After 6 months apart, Gaza mother to join baby daughter in Jerusalem hospital

A woman from the Gaza Strip who was separated from her newborn baby girl for six months as the infant lay in an East Jerusalem hospital will finally be reunited with her daughter, after she was granted a permit to return to Israel, Channel 13 news reported Tuesday.

The woman had been unable to return to Jerusalem after traveling to Gaza for the funeral of the baby girl’s two siblings, who did not survive when the triplets were born at the Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem.

According to the report, bureaucratic red tape had held up her return to Jerusalem. However, following inquiries by Channel 13, Israel’s military liaison with the Palestinians approved the mother’s permit request, granting her entry to Israel. The report did not say when she was due back in Jerusalem.

In January, the Gazan woman, pregnant with triplets, arrived at the Makassed Hospital for urgent surgery. She went into labor and gave birth but two of the siblings, both boys, died days later.

Baby Shahd with a nurse at Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem, May, 2019 (Channel 13 screenshot)

The mother returned to Gaza to bury her two sons while Shahd, the girl, stayed behind in Jerusalem, where she was taken care of by hospital staff.

The hospital repeatedly asked the Palestinian Authority to request a permit from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories for Shahd’s mother or father to come back to Israel, but the efforts failed.

For months the parents stayed in contact with the baby via cellphone video link, the report said.

COGAT said in a statement that it received just one previous request for a permit, but it was faulty and therefore not approved.

Israel issues thousands of permits every year for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to travel to Israel for medical treatment.