“MY medicine is finished. I’m so tired. I can hardly see in front of me. My chemotherapy ran out a long time ago,” said Siham.
The 62-year-old has leukaemia. Before the war broke out she was being treated at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in north Gaza – the only cancer hospital in the Strip.
She’s one of approximately 10,000 cancer patients in Gaza – according to figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry – who have been unable to get treatment or medicines since the hospital shut down in the first week of November due to fuel shortages.
Like other displaced Palestinians in Gaza – of which the UN estimates there are 1.7 million – Siham fled her home in the north when her neighbourhood was hit by air strikes. When we spoke, she was sheltering with her daughter, who has a newborn baby, in a school in Rafah run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
She has been trying to leave for life-saving treatment for months, but has been turned away at the Rafah border crossing five times since the war began – it is currently the only way out of Gaza.
All border crossings with Gaza were closed for almost four weeks after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 253 others as hostages. Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians and left more than 73,000 injured, according to the health ministry.
In November, Egypt reopened the Rafah crossing to allow Egyptian citizens and other foreign passport holders to leave, as well as seriously injured and sick Palestinians.
A recent report by Gaza’s health ministry said more than 2,600 patients had been evacuated via Rafah, comprising 1,700 wounded and 900 sick.
Egypt, Turkey, the UAE and Jordan have pledged to treat thousands of cancer patients like Siham, as well as those injured in the war.
A daily list is published by the Palestinian border authority with names of the people who have been approved by Egypt and Israel to leave. Siham’s name first appeared on the list published on 19 November for evacuation to Turkey. But she was turned away by border agents when she arrived at the crossing.
