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At least 19 children were allowed to leave to receive specialized medical treatment.
Israel and Egypt agreed to allow at least 19 sick children, most of them cancer patients, to leave Gaza for medical treatment on Thursday, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, in the first major evacuation of critically ill Gazans since the Rafah border crossing shut down in early May.
The Israeli military said the operation had been carried out in coordination with the United States, Egypt and the international community. In total, 68 people — sick and injured patients and their escorts — were allowed to leave, the military said.
Tania Hary, who directs Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit organization that advocates the free movement of Palestinians, said she was relieved that the children may “have a chance at life and finally receive the care they deserve.” But she emphasized that many more sick and wounded people remained trapped in Gaza, without any obvious mechanism for how they might be evacuated.
“It is a drop in an ocean of suffering, as thousands more wait to reach medical facilities outside the strip,” she said. “It serves as another reminder that the most vulnerable residents of Gaza — its children, sick and elderly — are paying the highest price.”
Over 10,000 sick and wounded people in Gaza require urgent care that is available only outside the enclave, the World Health Organization said this week. They include those wounded in airstrikes, as well as cancer patients, children with life-threatening illnesses and older people who need open-heart surgery.
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Even before the war, many Gazans were forced to travel abroad for lifesaving treatments, like chemotherapy, which were almost nonexistent in the Gaza Strip. The enclave’s health sector has struggled for over 15 years under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade intended to contain Hamas.
But the main conduit through which Gazans could leave — the Rafah crossing with Egypt — shut down after Israeli forces captured the border in May during a military offensive. Egypt shuttered its side of the gateway in protest, and the Gazan part was later destroyed in a fire, according to the Israeli military, seemingly dashing hopes that it would be reopened in the near future.
At least two sick Gazans who were slated to leave in early May have died, their family members said.
With the Rafah crossing closed, the group of children evacuated on Thursday was taken into Israeli territory through another border point, Kerem Shalom, before being brought to Egypt. The move did not appear to immediately herald a new permanent route for the critically ill to safely leave Gaza.
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One of the children who made the crossing on Thursday was a 10-month-old girl named Sadeel Hamdan.
For months, her family had looked on with growing dread as Sadeel’s condition deteriorated. Her belly swelled like a balloon because of severe liver failure, and she desperately needed a transplant, her father, Tamer Hamdan, said.
On Thursday morning — after weeks of waiting — Mr. Hamdan and Sadeel were finally permitted to leave the enclave. After entering Israel, they were ferried along with other patients to Nitzana, an Israeli border crossing, where they entered Egyptian territory, he said.
“Thank God,” said Mr. Hamdan, who was reached by phone as he sat in a bus on the Egyptian side of the checkpoint. “We’re so happy that we brought out Sadeel safely. Now we just need to complete her treatment.”
Their departure from Gaza, however, was bittersweet.
Mr. Hamdan traveled with his daughter so that he could be a partial liver donor, but his wife and three other children were not permitted to join them. He said he feared for their fate in Gaza.
“We’re all heading into the unknown,” he said.
For each patient who left, there were many others left behind. Muna Abu Holi, a college professor from central Gaza, survived an explosion that killed one of her daughters and left two others seriously wounded.
Both of her surviving daughters had received approval to travel through the Rafah crossing on May 7 for medical treatment, according to documents from the Gaza Health Ministry. But the Israeli offensive led to the border shutting down.
“We’re grasping for any possible hope,” said Ms. Abu Holi. “Every piece of news we hear, we cling to.”
— Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem
key developments
Canada imposes a new round of sanctions over Israeli settler violence, and other news.
Canada’s foreign ministry on Thursday announced new sanctions on seven Israeli settlers and five organizations accused of supporting violence against Palestinian civilians, the latest in a series of international penalties on settler groups after a surge of attacks in the West Bank. Canada imposed a first round of sanctions in May, and countries including the United States, France and Britain have taken similar measures.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that severe fuel shortages in Gaza had put more than a third of its ambulances out of commission. The Red Crescent said on social media that it had not received its daily share of gasoline from UNRWA, the main U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, for about eight days, adding that 18 of its ambulances — about 36 percent of its fleet — were not running as a result. The announcement highlighted the shortage of critical supplies in Gaza, including fuel. The scarcity is exacerbating a growing health and environmental crisis in the enclave while aid groups, including UNRWA, say they are struggling to deliver humanitarian assistance because of logistical complications with Israeli authorities and a lack of security.
An International Criminal Court case about arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over their conduct of the war in Gaza may face delays. The court gave Britain permission on Thursday to submit “observations” about the I.C.C.’s jurisdiction, a technical topic that does not go to the substance of the accusations in the warrants. In May, the I.C.C.’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, said that he was applying for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as for several Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — on the ground that they might have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Britain has until July 12 to file, a deadline that will apply to any others seeking to submit observations, the I.C.C. said in its decision on Thursday.
The Syrian government said an airstrike targeted a Hezbollah stronghold in the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, a Syrian state news agency, SANA, reported Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group, said three people were killed and more than 10 others were injured. The exact toll could not be independently confirmed. Syria blamed Israel for the strike. Israel’s military did not immediately comment, but it has previously acknowledged carrying out hundreds of assaults on Iran-linked targets in Syria.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday of planning to spread the war in Gaza to Lebanon “with the consent of the West,” in what he said would be a “grave disaster.” Mr. Netanyahu suggested on Sunday that fighting in Gaza was about to enter a less intense stage and that Israel would be able to move some of its forces north, where cross-border strikes have intensified with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. But he stopped well short of announcing plans to send troops into Lebanon. The U.N.’s departing humanitarian aid chief, Martin Griffiths, also warned on Wednesday of the dangers posed by a conflict in Lebanon, calling it a “flashpoint beyond all flash points.”
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, met with Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, on Wednesday to discuss developments in the war in Gaza, tensions along Israel’s border with Lebanon and other issues. During four days of meetings with U.S. officials in Washington, Mr. Gallant said, “we made significant progress, obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were addressed,” noting that he and Mr. Sullivan spoke specifically about Israel’s weapons needs. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has recently accused the United States of holding up weapons shipments, a claim that American officials have denied. Mr. Gallant struck a more conciliatory tone on Wednesday, saying, “It is moving to see the great support we receive from the U.S. government and the American public.”
The Israeli military orders more evacuations in eastern Gaza City as strikes are reported.
Israel ordered people in part of eastern Gaza City to evacuate on Thursday as Palestinian officials and residents reported heavy strikes and multiple casualties. People in the area described a frantic effort to get out as explosions sounded around them.
The Israeli military said that it could not immediately comment on the strikes, which Palestinian officials said hit the Shajaiye neighborhood, an already heavily damaged area that was the focus of intense fighting early in the war. Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, reported that the military was conducting a ground operation to root out Hamas based on intelligence that the armed group had begun to restore control in the neighborhood.
A witness with a human rights organization said that there were Israeli tanks on the outskirts of the neighborhood.
The operation, if confirmed, would be the latest instance of Israeli forces returning to parts of Gaza that they had previously left, especially in the north of the enclave, as Hamas regroups amid the anarchy that the nine-month war has unleashed. The fighting has dragged on even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will soon move to a less intense phase, and as frustration grows within Israel and globally over what critics say is Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to advance a plan for how Gaza should be governed after Hamas.
Gazan health authorities said on Thursday that 15 people had been killed and dozens injured in Shajaiye. Civil Defense, the Palestinian emergency service, said that five homes had been struck in Shajaiye and another neighborhood, and that a search was underway for missing people. The toll could not be independently verified, and Gazan authorities do not distinguish between civilians and combatants when reporting casualty figures.
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The witness, Mohammed Qraiqea, a researcher with the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor advocacy group who was in Shajaiye on Thursday, said that artillery shelling, occasional airstrikes and drone fire were continuing in the afternoon.
“The tanks have advanced in a limited manner so far on the outskirts of the neighborhood,” he said Thursday afternoon. “But by now most people had evacuated,” prompted by the heavy bombardment, he added.
Israeli troops invaded northern Gaza in October after the Hamas-led attack in Israel, taking over territory and pushing south as they took over Hamas strongholds, but they have yet to decisively defeat the armed group. Shajaiye, one of Gaza City’s largest neighborhoods, is home to a battalion that is considered one of the strongest in Hamas’s military wing. It is unclear how big a presence Hamas now has there.
Hamas has taken advantage of the urban areas in Gaza to provide its fighters and weapons infrastructure with an extra layer of protection, running tunnels under neighborhoods, launching rockets near civilian homes and holding hostages in city centers. Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, has said that the group tries to keep Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way.
Shajaiye was the site of heavy fighting earlier in the war. In December, nine Israeli soldiers were killed there on what the Israeli military reported was one of the deadliest days of the war for its forces.
In recent months, some residents had returned to Shajaiye as Israeli forces turned their focus to southern Gaza. Mohammad al-Bahrawi, 65, who had returned with his family to their home in Shajaiye in March, was forced to flee again on Thursday by the strikes. He said he saw crowds leaving “like a torrent.”
“I couldn’t even believe that this many people were still in Shajaiye,” he added.
Mr. al-Bahrawi said that he was not aware of the Israeli evacuation orders that the military posted on social media on Thursday.
“We got out by God’s mercy,” he said, adding that “we were hearing explosions from every direction.”
When the sounds of the explosions seemed to subside, Mr. al-Bahrawi walked with his wife and children to the courtyard of the Ahli Arab Hospital, seeing wounded people being pulled out from under rubble along the way.
At the hospital, they were “just sitting there until God helps us and we find an apartment to stay in,” he said.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
— Hiba Yazbek and Ameera Harouda reporting from Jerusalem and Doha, Qatar
Israel’s military says an officer was killed during a raid in the West Bank city of Jenin.
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An Israeli soldier was killed and another was severely wounded overnight during a raid in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the military said on Thursday. It was the latest in a series of violent Israeli raids in the city.
The soldier who was killed, a sniper team commander, “fell during operational activity,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a brief statement, which gave few details. Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, reported that one Palestinian man had been wounded in the raid.
Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, houses a refugee camp founded more than 70 years ago for Palestinians displaced in the wars surrounding the creation of the state of Israel. The city and camp are bastions of armed resistance to the occupation. Israel has conducted frequent raids there over the years, but they have become more common since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel that prompted a war in Gaza.
The military detained 28 people during the overnight raid and nine remain in detention, including Jamal Hawail, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, according to a statement from the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, which is linked to the Palestinian Authority, and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, a nongovernmental organization. The council sets policy for Fatah, the political party that controls the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli statement did not comment on the arrests.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been detained in the raids, which Israeli officials say are part of counterterrorism operations against Hamas and an extension of the war.
The U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said this month that Israeli forces and settlers had killed more than 500 people in the West Bank since Oct. 7. In the same period, 24 Israelis, of whom eight were members of the security forces, were killed in the West Bank and in Israel in clashes or what Israel called attacks by Palestinians from the West Bank, Mr. Türk said.
— Matthew Mpoke Bigg
