Children in Gaza will be protected from polio but not Israel’s airstrikes

At the beginning of the month, a joint effort bringing together the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, UNRWA, and other partners, started in an effort to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza for polio, a highly contagious virus that can cause lifelong paralysis. The vaccination campaign would be “one of the most complex in the world,” according to an UNRWA spokesperson, and is being conducted under a series of time-limited “humanitarian pauses” around vaccination sites, but not a full ceasefire.

The campaign was deemed necessary mere weeks after polio was detected in Gaza’s wastewater in late July, and after the first case was discovered in a 10-month old boy, Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, whose leg is now paralysed. His parents had not been able to get him his routine vaccinations during the war due to being displaced multiple times. If he survives at all, his future will certainly be unclear, a reality not lost on his mother: “It's his right to walk, run, and move like before. It's his right to get the proper treatment, travel, get out, and get his chance in life.”

Every child does deserve a chance to live, including Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, who should not be at risk of polio in this day and age. Because despite the virus being potentially deadly if left to proliferate, it is so easily preventable.

Whilst there is no arguing against the value of the polio vaccination campaign, we must remember that the suffering caused by the virus is in addition to the tens of thousands of children in Gaza who have been killed and tens of thousands more injured, including thousands of children with amputations and other life-altering injuries. Some untold number remain trapped under the rubble of their homes; many children who survive may be the last person left in their family, leading to an entirely new acronym used by medical workers: WCNSF (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family). At least 19,000 children have been orphaned, and aside from polio, children in Gaza are suffering from multiple other infectious diseases due to living in crowded and poorly served shelters.

Furthermore, Children who have survived months of bombing are increasingly starving to death.

Aside from the physical toll, every child has been out of school for at least one school year, with no prospect of return—especially as most schools are destroyed. Parents and humanitarian workers in the territory report significant mental trauma in children, many of whom may never feel safe again.

While political actors and the humanitarian sector were able to come together for a complex vaccination campaign, it is telling that they have been unable to make any progress on the endless other ways Palestinian children in Gaza are being harmed.

Unlike orphanhood, or lack of schooling, polio is contagious. Viruses are not contained by borders, a lesson made clear by the quick spread of Covid-19 just a few years ago. A polio outbreak anywhere in the world is a risk to everyone, especially with international workers and Israeli soldiers going in and out of Gaza. It is not difficult to argue that the impetus behind the vaccination campaign was not, then, solely with the children of Gaza in mind, but with the fear that polio may spread beyond them.

A policy centring the real needs of the children of Gaza would look much different than a vaccination campaign squeezed in between rounds of bombing, only made possible by the reluctant permission of the entity responsible for the bombing.

After all, of what comfort is a humanitarian pause of a few hours over a few days for a vaccine when a child is still just as likely to be killed by an airstrike, lose a parent, or lose a limb? Once the vaccination efforts conclude—and early accounts indicate they are proceeding ahead of schedule due to anxious parents desperately trying to protect their children from at least one threat to their lives—what future will these polio-free children face?

More than six months ago, UNICEF was already calling Israel’s assault on Gaza ‘a war on children.’ And it is clear that war is not limited to Gaza, but is taking place across the occupied territories, with one child killed every two days in the West Bank since October 7. At least 5 have been killed in just the week since Israel launched a large-scale military incursion in the West Bank, disturbingly called “Operation Summer Camps.”

Since October 7, Israel has also arrested more than 700 children from the West Bank, with many reporting horrific conditions and physical and mental abuse upon release.

The risk of polio has, briefly, brought the humanitarian conditions in Gaza back into the public discourse. But, like so many threats to life in what the ICJ has already termed a “plausible” genocide, the solution is seen as solely within the framing of humanitarian response. Shouldn’t the resurgence of a nearly eradicated disease in a territory where it has not been seen for 30 years necessitate at least some conversation about the conditions that led to this, and the actors responsible? Shouldn’t we also want for these children to not have to dig in trash for food, drink contaminated water, and otherwise live in conditions unacceptable for any child, whether they are vaccinated against polio or not?

Palestinian children—whether they risk polio and bombing in Gaza, military raids and settler violence in the West Bank, or racist and violent neighbours in the United States—do deserve a complex, global effort for their safety and comfort, which is threatened on a daily basis. A vaccination campaign can be a part of that effort but should not serve as its only outcome. Otherwise, it becomes clear that Palestinian children only start to matter when the threats to their lives have a chance of spreading beyond their own circumstances.

Yara M. Asi, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Global Health Management and Informatics at the University of Central Florida, a Visiting Scholar at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, and a US Fulbright Scholar to the West Bank.

Follow her on X: @Yara_M_Asi

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.