For thousands of cancer patients in Gaza, time has become the most dangerous enemy. While their illness advances day by day, the path to treatment remains largely sealed, narrowed to a trickle through the Rafah border crossing that leaves most waiting, and deteriorating.
Munir Al Barsh, director general of Gaza's Ministry of Health, said there are 11,000 cancer patients in the strip today who are deprived of specialist treatment and diagnostic services. Among them are 4,000 patients who urgently require treatment abroad according to referrals that doctors have issued but cannot be implemented because of Israel's blockade.
Hope among patients and their families after the reopening of Rafah was quickly extinguished. Priority for movement has largely gone to war-wounded patients rather than those suffering from chronic or life-threatening illnesses such as cancer.
In the first four days after the crossing's reopening, only 138 people were allowed to travel. Eighty of them were companions, and the rest were patients, mostly with war injuries. On Thursday, nobody was allowed in or out of Gaza through the crossing.
“Not a single cancer patient has been allowed to leave for treatment abroad,” Dr Al Barsh told The National.
For patients like Monther Abu Foul, 52, who has stomach cancer, these numbers are not statistics, they are the difference between life and death.
“I need regular treatment and chemotherapy so the cancer doesn’t spread. But since the beginning of the war, treatment hasn’t been available, and my health keeps getting worse,” he said.
Doctors gave Mr Abu Foul an urgent referral abroad months ago. When news of Rafah’s reopening spread, hope returned. “I thought maybe I could travel and save my life,” he said. “But when we saw how the crossing is operating, that hope disappeared.”
Today, he receives only basic medication at Al Shifa Hospital, the last functioning hospital in Gaza city and the north that still receives cancer patients. “It’s not real treatment,” he said. “It’s all that exists.”
Painkillers, he added, are often unavailable, making life unbearable. “Sometimes we wish for death a thousand times a day because of the pain.”
The collapse of cancer care in Gaza is not accidental. Alaa Al Sakkafi, director of Al Dameer Centre for Human Rights, said Israeli forces have systematically demolished the sector since the war began.
“The occupation destroyed cancer treatment centres and took them out of service,” he told The National.
The Gaza European Hospital’s oncology department was bombed, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, which was the only specialised facility for adult cancer treatment, was destroyed, and the cancer unit at Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital was also taken out of service by Israeli bombardment.
With hospitals destroyed, chemotherapy supplies wiped out and 64 per cent of life-saving cancer medications exhausted, Gaza’s cancer patients face what Dr Al Barsh describes as “the most difficult face of suffering” towards an unknown fate.
Diagnostic tools are also missing. MRI machines and mammography units are unavailable, eliminating early detection and monitoring, critical elements in cancer survival.
Human rights organisations protest that preventing patients from treatment constitutes a grave breach of international law. Mr Al Sakkafi said the deliberate deprivation of care amounts to collective punishment and contravenes the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Despite repeated appeals from Gaza’s health authorities to international organisations, the World Health Organisation and UN bodies, the situation remains unchanged. The crossing continues to operate at minimal capacity, allowing only a small number of people to pass each day, while thousands wait.
For cancer patients, waiting is lethal.
“If the crossing does not truly open, many of us will not survive long enough to leave,” Mr Abu Foul said.
