Wounded Gazans are receiving care in Italy, but their future in the country is uncertain

In a community complex that once housed Rome's central slaughterhouse, men and women holding infants leaned over plate‐ fuls of golden rice dotted with chicken, cashews and raisins, chatting and laugh‐ ing, the squeals and com‐ motion of children punctu‐ ating the festive atmos‐ phere.

It was an evening near the end of Ramadan, and the people gathered were injured Palestinians and their family members who, over the past several months, had been evacuated in planes and on a ship from Gaza via Egypt to be cared for in Italy - the only European country to orga‐ nize such help, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry.

So far, the Italian Foreign Ministry has co-ordinated the evacuation of 156 Palestini‐ ans from Gaza. But both those evacuated and the NGOs trying to help them say last-minute planning on the part of the Italian govern‐ ment has led to confusion and isolation for evacuees cut off from their homeland and anxious about losing their Palestinian nationality and becoming permanent refugees.

Doaa, 28, sat in a wheel‐ chair at a square table with her mother. With her left hand, she poured some juice into a plastic cup, before scooping up some humus with a triangle of pita bread.

Through a translator, Doaa, who did not want to give her last name because she feared that it might jeop‐ ardize her safety when she returned to Gaza, explained that she arrived in Italy aboard a military plane in late January after she lost her leg and right hand when the Israeli military bombed her family home in Gaza.

With quiet composure, she pulled out her cellphone and scrolled to a photo of two smiling girls.

"She has four daughters, and these two are deceased," relayed Mamoun Barghouthi, a longtime member of Rome's Palestinian commu‐ nity, who translated. "They were killed in the bombing. Doaa was five months preg‐ nant and lost the child."

Doaa learned only re‐ cently that her two other daughters and husband sur‐ vived the bombing and are in Rafah, where hunger is wide‐ spread and, a UN report warned, famine is "immi‐ nent."

Since March 10, Doaa has been treated at Rome's Or‐ thopedic Traumatology Cen‐ tre.

Others at the gathering have similar stories.

Odah Al Kurdy, 30, with his leg in a cast and hobbling around on crutches, said he was an ambulance driver for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society when his leg was torn apart when an Israeli rocket hit his ambulance on Oct. 10.

"It hit us just as I was pulling out from rescuing a family," said Al Kurdy. "Every‐ one was killed except me."

Confusion, isolation, worry following evacua‐ tion

Doaa, Al Kurdy and the oth‐ ers are part of four groups of injured and sick Gazans and their relatives whose evacua‐ tion was co-ordinated by the Italian Foreign Ministry.

They include 58 gravely in‐ jured children, with another 42 children expected to be evacuated from Gaza over the next months, according to the ministry.

The medical care they've received in public and private hospitals throughout Italy has been excellent, according to Yousef Salman, a Palestin‐ ian surgeon who has worked in Italy for 50 years and heads the country's Red Crescent Society.

But, he says, after people are released from hospital, the Christian NGOs and mu‐ nicipal governments tasked with looking after them struggle to accommodate them. Many live in subpar housing and have little ac‐ cess to the legal support to decide if they want to re‐ quest asylum or not.

"Unfortunately, the Italian government brought people here and then abandoned them," Salman said.

While handing out pack‐ ages of dates, he said the small local Palestinian com‐ munity of several hundred is doing all it can to help.

"We fundraise, get them clothing, cellphones and numbers and help them with bureaucratic problems, but it's a lot."

A spokesperson for Italy's Foreign Ministry says the as‐ sistance to the Palestinians is a joint effort among the health, defence and interior ministries and that it is not responsible for co-ordina‐ tion. A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said it has nothing to do with the evac‐ uees.

Refugee status concern

Along with patchwork sup‐ port, some of the Palestini‐ ans say they face another worrisome uncertainty: the Italian government is subtly pressuring them to accept refugee status in order to simplify the bureaucracy and make it easier for them to ac‐ cess social services after their three-month visa expires.

This strikes a deep fear among some of losing their Palestinian identity and re‐ maining stuck as refugees abroad, not being able to re‐ turn to Gaza.

"We are insisting that our nationality is a red line," said Abeer Odeh, the Palestinian ambassador to Italy.

Most of the Palestinians came without passports, evacuated in a rush from

Gaza to Egypt before board‐ ing military planes to Rome, she said.

"The right of return of the Palestinians is very important to us," Odeh said. "We don't want to see more and more refugees. We want them to keep their passports, to get back to Gaza whenever they finish their treatment here and the conditions are right."

When Russia invaded Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainians poured into the EU, which granted them per‐ mission to stay for 90 days with access to the healthcare system and social ser‐ vices - and then apply for a "permit of stay" for tempo‐ rary protection.

So far, no such permit of stay is being offered to the Palestinians, with the threemonth visa for the first ar‐ rivals set to expire at the end of this month.

"We want the same condi‐ tions as the Ukrainians got," said Mamoun Barghouthi, who represents the office of the observer of Palestine at

the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

"They need to find a tem‐ porary category for us. Our people are not escaping a government; we're not refugees."

But Maria Quinto, a refugee co-ordinator at San‐ t'Egidio, one of the NGOs helping support the Palestini‐ ans, says about 40 per cent of the Gazans she's dealt with in Rome have chosen to apply for asylum, tantly.

"They're struggling to de‐ cide what to do - to ask for asylum, to join family mem‐ bers in other countries or to return to Gaza," she said.

Under the Geneva Con‐ vention, refugee status does not have to be a permanent designation and can be un‐ done, she said. if reluc‐

Italy's shifting alliances

Italy was one of the first

Western governments to es‐ tablish relations with the Palestinian Liberation Orga‐ nization in 1980 and, histori‐ cally, was a strong supporter of the Palestinian right to self-determination, recogniz‐ ing Palestine as a state in 2015.

While considered neutral regarding Palestinian-Israeli relations, Italy's foreign policy has shifted toward Israel, to which it supplies arms. In a rare show of unity, in Febru‐ ary, the Italian parliament ap‐ proved an opposition motion to request an immediate ceasefire in Gaza while also reiterating support for Israel.

Along with many other countries, Italy cut off fund‐ ing to UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians, after Israel accused some of its employees of being involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led at‐ tack on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and about 250 others taken hostage to Gaza, ac‐ cording to Israeli officials.

More than 33,400 Pales‐ tinians have been killed in the subsequent Israeli offen‐ sive, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does‐ n't differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says most of the dead are women and chil‐ dren.

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