Fighting rages in Gaza as Palestinians hope for a pause for polio vaccinations

CAIRO/GAZA – Palestinians in Gaza were waiting to see if there would be a pause in fighting to allow a polio vaccination campaign to begin, as the conflict raged across the besieged enclave, killing at least 34 people on Aug 29.

The United Nations is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed on Aug 23 that at least one baby has been paralysed by the type 2 poliovirus,

the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

The UN, which called for a humanitarian truce earlier in August, hopes to begin the vaccination campaign on Sept 1, said Ms Juliette Touma, communications director of UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency.

The WHO named the baby as Abdul-Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan. He will turn one year old on Sept 1. 

His mother, Ms Nivine Abu Al-Jidyan, said she feared for her son after she was told by health officials that they could do little to help him.

“I was shocked that my son got this disease amid the war and the closure of border crossings, under these conditions and lack of medicine for him, it’s a shock. Would he remain like this?” Ms Abu Al-Jidyan told Reuters on Aug 29.

“He is my only baby boy. It’s his right to travel and be treated; it’s his right to walk, run and move like before... It is unfair that he stays... in the tent without care or attention,” she said from a tent in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

At Nasser Hospital, in the southern city of Khan Younis, Ms Umm Eliane Bakr fears her 19-month-old daughter may be vulnerable to polio because of ill health brought on by malnutrition. 

She hopes her baby will be vaccinated soon, but said she is worried about moving safely in an area where there have been repeated Israeli strikes.

“I cannot walk in the street and get bombed, or have something happen to my daughter, or have a targeted (attack). I need a truce, a ceasefire so I can give my daughter this injection (vaccine),” she told Reuters.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week denied media reports that Israel was preparing for a generalised humanitarian truce, saying a more limited plan had been presented.

“These are not pauses in the fighting to administer polio vaccines but only the allocation of certain places in the Gaza Strip,” he said in a statement. 

Senior Hamas official Izzat El-Reshiq reiterated the group’s support for the UN and international organisations’ initiative for an urgent humanitarian truce across the enclave to allow the polio vaccination campaign.

He described Mr Netanyahu’s statement as an attempt to thwart the process by refusing the UN call.

Family ‘consumed’ by fire

On Aug 29, Israeli forces continued to bombard areas across the Gaza Strip in their battle against Hamas-led militants. Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes have so far killed at least 34 people.

One strike on a house in Gaza City killed eight Palestinians, including children, they said, while three others were killed when an Israeli missile hit a motorcycle in Rafah, near the border with Egypt. A neighbour of the bombed Gaza City house said they had managed to lower a ladder into the building to rescue a family trapped inside, but only managed to extract a young girl.

“After that, the fire consumed them and we could not reach them,” he said.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct 7 when Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent assault on the enclave has killed more than 40,600 Palestinians, according to the local Health Ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies. REUTERS