More than 60 members of the US Congress have called on the Israeli regime to lift restrictions on Palestinian cancer patients in Gaza, allowing them to seek treatment in hospitals in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Fifty-one House members and 11 senators signed the letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Van Hollen and Representatives Madeleine Dean and Greg Casar.
The letter urges the Trump regime to facilitate medical evacuation of child cancer patients and their caretakers, and to obtain Israeli guarantees for their return to Gaza. “There is no conceivable reason that allowing kids with cancer to drive 40 minutes for lifesaving medical treatment should be controversial,” said Deyar Jamil, a fellow at human rights group DAWN, which helped draft the letter. “Such cruelty would not be possible without US political cover and we are grateful for the members of Congress who are demanding an end to it.”
The UN estimates some 11,000 cancer patients currently live in Gaza, where the Israeli regime’s systematic destruction of the healthcare system has left them unable to obtain adequate treatment. According to the WHO, 94 percent of Gaza’s hospitals were destroyed or damaged during the war that began in October 2023. In March 2025, Israeli forces destroyed the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the sole specialized cancer facility in the strip.
“Cancer diagnoses become death sentences in Gaza, where doctors estimate that cancer deaths have tripled since October 2023,” the letter reads. It argues that limited medical evacuations permitted by Israeli authorities have fallen far short of patients’ needs. According to the UN, at least 1,200 people have died in Gaza while waiting for evacuation approvals, including a six-year-old boy with leukemia named Ghazal. The WHO suspended medical evacuations from Gaza to Egypt in April after Israeli forces shot and killed a medical contractor.
The letter proposes establishing a medical corridor connecting Gaza to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where facilities like Augusta Victoria Hospital have offered to cover all expenses. It also calls for assurances that Palestinians can rebuild Gaza’s medical facilities without further destruction, but emphasizes the immediate need to evacuate cancer patients. “The only obstacle between these patients and the treatment they desperately need is the Israeli government’s approval of their evacuation requests,” the letter states.
Source: www.aljazeera.com