Forcing people to return to a place where they could face serious harm would be a violation of international human rights law, according to rights groups [Getty]
When Haitham Abu Daqa’s 5-month-old daughter developed a heart problem that could not be addressed near their home in Gaza, the family sought medical help in Jordan, where she underwent successful open-heart surgery.
After the surgery, Daqa’s wife, who was with their daughter, pleaded with Jordanian officials to be allowed to stay. She feared that little Nevine’s recovery would be at risk in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave that has few functioning medical facilities. But the officials insisted that the family had to go home.
“How can I take care of the girl while I am living in a tent, and at the same time, the bombing doesn’t stop,” Daqa said, sobbing. “How dare they send her back? If there is treatment in Gaza for her case, why did they take her in the first place?”
Daqa’s daughter was among 17 Palestinian children who were recently returned to Gaza with their caregivers after receiving medical treatment in Jordan. Rights groups warn that forcing the children to go back to a war zone is a possible violation of international law. It also raises doubts about whether the young patients can regain their health in a place where medical care is scarce and military strikes are an everyday threat.
The children are trapped between Israel intensifying its military operation in Gaza as it threatens to seize the territory and a proposal to permanently expel much of the population — which experts say could be a legal violation — and the refusal of Arab countries to take part in any such plan, which they view as forcible expulsion that could create another refugee crisis.
Arab nations have long been reluctant to take in Palestinians, or give them permanent status, out of fear that the refugees might never be allowed to return and that permanent resettlement would undermine the prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Jordan, which is already home to a large Palestinian population, has been hesitant to accept more due to its own demographic balance, weak economy and high unemployment.
For Daqa’s family, the dangers of Israel’s war on Gaza returned almost immediately. As his wife crossed into Gaza on Tuesday, their bus was rerouted because an Israeli airstrike hit the hospital that was their destination, he said.
The plan was always to return them
The couple’s child was in excellent health when she was discharged more than a month ago from the Specialty Hospital in the Jordanian capital of Amman, said Dr. Reyad Al-Sharqawi, the hospital’s assistant director general.
Three other children from Gaza were also treated and discharged, he said. The hospital covered the families’ rent and other expenses until they left Tuesday, Al-Sharqawi said.
More than two dozen children and their caregivers were evacuated from Gaza in March as part of a Jordanian initiative to provide urgent medical care to 2,000 children. The 17 patients who completed their treatment were returned to Gaza.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II, a close U.S. ally, announced the initiative during a meeting with President Donald Trump in February aimed at heading off the American leader’s proposal for Gaza to be depopulated and redeveloped as a tourism destination. The Israeli government has embraced Trump’s plan.
A Jordanian official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation acknowledged that some Palestinians asked to stay beyond the treatment, but he said the plan was always to return them.
“We are not going to allow the displacement of Palestinians outside Gaza,” he said.
Jordan’s government said the children who left made room for others to come. On Wednesday, four cancer patients arrived from Gaza to start care.
Forcing people to return to a place where they could face serious harm would be a violation of international human rights law, according to rights groups. Under the law, all returns must be safe and voluntary, and the evacuating country should ensure that adequate services are available in their place of origin.
Israel’s attacks have ravaged Gaza’s health system. Israel has blocked all aid, including food, fuel and medicine, for more than two months. Hospitals are running out of supplies, and experts have warned that the territory will likely fall into famine unless Israel lifts the blockade and ends its military campaign.
Law cites the rights of wounded children
Human rights experts said Jordanian officials were in a tough position, not wanting to be complicit in what many see as the expulsion of Palestinians while providing aid to those in need. Still, the law comes down to the rights of wounded children, said professor Omer Shatz, a human rights lawyer and lecturer at SciencesPo University in Paris.
“There is an absolute prohibition on returning them to a place where they will be exposed to cruel, degrading or inhuman treatment, let alone a risk to their life,” Shatz said.
Like refugees in other contexts, Palestinians should have the freedom to choose whether to return to their country, said Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. Countries that take in Palestinians from Gaza should seek assurances that they will be allowed to return if and when they choose, he said.
For now, Israel is allowing Palestinians to return to Gaza after medical treatment. But the Palestinians fear that if the larger resettlement policy is enacted, they will be permanently exiled from their homeland, as hundreds of thousands were during the 1948 Nakba. Those refugees and their descendants now number some 6 million, concentrated in built-up camps across the region.
Two families who returned to Gaza said the road home included many checkpoints, and Israeli soldiers took their phones and money upon entering.
It was unclear whether any aid organizations helped facilitate the children’s return.
In March, the World Health Organization worked with the Jordanians to evacuate the sick children from Gaza, according to Jordan’s government. The WHO did not respond to requests for comment on whether they were involved in the transfer back to Gaza.
For some families there were no good options.
Arafat Yousef’s 12-year-old son, who lost a leg to an Israeli airstrike, waited eight months to get a prosthetic limb in Jordan.
Yousef wants to stay in Jordan so his son can get the necessary follow-up care, but he also feels drawn back to Gaza to take care of his six other children.
“I wanted my son to complete his treatment,” Yousef said. “But at the same time, I wanted to return to my land. I don’t want to leave my children alone amid this bombing.”
