While Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization was firing rockets at Tel Aviv earlier this month, a separate drama was taking place with a relative of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
According to a report Thursday by Israel’s Channel 12 News outlet, Haniyeh’s 17-year-old was hospitalized for a bone marrow transplant at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center. The young girl spent more than a month under Israeli medical care.
In a separate report, the Hebrew-language Walla! News outlet said the young patient was no teenager — she was just six years old.
Ichilov Medical Center has declined to clarify the age of its patient, and declined to comment at all on the report.
Without mentioning his niece, Haniyeh claimed last Friday in public remarks that Hamas scored a “victory” over Israel in the recent mini-war, which Israel named “Operation Guardian of the Walls”.
“This battle has destroyed the project of ‘coexistence’ with the Israeli occupation, the project of ‘normalization’ with Israel,” Haniyeh said.
“There is an intifada (uprising) today in the West Bank, a revolution inside the 1948 borders and an amazing mobilization in the diaspora,” he added, referencing the recent nationwide riots and attacks on Israeli Jews by Israeli Arabs.
Regardless of Israel’s security situation, Haniyeh’s family has received medical care on numerous prior occasions by top physicians in the Jewish State; the families of other Hamas leaders have also been treated in Israel as well.
Haniyeh’s daughter was hospitalized in 2014 at Ichilov for days, a hospital spokesperson said, without revealing her diagnosis or further details about her care. Haniyeh’s 68-year-old mother-in-law was also hospitalized in Israel that same year, at Augusta Victoria Hospital, located near the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
In the year prior, Haniyeh’s baby granddaughter was rushed to an Israeli hospital in critical condition with an infection in her digestive tract. The one-year-old – who later passed away — was brought home to Gaza after it was determined that her condition could not be cured, the IDF said.
Gaza medical patients enter Israel for medical care via the Erez Crossing almost every week; permits are granted to the patients based on health and security circumstances.