KHAN YUNIS: Seventy-six Palestinian patients and their companions voluntarily went back to the Gaza Strip on Monday, having been unable to return to the embattled territory for more than two years.
The Gazan patients had been receiving medical care in two hospitals in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem in October 2023, when Hamas launched the attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war and saw access to the territory blocked.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said it had organized their transfer to the coastal territory in buses, in cooperation with Al-Mutlaa and Al-Makassed hospitals in Jerusalem, “after they completed their treatment.”
Hatem Nassar was one of dozens of people who gathered around the buses carrying the patients as they arrived at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip. His mother was one of the patients onboard.
“This was a moment we had been waiting for, we were finally reunited with our mother after two years and two months of suffering, loss, and worry during the war, bombing, and destruction,” he told AFP.
“Her heart ached for us, but thank God, she returned to her homeland safely.”
Kifah Hussein spent the two years of the war at Al-Makassed hospital, and expressed her gratitude for the treatment she received while her native Gaza was devastated.
“They provided us with everything: accommodation, food, and clothing,” she told AFP.
Both Palestinian and Israeli authorities said that the patients’ return was voluntary.
“They expressed their desire to return to the Gaza Strip, as they had been there prior to October 7, 2023,” the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said in a statement on Sunday.
COGAT, the Israeli body that runs civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, told AFP that “due to the closure of the crossings, their return was not possible until now, despite having completed their medical care.”
It added that their repatriation to Gaza was with their “full consent.”