed you old photos of her, you wouldn't recognize her," said Akram. Her youngest son, Yazan, 5, ran around the aisles of the plane. He had been very close to his two brothers. Since their deaths, "he's been angry," said his mother. "He keeps asking me to take him to the doctors so he can join his brothers in heaven."
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