- By Quentin Sommerville
- BBC Middle East Correspondent
February 22, 2024
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Palestinians leave an evacuation flight that took them from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates
Two very different flights within 24 hours, each with the same goal: to alleviate the suffering in Gaza.
The first is the less dangerous one: an Etihad Airways passenger aircraft, flight EY750 from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The Boeing 777 has been transformed into a virtual flying ambulance, with economy class seats converted into hospital beds.
Their mission, funded by the government of the United Arab Emirates, is to bring back civilians who previously managed to escape after being trapped in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip for months in some cases, and to evacuate wounded Palestinian children from Gaza to al-Arish im northern Sinai of Egypt.
After hours on the ground, the first evacuees make it on board. You can see relief on their faces as they cross the airport to get to the plane, but also uncertainty. Many have left family members behind in Gaza.
Among them is 58-year-old Hanaa Hasan Abu Namous. Her hand is badly injured. She says 25 members of her family were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
“During the war they were displaced,” she tells me. “Thirty or 50 of them came to our house. We are civilians. We have never fought and never will.”
She holds a picture on her phone of corpses in shrouds. They had to be buried together, four or five to a coffin, she says.
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The plane was evacuating Palestinian children who had come to Egypt from Gaza
A few rows ahead sits 13-year-old Yazan Wajih Barhum, whose left foot has been partially amputated. He says he was in a neighbor's house in Rafah when an Israeli bomb hit.
His seven-year-old brother Yamen was hit in the eye by shrapnel and is already in Abu Dhabi. When I ask him when they last saw each other, he quickly answers: “58 days ago.” What are his hopes for the future, I ask.
“I want to be able to walk on my legs again, go back to the way I was, play football with my friends and for the war to end so I can return to my country,” he says.
The crew on board, regular flight personnel, presents the 25 injured children with backpacks with games and a SpongeBob blanket. The children who are able sit on the entertainment system and watch cartoons. Some are lying on stretchers in the back of the plane.
Kiran Sadasivan, the cabin manager, welcomes the children and their companions on board, takes photos with their cell phones and distributes meals. “This is my tenth mission flight,” he tells me. “And I’ll be at the next one in a few days.”
Also on board is Dr. Maha Barakat, the UAE's deputy foreign minister. As a British-trained doctor, she does not rest during the 20-hour evacuation mission, checking on patients and the medical team and maintaining contact with the Egyptian authorities on site.
“Today was definitely more demanding than usual,” she says. “We were trying to reach a particular girl – she needed urgent medical attention. And she didn't make it to the border. However, another plane will arrive in the next few days.”
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A crew member explains the plane's entertainment system to a Palestinian girl
Not all Palestinians on the plane leave Gaza. Mother of three Zahra Mohammed Al-Qeiq sits alone, wearing a dark red headscarf and a small leather handbag at her side. She suffers from leukemia and left Gaza a few months ago to seek treatment in Abu Dhabi. Now she is returning to Rafah.
Isn't she afraid, I ask her.
“The whole time I spent in the Emirates, my children cried on calls asking me to come back, saying: 'Come back, we will die in Gaza.' I had to stop my treatment and return to my children,” she says.
Emirati doctors gave her chemotherapy drugs for six months. “I cried every night when I wasn’t home. I have to go back, they are my children,” she says.
First British airdrop of aid
Twenty-four hours later, a Royal Jordanian Airforce cargo plane with “Guts Airline” written on the side flies into Gaza at sunset.
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Watch British aid being dropped from a plane into the Gaza Strip
The crew on board has made this flight a dozen times. As they reach an altitude of 17,000 feet (5,200 m), they don oxygen masks and make the final precise adjustments for descent.
For the first time, the cargo on board is of British origin: four tons of relief supplies, including fuel, medical equipment and food rations, to supply the Jordanian-run field hospital in Gaza City.
There is a strong Israeli military presence on site. Jordanian authorities are not disclosing what arrangements will be made with Israel to allow the plane to fly over without incident.
Israel remains firmly in control of aid to the Gaza Strip. Britain and others have complained that only a fraction of the aid needed is reaching the Strip. Everything is subject to strict Israeli controls to prevent supplies that would help Hamas from entering the interior.
Most people in this once densely populated part of Gaza have been displaced by Israeli forces, but about 300,000 remain, barely surviving in the most desperate circumstances. The United Nations has been warning for months of an impending famine in the north of the Gaza Strip.
I watch as the cargo doors opened and the first two pallets of supplies flew away into the black night. The aircraft banks and turns sharply, and the second two pallets are launched. The Jordanian team gives a thumbs up and heads home.
It is just a small drop in the chasm of need in Gaza. But this help sent in the night at least gets through; The crew confirms that they landed exactly at their destination.