Jerusalem
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Yamen Al Najjar recalls his past life, the days when he attended school and laughed regularly. The 16-year-old now lives with his mother in a cramped 6 square meter room, just enough space for a hospital bed, where he rarely leaves the house.
“Life is hard. I’m sick and in pain all the time…I feel lonely and I miss home,” he told CNN.
Yamen, who suffers from a bleeding disorder, had been medically evacuated with his mother from Gaza City to a Palestinian hospital in occupied East Jerusalem just two days before the October 7, 2023 attack.
His mother, Haifaa al-Najjar, and doctors said his condition was rare and they struggled to manage it in East Jerusalem, where he was unable to receive the treatment he needed.
Al-Najjar has been working for the past two years to get her son medically evacuated to a third country. She managed to get approval for a medical transfer from the World Health Organization (WHO), but spent 14 months searching for a host country to accept her son for treatment.
On Tuesday morning, she received news that her heart was about to stop. Doctors at Makassed Hospital told her that Israeli authorities had decided to send all patients on Gaza back next week, including those currently being treated.
“All my hard work disappears before my eyes. I don’t understand how a sick child can be sent back to a disaster area…This is a death sentence for my son,” she told CNN.
Yamen and her mother are among at least 89 Gazan patients and their companions scheduled for deportation, according to medical teams from East Jerusalem’s Makassed Hospital and Augusta Victoria Hospital. They told CNN that while some patients have agreed to return to Gaza, most are being sent against their will because there is no treatment available in the devastated enclave. The WHO said last month that 94% of the country’s hospitals were damaged or destroyed.
The youngest person to be deported is an infant born to a woman who was taken to Jerusalem for treatment, and the oldest is 85 years old, hospital authorities said. Most have lived in the city since before the war.
WHO research manager Salwa Massad told CNN that the agency was asked by the Israeli military’s Coordinator of Territorial Government Operations (COGAT) to facilitate the transfer of patients early next week.
CNN contacted COGAT about the possibility of deporting sick Palestinians to Gaza, but has not yet received a response.
Yamen’s father, brother and two sisters are in Gaza, taking refuge in a tent camp in al-Mawasi in the south after their home in Gaza City was bombed. He hasn’t seen them for two years now.
Yamen’s condition is so bad that he won’t be able to survive in the tent for even a few hours without treatment, his mother said.
“His blood pressure fluctuates, his body temperature is constantly low, he is constantly bleeding, he is suffering from body pain…I absolutely refuse to return to Gaza,” she said through tears.
Israel’s non-profit Physicians for Human Rights (PHRI) said Gaza’s health system was “dysfunctional” and any attempt to return patients to Gaza was “unacceptable from a moral, medical and legal perspective.”
“Under international humanitarian law, Israel has an obligation to ensure that patients who require medical care continue to receive medical care in the hospital where they are currently admitted or in other hospitals in Israel and abroad,” PHRI’s Occupied Territories Director, Ashir Abras, told CNN.
Abras emphasized the importance of this obligation, saying that it was Israel itself that had destroyed Gaza’s healthcare system and that it “cannot now shirk its responsibility for the lives and health of these patients.”
Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian-Israeli member of the Israeli parliament, echoed similar sentiments, telling CNN that Yamen’s welfare is Israel’s responsibility.
“Sending them back in the current situation will be a fatal blow. They will not die from airstrikes, but from lack of medical treatment,” he said.
Nafez al-Khawaji, a native of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, told CNN that he suffers from kidney failure and requires dialysis three times a week.
“Yesterday, the hospital informed us that we would all be deported to Gaza. I was shocked to hear this because I knew that patients were living in inhumane conditions in Gaza,” he said at Makassed Hospital. “Why do they want to send me to hell? I will die there in two days.”
Naer Ezzeddin, a native of Jabalya, is not opposed to a return. He has a heart condition and has been hospitalized at Makassedo Hospital for 25 months. He said he lost everything when his home in Gaza was attacked by Israeli forces, but that his loved ones were waiting for him.
“I miss my family. I have 10 children and a wife and they are all sheltering in tents in Deir Elbara. I want to go with them. I know how much they are suffering, but what can I do here?” he said. “They are trying to force us to leave, they are always threatening to send us back…I am tired of it. I just want to be with my family, even if it means dying.”
This is not the first time sick patients in Gaza have faced this threat.
In March 2024, Israeli authorities were preparing to deport 22 Palestinians from East Jerusalem to Gaza, including newborn babies and cancer patients. Israel’s Supreme Court then temporarily halted those plans following PHRI’s petition and CNN reporting on hospitalizations.
Most of Yamen’s paintings are colorful illustrations depicting nature, landscapes, and Palestinian culture. He said his passion for art stems from a desire to “bring color back into a world that has gone gray.”
“I miss home, the voices of my brothers, my school, the colors, the sea. I miss the toys I collected as a child and every moment when Gaza was safe,” he said.
“I’ve suffered a lot and I just want to rest…I want all the children in Gaza to live like children all over the world…I don’t want them to come out sick or scared like me.”
