Gaza: Three-Day Truce for Children Immunizations

Israel has finally given the go-ahead for a three-day truce in Gaza. The Netanyahu government is downplaying the significance of the decision announced by the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Palestinian territories, a decision that has some relevance after 10 months of war and the suffering of the Palestinian population.

In this way, WHO staff will be able to conduct a vaccination campaign against polio, a disease that has returned to the strip after 25 years due to poor hygienic conditions and water quality.

The truce is expected to begin on Sunday, September 1, starting in central Gaza and then spreading to the north and south. There will be no shooting in either area for three days, maybe up to four; even Hamas has said it will not attack.

More than 1.6 million doses of vaccine have already arrived in the sector, but so far it has not been possible to administer them due to clashes. The first polio case confirmed after 25 years, according to the Italian newspaper Avvenire, “concerns 11-month-old Abdul Rahman, in whom the type 2 virus partially paralyzed his left leg.” A photo of him in a tent in the Al Mawasi refugee camp, sleeping in his car seat, with an older little girl waving fresh air in his face, went around the world. His mother, Niveen Abu al-Jidyan, said: “He hasn’t been vaccinated because of our constant traveling. When we left the North, he was only one month old.”