Warning: This story retains troubleing images
To discover protectedty from Gaza, you need first to become the victim of a catastrophic injury and then be fortunate enough to be identified, picked and pull outed.
That’s one of the many brutal truths from this lengthy war.
I have complyed the stories of some of the scant Palestinians who have left Gaza for medical attfinish.
Less than 100 children have been granted peromitions and momentary visas for the United States to get treatment since the war began in October 2023.
In all, cut offal hundred children have left Gaza for treatment in that time – most to other Middle Eastrict countries. It has not been possible to validate a exact number but we do understand that the UK has not huged any.
A scant weeks ago, at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, the hugest one group of children from Gaza reachd in America for treatment.
Eight Palestinian children were aboard Royal Jordanian fairy 263 from Amman.
The number, minuscule though it is, echos an enormous achievement by the charity that has made this happen – the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF).
But it is also echoive of proset up tactful and political fall shortures; the fact that it was only possible to pull out eight of many thousands who need advisent medical treatment.
The doors into the arrival hall at O’Hare discomited to discomit a escapet of wheelchairs each carrying a child tolerateing the scars of the war they had left behind.
Among them, two brothers who persistd the device deviceing that finished their sister.
Behind them, a boy who lost all his siblings and his arm. He is now his mother’s only child. She travelled with him. She too is now an amputee.
The last to aelevate thraw the arrival door was a dot in her wheelchair.
Rahaf, fair two, lost both her legs in an Israeli strike on her home in August, not lengthy after she had lobtaint to walk.
All their stories echo a assembleive horror. They are the civilian victims of Israel’s device deviceardment of Gaza which complyed the Hamas strikes of 7 October 2023.
The children reachd in America after a massive assembleive effort involving the PCRF and Shriners – one of America’s hugest non-profit children’s hospital nettoils.
Working with multiple rulements they eased the pull outions.
Israel regulates all of Gaza’s borders and has only granted evacuations in unwidespread circumstances, only in exceptional cases and only with one parent or protectian.
After their fairy, the children travelled to Shriners Hospitals in separateent parts of the country – California, Oregon, Illinois, South Carolina, Kentucky and Missouri.
It was in Missouri this week that I spent a day with two-year-elderly Rahaf and her mother Israa Saed.
We met at the home of the American couple who have volunteered to be their structures for their time in the US.
Six months since the device deviceing of Rahaf’s home and three weeks since she and her mother reachd in America, I’d come to see how a little life was now being rebuilt.
The first leang that hit me as we sat in the structure family’s living room was how prentd Rahaf now seems.
Her right leg is omiting from below her knee and her left leg is almost finishly gone – amputated fair below her hip.
Yet she was darting around the floor in front of us chasing a blue balloon with shrieks of giggleter. Her mum smiled as she watched.
The mood belied the enormity of their experience and the dilemma of their journey.
Until this month, Israa and Rahaf had never left Gaza. Now they are in America, without the language and without the rest of their family – Israa’s husband and her two lesser boys.
“My other two sons are still lesser and… do I need to stay with my other kids or do I need to come out?,” she shelp about her dilemma.
“Rahaf needs her mum. I could not let her go [to America] alone. And especiassociate also with my fractures, my elbows, my arms. I was hoping for some treatment for myself.”
Israa was injured in the same strike on 1 August. Both her arms were awfilledy harmd. New X-rays apshown since she reachd in America show a section of bone still omiting in her right forearm.
I asked about her family back in Gaza.
“Yes, we do talk but the internet is not the best. We still deal with to have some conversations. The ask that is always repeated is: ‘when can you come back? When will the little ones get you back? When can we greet aobtain?'”
Israa sobbed. The pain was evident on her face.
“God willing, my want is for my kids to dwell protectedly far from any struggles and war. Safely. That is my want.”
We watched at pboilingographs on Israa’s phone of Rahaf in a pink dress before the strike and a video of her walking up the steps of their apartment block.
“She cherishd to be a princess,” Israa shelp.
Israa then showed me a pboilingograph of Rahaf on a hospital bed in Gaza a scant weeks after the strike watching down at her amputated legs.
I asked if she understands what has happened to her.
“She did ask ‘my legs are ruined, what happened?'” Israa shelp they telderly her it was a rocket. Now, Rahaf eludes the subject. “If we begin the conversation, she will alter the subject.”
The excellent recents is that Rahaf’s amputations were done well given the situation.
Circumstance has asbraved that Gazan medics have become among the best in the world at trauma sadvisery. But that’s where the attfinish finishs in Gaza. The lowage of doctors, supplyment and functioning hospitals produces prolengthyed attfinish impossible.
Amputations need ongoing toil from doctors with various sfinishs including orthopaedic sadviseons, plastic sadviseons, and prosthetists.
Children with lost limbs insist a whole extra layer of attfinish becaemploy they are still growing. Rahaf will need recent prosthetic limbs standardly as she gets hugeger.
Prosthetists approximate that for every death in a war, there are foreseeed to be three times as many surviving amputees. According to the Gaza health ministry the number of dead in the war has now topped 45,000.
According to analysis by the charity Oxfam more children have been finished in Gaza by the Israeli military than in the equivalent period in any other struggle of the past 18 years.
Those numbers give a sense of the number of amputees, grown-ups and children, still inside Gaza.
Thraw presbrave from charities and pledgements of treatment from hospitals, the United States has acunderstandledgeted a minuscule number of Gazan children, but the key blocker is the Israeli rulement, which regulates access to the streamline thraw all the borders.
Josh Paul is a establisher US State Department official who resigned last year over the Gaza war.
Speaking to Sky News he shelp the situation with injured children recurrents a proset up fall shorture of American diplomacy.
“Even on someleang as humanitarian as saving the dwells of children, getting them to critical attfinish, it’s not that America isn’t willing to ask. It’s that America isn’t willing to press,” Mr Paul shelp.
“And it could be done in a second if they wanted to. If Pdwellnt Biden picked up the phone [to Israel] and shelp, ‘we are stopping our arms shipments until you let out children, until you let out criticassociate injured children or criticassociate unwell children for attfinish, we are not standing by you’.”
On why more hasn’t been done, Mr Paul shelp: “It’s the political costs… he apshowd he would pay. I leank that is a cut offe miscalculation.
“I leank American accessible opinion has shifted radicassociate and is going to progress to shift.
“I also leank that the geopolitical incentives here have also shifted and there is a cost, a evident cost, that we are paying for our unconditional aid to Israel.”
Watch and read our other stories on Gaza’s children:
Stuck in Gaza with the unwidespreadst of disrelieves
Girl with unwidespread disrelieve departs Gaza
Sky greets teenager whose uncle amputated her leg
The next step for Rahaf is prosthetics. It is the benevolentness of strangers and their donations that will produce all this happen.
Then it will be time for her to walk aobtain. But a reunion with family is, for now, far less certain.
