Jalal al-Masri and his wife spent eight years and their life savings on fertility treatments in order to have their daughter, Fatma. When she was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect in December, they waited another three months for an Israeli permit to take her for treatment outside the Gaza Strip.
The permit never came. The 19-month-old died on March 25.
“When I lost my daughter, I felt there is no more life in Gaza,” al-Masri said, his voice trembling. “The story of my daughter will happen again and again.”
Israel grants permits for what it defines as life-saving treatment to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, which has been under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power there in 2007.
But families must negotiate an opaque and uncertain bureaucratic process. Applications are submitted through the Palestinian Authority, reports must be stamped, paperwork processed. In the end, all the al-Masris got was a text message from the Israeli military saying the application is “being examined.”
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