The Palestinian mother shares her happiness:
Joumana Daoud was finally able to hug Maryam, whom she had come to give birth to in Jerusalem and who has since spent six months in incubator far from her mother, returned to Gaza and blocked there for lack of permission to leave. "It's wonderful, I can finally take her in my arms. I hope that now she will be happy and healthy forever," the 24-year-old Palestinian woman told a source. At the end of July 2016, Joumana Daoud reached her fourth month of pregnancy when her doctors detected serious problems.
Maryam was born in August 2016:
Unable to treat her in the Gaza Strip, under an Israeli blockade for 10 years and where hospital facilities are limited, they managed to get her to deliver at the Makassed hospital in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian part of occupied Jerusalem and Annexed by Israel. In order to do so, they obtained from the Israeli authorities a laissez-passer, essential to the two million Gazans to leave their enclave and cross the Israeli territory to Jerusalem. Maryam was born on August 1 after only 29 weeks of gestation and was immediately placed in an incubator. Her twin did not survive the childbirth.
Gaza's unpredictable permits:
Support from Israeli NGO Physicians:
Joumana Daoud went away after a few days to look after her two other young children in Gaza, thinking that she could return.
The young woman and the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights who support her claim that she asked for a new safe-conduct to return to Maryam but did not see anything coming for months. What has happened in the meantime remains to be elucidated. Requests for permits to leave Gaza are often unpredictable. They are approved or rejected by the Israelis.
But they are first filed with the Palestinian Authority.
The procedure often random:
Israeli Ministry of Defense is responsible:
Requests for permits to leave Gaza are often unpredictable. They are approved or rejected by the Israelis. But they are first filed with the Palestinian Authority. The body of the Israeli Ministry of Defense responsible for these procedures, the Cogat, told a source not to have received any request. The Palestinian body in charge of coordination with the Israelis claims to have a document proving that the request has been made.
