Gazan children are dying as they wait for Israel to allow evacuation

So many lives in Gaza still hang in the balance.

Two 10-year-old boys lie in different wards of Nasser Hospital, one shot by Israeli fire and paralyzed from the neck down, the other with a brain tumor.

Now that a fragile ceasefire is in place, they are among some 15,000 patients who the World Health Organization (WHO) says require urgent medical evacuation.

Ola Abu Said sits gently stroking her son Amar’s hair. His family says he was in their tent in southern Gaza when he was hit by a stray bullet fired from an Israeli drone. It is stuck between two of his vertebrae, leaving him paralyzed.

“He needs an operation urgently,” says Ola, “but it’s complicated. The doctors told us it could cause his death, a stroke or a brain hemorrhage. He needs an operation in a well-equipped place.”

Right now, Gaza is anything but that. After two years of war, hospitals are left in a critical state.

Sitting by her younger brother Ahmed al-Jad’s bedside, his sister Shahd says her brother has been a constant comfort to her during two years of war and displacement.

“He’s only 10 and when our situation got so bad, he would go out and sell water to help us bring in some money,” she says. A few months ago he showed the first signs of ill health.

“Ahmad’s mouth started hanging to one side,” explains Shahd. “One time he was saying, ‘Shahd, I have a headache’ and we just gave him paracetamol, but later his right arm stopped moving.

The former student is desperate for her brother to travel abroad to have his tumor removed.

“We can’t lose him. We’ve already lost our father, our home and our dreams,” says Shahd. “When the ceasefire came in, it gave us some hope that maybe there was a 1 percent chance that Ahmed would travel and get treatment.”

On Wednesday, the WHO coordinated the first medical convoy to leave Gaza since the fragile ceasefire began on October 10. He took 41 patients and 145 caregivers to hospitals abroad through Israel’s Kerem Shalom border crossing, with ambulances and buses taking the group to Jordan. Some are left for care there.

The UN agency called for the number of medical evacuations to be rapidly increased to deal with the thousands of sick and injured cases. He wants to be able to take patients through Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, as he used to do.

However, Israel said it was keeping the crossing closed until Hamas “fulfilled” its commitments under the terms of the Gaza ceasefire agreement by returning the bodies of deceased hostages. Israel has kept the Gaza side of the Egyptian border closed since May 2024, when it took control during the war.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, the head of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the “most impactful measure” would be if Israel allowed patients from Gaza to be treated in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as happened before the war.

Senior EU officials and foreign ministers of more than 20 countries – including the UK – have previously called for it, offering “financial contributions, provision of medical staff or necessary equipment”.

“Hundreds of patients could be treated easily and efficiently in a short time if this route is reopened to the network of hospitals in East Jerusalem and hospitals in the West Bank,” said Dr. Fadi Atrash, CEO of Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives.

“We can treat at least 50 patients a day for chemotherapy and radiotherapy and even more than that. Other hospitals can do a lot of surgeries,” the doctor tells me.

“Sending them to East Jerusalem is the shortest distance, the most efficient way, because we have the mechanism. We speak the same language, we have the same culture, in many cases we have medical records for patients from Gaza. They were receiving treatment in hospitals in East Jerusalem for more than a decade before the war.”

The BBC asked Kogat, the Israeli defense authority that controls passage through Gaza, why the medical route was not approved. Kogat said it was a decision of the political echelon and referred inquiries to the Prime Minister’s Office, which offered no further explanation.

Following the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023, Israel cited security concerns to not allow patients from Gaza into other Palestinian territories. He also indicated that his main human crossing point in Erez was targeted by Hamas fighters during the attack.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says that in the year to August 2025, at least 740 people, including nearly 140 children, died while on waiting lists.

At Nasser Hospital, the director of paediatrics and maternity, Dr. Ahmed al-Fara, expresses his disappointment.

“The hardest part is the feeling of a doctor being present, being able to diagnose a condition but not being able to perform basic tests and lacking the necessary treatment,” says Dr al-Fara. “This has happened on so many occasions and unfortunately there is a daily loss of life due to our lack of capability.”

After the ceasefire, hope for more of his patients was lost.

Last week, the funeral of Saadi Abu Taha, 8 years old, who died of bowel cancer, took place on the grounds of the hospital.

A day later, three-year-old Zane Tafesh and eight-year-old Louie Dweck died of hepatitis.

Without action, there are many more Gazans who will not have a chance to live in peace.