Meet the only two children from Gaza allowed into the UK for medical treatment

In their London apartment, Qudieh gets a phone call from Gaza. It is her daughter-in-law, Namir. It’s the first time she’s heard from her in 12 days – internet connections are patchy. Afterwards, she shows me a picture on her phone of her new baby granddaughter Tia, just 20 days old. How are they?

“She is a new mother but there is nothing for her to eat,” Qudieh says. Namir is breastfeeding and has no access to formula milk. “There is no food at all, not even canned food. There is no flour. There is no sugar [for] tea.” When Qudieh puts food on her plate, “my heart cries” she says. “Every time we eat, I remember them.”

Before 7 October, Qudieh and Abed’s families lived on opposite sides of the Khan Younis region. Qudieh’s family lived in Khuza’a, less than a mile from the security fence dividing Gaza from Israel. On the other side of the fence is Nir Oz, the kibbutz which suffered the worst effects of the Hamas attacks.

Two days afterwards, Qudieh, her husband, and their four children, including Rama, fled the town. They found refuge with her sister near the Al Nassr hospital in Khan Younis city, and stayed there for three months until December.

At this point, the war reached Abed’s family. They lived in an apartment in Hamad city, in the north of Khan Younis. Abed recalls how Ghena’s eye problems meant they needed to make regular trips to an ophthalmic hospital in Gaza City, 16 miles away. But that stopped when the war began. “The hospital was destroyed completely.”

As the Israel Defense Forces pushed south towards them, both families followed instructions to evacuate. Qudieh’s family went to al-Mawasi by the coast, Abed’s to Rafah, where one of the largest refugee camps had been set up.

Eighteen members of Abed’s family crammed themselves into their tent, the size of a small room, cheek by jowl with all the other makeshift shelters. Rain and sand and earth got everywhere. By this stage, Ghena’s eye had been untreated for months and without eyedrops, it was getting worse, exacerbated by insects, sand and dirt.

The little girl, just four years old, was in constant pain. Her grandmother, Abed’s mother, Wedad Ahmed Mustafa, also needed treatment: for diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure. At night it was freezing cold, but during the day the heat inside the tent became intolerable. She deteriorated rapidly.

“After 15 days in the tent, she died,” Abed says. “May God bless her soul. She is better now, not suffering.”

Meanwhile, Qudieh’s family found shelter inside al-Khair hospital, a maternity and out-patient facility near Rafah. Rama, who was 12, needed an operation on her colon. Operations are never risk-free but for Rama, the risk meant a possible haemorrhage without a blood bank to rely on. A doctor working in Gaza’s European hospital at this time told Al Jazeera of having to reuse scalpels until they became too blunt to cut properly and the chances of infection increased.

But what Rama’s mother remembers most is the absence of anaesthetic. She has no words to describe it, apart from to say: “You would hear her screams in the whole hospital.”

Qudieh and Rama were evacuated to Egypt in March; Abed, Ghena and her older sister Tala, came shortly after. A year ago, Project Pure Hope and the charity Save a Child wrote to the then foreign secretary David Cameron and the then home secretary James Cleverly ­asking them to allow 11 children to come to the UK for treatment they could not receive in Gaza. No permissions were granted and the children were instead taken in by Italy. In December, 50 MPs signed a joint letter to Keir Starmer urging him to act on evacuating children for ­medical treatment.

Life in London has been spent mostly at hospital, but the children have had something closer to a normal life. They have learnt to swim, been to a classical music concert and taken trips around London, thrilled by the green parks. Rama is “living like a normal child”, her mother says. Ghena and Hala feel safe.

Project Pure Hope is making plans to support them to return to Egypt when their medical treatment is finished – visas for medical purposes last for a year. Rama needs further surgery.

But the children do not want to go back to Gaza, Abed says. “Two days ago, Ghena and I were getting ready for bed. I like to talk with her before she sleeps. Suddenly, she started crying and said to me, ‘I’m really scared for [the rest of their family], because they’re in the war, there’s bombing, and they don’t have food.’ Even though Ghena is still little, she understands everything.”

Qudieh and Abed hope that they are not the last ones to come. “If you see all these children suffering right now and you looked away, how can you be human?” Abed says. “Where is the mercy?”

“All we ask is for our children to be treated,” Qudieh says. “And for the government to agree to bring children to be treated in a place like this. It gets exhausting when you see a sick child and you cannot do anything for her. Your hands are tied. All you can do is cry. And she dies, little by little.”

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The UK is committed to alleviating Palestinian suffering and helping build stability in the Middle East. UK support has provided essential healthcare to over 430,000 people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as privately funded medical care in the UK for several children with complex paediatric conditions.”